Alt-tab support?

Setup is: Windows 7 laptop, 1074 patch, UAP, high res town maps and textures.

Everything runs fine unless I need to alt-tab to do something else, because that's really rolling the dice. When I switch back, sometimes it works as expected, but fairly often I get locked on a black screen with music, and can't even get the game to shut down or switch back to the desktop. Best solution at that point is to do something drastic like log out of Windows.

I've tried to run it in windowed mode, but run into the same instant crash issue as here. The only thread I've been able to dig up that talks about this issue is this one, but I'm not sure what to take away from it.

I'm willing to put up with some inconveniences to get a somewhat older game running, but if I can't switch out of the game and resume it without major disruption, that's kind of a mood-killer.

Any suggestions?

 

Sometimes when something weird like that happens to me changing screen resolution to that of the actual game (800 x 600) and then going back into the game tab gets the screen from black to normal (as in I think the problem is changing to higher resolution and going back into the low res game), still I suppose you might find that equally annoying. Going by that logic, maybe if you changed the game to the same resolution as your desktop by using Drog's high res patch found in the downloads section may also help. This is just a suggestion though, might not work at all.

I guess as a different solution, don't alt tab out of the game! Or maybe try temporarily exiting the game by a different means (using the windows button that gets up the start menu for example) and see if that helps.

 

I confirm that 70% of the time you Alt+Tab Arcanum to go back to your desktop, you can't go back properly.

 

I have been using the high res patch, and at my monitor's default resolution.

I've been poking around and it seems like the best solution might be running it through VirtualBox, though I've never done anything like that before and it's a little daunting. Can anyone who has pulled this off vouch for it?

 

I don't think it depends on the resolution you play with, it's just that some old games can't properly switch with alt+tab.

I've experienced that with some other old games - e.g. Sanitarium.

 

Found a workaround for this. When you alt+tab Arcanum and can't go back, select the proper window and then press ctrl+alt+del. Cancel and voila, you're back in Arcanum. Works everytime.

 

I agree, whenever i play arcanum, the best way to return after Alt-Tab, is via task manager.

 

For me this only happens when I have some kind of game window up in Arcanum, like the Inventory or Character Sheet or Shop Window. If I dont have any of those open, hit esc to have the menu up so that the game is paused, and then alt tab, it is 100% fine.

Hope this helps others?