Two things really

[Neon]

1) Holy alt-tab batman
- It being a microsoft product its quite alt-tab resiliant which is nice for those long trade lane journeys, i tend to alt-tab out and browse the web a bit, like now in these forums, i can still hear it though so you never get attacked and not know about it , which is rather cool :)

2) Fan sites
- Anyone know some good fan sites, apart from lancerreactor, no offense but the way the site is laid out and stuff is pretty crappy, hard to find what you want, more would be cool, gimme links links !;)

[phil]

Originally posted by Neon
1) Holy alt-tab batman
- It being a microsoft product its quite alt-tab resiliant which is nice for those long trade lane journeys, i tend to alt-tab out and browse the web a bit, like now in these forums, i can still hear it though so you never get attacked and not know about it , which is rather cool :)


The fact that you can alt-tab out and carry on playing a real-time game sums up why Freelancer is a bag of streaming horse poo.



btw/ I doubt being published by microsoft has got much to do with the alt-tabability of a game. I can alt-tab out of BF without any problem while online. I'd have thought it's got more to do with how and which directX libraries are used and how much memory you've got.

[Catachan]

I'm afraid your wrong in the case of alt-tabbing. While the amount of programs you could run while alt-tabbing certainly is dependant on the physical spec of your machine, the reliability of alt-tabbing a game is 100% down to the programmers.

Done at a minimum, a successful alt-tab would at the very least suspend the thread which runs the game information, effectively pausing the game while minimised.

Done well however, like Freelancer, the game can continue running undeterred in the background while other applications are used and loaded.

The basics of alt-tabbing a game fall to the graphics most of all. Coding proper alt-tab code will allow the rendering pipeline to minimise it's use and continue allowing the program to run unpaused in the background.

Just some information if anyone was interested. I had to do this for a game I coded when I did A-Level Programming.

[afty]

Psym : why is the ability to alt-tab out and carry on in the background bad? Would you prefer that the server paused for everyone? I can't understand your gripe.

As for the alt-tabbability (!) Microsoft games usually behave rather well when alt-tabbed, and a source of much grievance for me is that id engine based games do not. Memory helps with speed, but even a top end rig can cry when alt-tabbed out of half life, Quake 3 etc. depending on hardware and drivers.

[phil]

Originally posted by Catachan
I'm afraid your wrong in the case of alt-tabbing. While the amount of programs you could run while alt-tabbing certainly is dependant on the physical spec of your machine, the reliability of alt-tabbing a game is 100% down to the programmers.

I entirely agree, my point was that microsoft publishing the game is not the reason the game is alt-tab safe.

[phil]

Originally posted by afty
Psym : why is the ability to alt-tab out and carry on in the background bad? Would you prefer that the server paused for everyone? I can't understand your gripe.


My gripe isn't that it continues that game in the background - this is a good thing (as any BF commander would tell you). My gripe is that the game is so mind-numbingly dull that you can sit there alt-tabbed browsing the web while it does it's winamp plug-in impression as you cross the galaxy.

Originally posted by afty
As for the alt-tabbability (!) Microsoft games usually behave rather well when alt-tabbed, and a source of much grievance for me is that id engine based games do not. Memory helps with speed, but even a top end rig can cry when alt-tabbed out of half life, Quake 3 etc. depending on hardware and drivers.

It's a word! ;)

I can't say I've noticed a correlation between microsoft games and good alt-tab stability (the X-madness games for example). You're right about id games, and I'm sure lots of other games by lots of other developers.