Fullscreen, DirectX, and Synchronous Animations

Java 2D
#1

Hello Everyone!

I have been lurking for a little while and I have a question that I can’t seem to find answered anywhere else:

If my Java app is using Exclusive Screen mode on Windows, do I need to do anything in reaction to losing exclusive access in the middle of a synchronous animation? I don’t mean from the point of view of game play, I mean from the point of view of the JVM. I am talking about animation loops with a lifespan of several seconds, but no longer.

It certainly seems the animation can simply be completed while the application is moved into the background. But is that really correct? Does the JVM “like” that?

I have seen much discussion of using Exclusive Access versus Windowed Mode, etc., but I don’t recall seeing anything definitive as to how a “proper” java game is supposed to react to losing exclusive access and going into the background.

BTW, it used to be that doing this (by pressing the Windows key) caused the windowIconified message to be sent, but now the windowDeactivated message is sent?

Thanks and I am sorry if this is covered elsewhere.

James

#2

beginning with the “exclusive full-screen” mode, it is not a special issue for the repaintManager, thus repaint() should work every where. But as for “active/passive rendering” mode, some properties can change. One of the most known is the BufferStrategy that cannot load more than one buffer in windowed mode while switching to the full-screen mode allows us to load up to three buffers, see createBufferStrategy(int numBuffers).
Thus your Animation rendering mustn’t care about full-screen mode, or you can fail on bufferStrategy properties if you change those latter properties.