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[Finaldeath]

Since some people (ie; me) wanted to know about this (and no one else seemed to know? at least the few I asked ), I found out how to do a windowed mode full screen version of Source games (TF2, L4D, HL2, CS:S etc.). Go to the games properties, open the "Set Launch Options" and put:

-novid -noborder -windowed

novid removes the intro videos (thank goodness it works on Left4Dead), noborder means there isn't the standard windows X buttons and whatever, and -windowed makes it act like a normal window - you can now Alt-Tab. Can easily remove the options to set it back to normal.

There might be a little performance lost, multitasking in Windows is a pain but from my small test tonight, works fine. Dead useful, too, considering the few times I want to alt-tab, it always messes up a full screen game until a level reload or restart of the game (sigh).

Only thing is be careful with multiple monitors, the menus don't limit where the mouse can move so you can click off on another window accidentally.

[Zarf]

Multitasking in Vista with Aero enabled works great, no pause at all alt-tabbing from TF2. Even the windows key+tab thing works perfectly.

[Finaldeath]

I've never heard of the source engine not being quirky switching (many games do it well, while Source engines miss textures, transparencies, people's models, and even outright crashes, especially if a level loads). I'm surprised Vista is really that good when the game is the same on both that, XP and 2000.

[LtMama]

I recalled playing Red Orchestra with it windowed was kinda useful, meant i could play and talk on msn etc at the same time

[Gasman]

I'm not sure I'd try it windowed as I use two monitors and sure as damn would misplace the cursor. However, I can speak to the multitasking aspect - played last night with my full multitiude of desktop toys in action. That's a couple of Widgets, plus media player (stalled or not depending on what was happening). That's not unusual but last night I also had another game minimised (and paused) and three Citrix Windows sessions - including Outlook which continued to notify incoming emails during the game. It worked flawlessly - framerates scarcely affected. Of course, I did have a problem when playing L4D last thing but not related to software.

[Chaos]

I've never heard of the source engine not being quirky switching (many games do it well, while Source engines miss textures, transparencies, people's models, and even outright crashes, especially if a level loads). I'm surprised Vista is really that good when the game is the same on both that, XP and 2000.

in this situation its more about how the os handles the app (or game) than how the app handles the switching

[Junta]

For a desktop shortcut to connect to WDG server (window mode):

x:\Path to your steam dir\Steam.exe" -applaunch 440 +connect 193.93.47.60:27016 -noborder -novid -windowed

where 'x' is the drive where steam is installed

Like others, I've seen TF2 (HL.EXE) crash when running in full screen mode (not windowed) and you switch out of the game. Windowed mode works really well for me.

[Teatime]

Switching while in game works quite well for me under XP. It takes a few seconds (10-15), but I rarely have crashes.
I can count on HL crashing when I have the game running in "auto-retry" mode for connecting to a server.

(But since "auto-retry" is pretty much pointless on the WDG-server and by now I rarely play anywhere else it's not much of a burden  )

[claws]

If alt-tab messes things up (i.e. missing people) you can use the old record demo ; stop trick - works great.

[Finaldeath]

Chaos; I'd beg to differ on that opinion, the OS might be partially responsible, but really, it depends on the game much more then the OS. I can provide several examples are games which have excellent alt-tab support if you want them (even sometimes including auto-pausing, or pausing the execution of the game during it).

[Zarf]

Got a feeling that might be to do with resolution changes, or simply RAM usage by the game in question. If your comp has to page out it's going to slow down.

[Finaldeath]

Slowness and RAM usage is not the issue, Windows doesn't suddenly page everything on returning to the desktop, there's many high RAM using games which are just simply better written then the Source engine for Alt-tabbing. It's Valve's work, not Microsoft's, that causes issues here.

This is a good enough workaround for me and others at least. In this respect, it's one of the few features (although, like I say, a better alt-tab would be good...) that isn't in other games.

[Junta]

It's Valve's work, not Microsoft's, that causes issues here.

I agree that its mostly a Valve programming issue - and how the game processing loops / threads work with Windows when the user switches focus away from the game window. TF2 will be able to detect specific keyboard events triggered by the user (or other "lost focus" events fired by the OS when the window focus changes to the desktop). I suspect that the TF2 threads are too busy sometimes to detect things such as this. The fact that windowed mode works better also hints that the detection of events is handled better in windowed mode than in full screen mode.

[Finaldeath]

It's all rather odd, but I expect since the engine is so old (its been upgraded more then most of the Unreal engines) it's ingrained in there. I should look at the SDK a bit more, once I get some time, although I don't think all the engine code is there sadly. What is good, is the windowed mode does work better, although yesterday in Left 4 Dead I couldn't workout why my ping was lower. It seems Firefox had crashed on exit (must be one of my extensions, sigh) and hung one of the CPU's at 100% constantly, heh.

[Chaos]

**Rises thread from the dead**
badumtish

Right.. I'm sick of my choices in this matter...
When I start TF2 with the

Code:

-noborder -windowed

launch options I get an awful amout of screen stutter.. to the point my rocket jumps are useless and the mouse seems to do what it wants (rather than what I want)
The good thing about these launch controls is that I can alt-tab out.. but my game looks and handles like crap!
I have tried setting new graphics settings ect. to no avail.
If I remove the settings, I am happy while I am playing.. but no alt tab for me!

I read on some forum after doing a google search that

Code:

mat_forcehardwaresync 1

this in the Autoexec should fix the problem but that did crap all...
Is anyone else getting these issues?
Or even better.. does anyone else have another way of alt-tabbing without source being a douche