Library recommendation?

[Wiering]

Thanks SilverWarior, the reason is that I want to try to get the game on Steam and the broken full screen mode is a complaint I get most, so it needs to be fixed.
Actually the DelphiX version is already kind of a port, since it started out as a DOS game, so it mainly just uses one DIB from DelphiX to draw the screen on, so moving to a different library shouldn't be that bad.
But your idea for borderless full screen window is probably a good temporary fix (eventhough I would prefer real fullscreen for the smoothness), it sure would be better than having an option in the game that doesn't work.
I recently contacted the author, maybe he will still reply. But I think it is something that Microsoft needs to fix (and from https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...3-997b996b9567 I don't think it is very high on their priority list.

I don't remember running into that problem of the names, but it's a good thing to know. And yes, unicode could be a problem too, especially combined with assembly (I used to have lots of optimized string functions like UpCaseStr with assembly). I should probably rewrite all my assembly code to standard pascal.

[SilverWarior]

Actually the DelphiX version is already kind of a port, since it started out as a DOS game, so it mainly just uses one DIB from DelphiX to draw the screen on, so moving to a different library shouldn't be that bad.

If you are drawing the contents of the game screen into a DIB (device independent bitmap) and then rendering that DIB onto the screen you don't even need specific library. That could all be done with a Windows API.
But in your original post you were also talking about sound and input handling. Here is where I believe you might encounter even greater difficulties.

But your idea for borderless full screen window is probably a good temporary fix (eventhough I would prefer real fullscreen for the smoothness)

As I sad before on modern computers there is virtually no performance impact of running a game in borderless full screen window.
If you don't believe me just check any modern game that has support for full screen borderless window and make a comparison. You might even find out that some of the modern games no longer even support the true full screen mode.

[Wiering]

If you are drawing the contents of the game screen into a DIB (device independent bitmap) and then rendering that DIB onto the screen you don't even need specific library. That could all be done with a Windows API.
But in your original post you were also talking about sound and input handling. Here is where I believe you might encounter even greater difficulties.

It's actually not DIB but DXDIB, and yes I also use a DXDraw, DXTimer, DXInput, DXSound and DXWaveList. What I meant is that game itself is not based on DelphiX, like when you use DelphiX's sprites and collision detection, instead I use it as a layer around the game.

As I sad before on modern computers there is virtually no performance impact of running a game in borderless full screen window.
If you don't believe me just check any modern game that has support for full screen borderless window and make a comparison. You might even find out that some of the modern games no longer even support the true full screen mode.

Could you name any examples of modern games that use full screen borderless window?

[SilverWarior]

It's actually not DIB but DXDIB

Actually DXDIB or to be more precise TDXDIB is a unDelphiX component intended to ease up working with DIB images.
Notice that all od unDelphiX components and many of its classes have DX prefix. This prefix is still from the time of the original DelphiX library. unDelphiX is actually an unofficial version of DelphiX which has been updated with more features and better compatibility with newer versions od DirectX.
And yes many people mistakenly think that DX prefix in unDelphiX library is actually referring to DirectX API which is not true. This has caused quite some confusion in the past and even whole lot of problems when people would have both DelphiX and DirectX wrappers in same project as it lead to scenarios of having duplicate names.

Could you name any examples of modern games that use full screen borderless window?

Hmm... Where should I start? Let's start by checking my steam library

Age of Empires 2: HD Edition
In the options you have three choices for Dipslay Mode:
- Windowed: which is self explanatory
- Full Screen: which is true Full Screen mode
- Full Desktop: which is borderless full screen window mode. Note some people experience problem when switching between Full Screen and Full Desktop mode due to a bug in AOE2 HD

BeamNG Drive
It has ability to run in borderless full screen window but always switches back to standard windowed mode when it loses focus (user clicks on some other application on the second monitor - dual monitor setup)
Done quite some testing and haven't seen any performance difference

Empyrion - Galactic Survival
Also supports borderless full screen window. Also haven't noticed any performance difference.

Grand Theft Auto V
It does support borderless full screen mode.
Here I used in-game benchmark system to test out the performance difference between true full screen and borderless full screen window mode. The is a slight performance drop in borderless full screen window mode of about 3 FPS. But that is still negligible especially if you take into account that GTAV is graphically heavy demanding game and my computer (AMD FX-8350 Eight Core, 16 GB RAM, Radeon R9 270 2GB VRAM) isn't some very powerful gaming rig either.

Medieval Engineers, Space Engineers
Both support full screen window mode. There is slight performance drop when running in full screen window mode but nothing serious. Just a few FPS similar to GTAV

Scrap Mechanic
Haven't noticed any performance difference

X-COM: Enemy Unknown
Haven't noticed any performance difference but since it is turn based game I guess if there is any difference it would be much harder to spot.

These are just some of the more known games who have the borderless full screen window mode available in the options menu. But there are also others which might require starting game with additional command parameter or manually editing game settings files.