BUG: Alt-tab screws up gamma if changed (SOLVED)

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Basically, if I'm playing a game with adjustable gamma, and change the gamma setting, and alt-tab, it screws up my regular gamma settings royally. Right now, my monitor is unbearably bright after having set gamma VERY HIGH on the game I was testing and then alt-tabbing, and I'm going to restart as soon as I post this.

EDIT - Ok, now that I restarted, I accidently alt-tabbed with modified gamma AGAIN. And just as I was gritting my teeth in antecipation... nothing happened.

HOWEVER, I do know that before I restarted, I had been reduced to constantly going in-game, changing gamma and alt-tabbing out in an attempt to restore normality. I didn't manage to restore normality, but I DID see a gamma change on my desktop every time I did that.

So... I'm pretty clueless now.

EDIT 2 - GAH! And now that I Alt-X'd it got screwed up again! Another restart... <sigh>

[Scorpiorus]

If I remember correctly, the gamma setting in Windows has a global effect, so if you run a game, change gamma there and then do Alt-Tab (or minimize it) the gamma on your desktop will remain the same as in game, until you return to the game and close it. (at least I experienced that with an application working with OpenGL interface)

That's also noticable when a certain game crashes, then it may fail to restore the gamma level and you then must do it manually from you graphic card settings or just restart the operating system.

By the way, if you graphic card supports overlays you may be able to adjust gamma independently, such as you can have a movie played in a window with a different gamma level to the one of your desktop. That's usually controllable via graphic card driver settings.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

If I remember correctly, the gamma setting in Windows has a global effect, so if you run a game, change gamma there and then do Alt-Tab (or minimize it) the gamma on your desktop will remain the same as in game, until you return to the game and close it. (at least I experienced that with an application working with the OpenGL interface)

Oddly enough, there were times when alt-tabbing did restore my desktop's gamma.

So basically, if I want to avoid the mess-up I saw I should take care not to Alt-X but rather simply quit the game, and it's not an issue with AGS. Right, thanks for the tip.

[Scorpiorus]

I just tried a couple of tests with gamma in AGS and it all seems to work fine for me. Both Alt-tabbing and Alt-X'ing do restore gamma settings on desktop. If I press a WinKey, the Windows Start Menu and some of the desktop elements partially appear but the gamma isn't being changed for a second, but after that it does restore to its normal level (I used the same graphic mode, ie. resolution, color depth and refresh rate, while switching between a game in full-screen and desktop to avoid my monitor's changing refresh rate mode in the process).

I did that on Win2k, by the way.

EDIT: I checked things up and fiddled with it a bit more and seems Windows actually handles (atleast tries to handle) restoring of gamma level between application and desktop. It's just some applications adjust the gamma on a low level, effectively overriding what's set through high-level OS interface. It may have something to do with DirectX (DDraw/D3D) based vs not based applications, where DirectX probably manages gamma for its applications when switching between full-screen and windowed modes, I guess.