Attract Mode not giving focus away to Windows .exe

[victor]

Hi there,

I'm having some trouble getting a reliable handoff from AM to Windows executables. If the user presses keys during the launch, AM can hold on to focus instead of handing off to the game.

(Full disclosure: I first went to the bug link from the forum index, found myself on GitHub, and posted a ticket here https://github.com/mickelson/attract/issues/220)

My current configuration launches games by way of "cmd /c [romfilename]". The games always launch, but in some cases they don't get focus. It's very reproducible for me: Rapidly press a key that's not mapped in AM; launch the currently selected game while still pressing that other key; the game launches, but does not get full focus.

In most cases, this results in a black screen because AM has faded to black in preparation for launching the game, but the game didn't get window focus. In fewer cases, the game DOES get window focus, but AM still has keyboard focus.

I've tried a couple of things so far, with no change in this behavior:

  - setting "Minimum Run Time" to a few different values (0, 1, 5, 60)
  - launching a batch file that then launches the .exe
  - launching Notepad.exe (tried because it launches pretty quickly)

I'm running Windows 8 and Attract mode 2.0.0.

I'm at a loss! Please help!

Thanks,
Victor

[rascaluk]

I'm having a similar problem.

I have about 6 Windows shooters in a list. Crimzon Clover, works fine no probs every time.

All the others AM stays on top, some don't even run. Screen flashes once and that's it...

[omegaman]

Hi guys!

Thanks for opening a ticket. But, just for a precautionary measure make sure there is nothing running in the system tray like Onedrive that might be stilling focus. I ended up turning off all my notifications in the system tray to be safe. I'm not saying this is going to fix the problem but it does help rule out potential issues. On windows 10, you change here:

 right-click on the Taskbar, choose Properties, and then click the Customize button.