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Sounds like you're playing your game in fullscreen mode at whatever the native resolution is. The game is taking up the 1 monitor thus allowing you to view stuff on the other but not interact with it. You need to look in the games options menu and find an option that says something like "borderless window" or "borderless fullscreen" and that will let you do what you want.

You could try this program call DxWnd

Use dxwnd to force it in fullscreen. I don't own the games so thats my best guess.

You can also try the PC gaming wiki and see if they have a fix.

Just wanted to double-confirm that everything works awesome on Windows 7 with this package. (It does need to run as admin, but this is configured by default.)

Also, there are a couple of really nice tweaks you can do to the AlphaCentauri.ini file.

Runs the game at your full resolution instead of 1024x768 (might cause some weirdness with some movies/UI elements):
DirectDraw=0

Additionally you can add the following line:
DisableOpeningMovie=1
EDIT: The config file from GOG seems to already have this line, but with an explicit "=0", so you need to CHANGE the existing line. Just adding this line will not disable the movie.

If you want to run SMAX in WINDOWED mode, you will need a third-party application that hooks into the program, called DxWnd. There are a few versions of this kicking around. I believe this is the most up to date version. I believe the default settings are all fine except that you have to set the window size to 1024x768 instead of the default 800x600. It might be possible to optimize/improve things by fiddling with some more of the options. If you do this, you should NOT need to change anything in the AlphaCentauri.ini file (in fact, the combination of DirectDraw=0 and DxWnd will simply not work well at all). You must run DxWnd as Admin (which is NOT enabled by default).

EDIT: In DxWnd, enabling the Emulation: Primary Surface option will prevent your desktop from dropping into 256-color mode and looking all weird.

EDIT 2: I just made a blog post with a complete guide to configuring SMAX for modern windows (including changing the resolution and running in Windowed mode.)

Here is DXWND - http://sourceforge.net/projects/dxwnd/files/Latest%20build/v2_03_28_build.rar/download

thats the real site, and here is cPU grabber from the real site -

http://mustafayalcin.com/?p=21

Got it up and running pretty quickly with DxWnd, but I'm having some issues with the colors acting up. Gotta play with it more to clean that up, but it's looking pretty hopeful.

For shits and grins, I tested uncdcheck with it and it worked for removing the copy protection. It's a super simple program that targets a single cd checking scheme that was popular in the 90s.

If you run fullscreen directx games it will take over global hotkeys and obviously be on top of any other windows. To be able to see livesplit you need to

• Find a way to run the game in windowed mode. Try adding -w to the .exe command line, pressing alt+enter, or pressing f11 in game.

OR

• If none of these work (might be the case for mirrors edge) you need to run it through a program like dxwnd

OR

• Use dual monitors.

To get hotkeys to work, usually running the game as administrator (right click > properties > compatibility) will do the trick

Well on windows I got most of them running, by using DxWnd. On mac I had less success. Some worked with wine. On mac I mostly used VirtualBox. Apple seems to have dropped a lot of backwards compatibility with the more recent OS's.

have you tried running it at the lowest resolution (640x480 I think)? I also had problems with higher resolutions.

Try re-downloading the installer from GoG in case it got corrupted somehow.

Ubuntu is free to download so you could try that through vmware although it's a bit of a hassle. If you do follow the instructions for Gangsters running in wine provided here:

https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=2579

A final solution would be to try and run it through dxwnd. dxwnd is a program which you can use to force applications to run in windowed mode. It also solves quite a lot of compatibility issues with older programs (esp resolution issues). You can get it here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/dxwnd/

check the post on the gog Gangsters forum. You can see the settings for dxwnd in the gangster.png attachment. In fact I would try dxwnd first after re-downloading the gangsters installer from gog. Might save you messing around with Operating Systems

edt: link for the dxwnd post on gog forums:

http://www.gog.com/forum/gangsters_organized_crime/is_there_any_way_of_running_this_game_in_windowed_mode

I'm using a combination of DxWnd and Windowed Borderless Gaming.

DxWnd will put any full screen app and into a window and the WBG will get rid of said window. I'm sure this would work for you.

EDIT - I've had another look at some thing and unless someone can point out something different then I'll stick with this method. The game I've been playing like this, Resident Evil Revelations 2, actually has a built in windowed mode. At first I was only using WBG to remove the border and shift it over to my TV so I could still use my monitor. I was getting weird tearing and no matter what I did I couldn't fix it - setting vsync in game would drop my fps to 44 and doing anything with nvidia inspector didn't have an effect. In steps DxWnd, running in faked full screen meant my settings in nvidia inspector actually worked. The only issue now was jittering cause by Aero when using two monitors, setting the game to run with disable desktop composition ticked under compatibility on the exe fixed that.

(if you're using an AMD card substitute nvidia inspector with RadeonPro)

The first thing to try when running an old game is Windows's compatibility mode.

If that doesn't work (or if the game runs but the fullscreen mode bugs out) try DxWnd, it's mainly to force things into window mode, but it has a ton of compatibility-related settings aswell.

Sometimes you'll also find modified versions of older games or remakes that run better on newer computers than the original.

Finally, if all else fails, you can run an older OS in a virtual box. Specifically for DOS games you could use DOSbox.

Not sure why Gestureworks isn't working for you. I'll hopefully try it myself soon.

There is another program called Virtual Gamepad that you can try.

Also, you can look into tablet cases that have a keyboard built in. They are on amazon for only like $10 or less.

Here is something else that you can look into, it may solve the problem of GestureWorks not working: http://sourceforge.net/projects/dxwnd/

There is a program out there that can force games to run in windowed mode.

I think this is it.

If it isn't in the games options you may be able to find a config file somewhere that you can edit. Each game is going to be different though.

Well, I figured out what the problem was just in case anyone stumbles on this in the future.

It only affects certain games made mostly before 2008ish. The problem is the ratio my screen isn't a default for anything the games can handle so it causes them to freak out an crash. The only things you can do to fix this are either play on a computer monitor or run a program like DxWnd that forces games to run at certain resolutions.

Edit: Anything trying to launch in 4:3 aspect ratio is what was causing the problem. Forcing things to 16:9 or not having them go full screen is the proper solution.