Supressing the console window

Collector · Post by **Collector** » Thu Oct 21, 2010 11:57 pm

Is there a way to suppress the console window or at least have it start minimized from starting a game from the command line?

KuroShiro · Post by **KuroShiro** » Fri Oct 22, 2010 2:04 am

Collector wrote:Is there a way to suppress the console window or at least have it start minimized from starting a game from the command line?

It's possible to do, yes. I believe to do so you have to build it yourself, and change some settings to Windows in sdl-config. I think that is actually the default, so if you download the SDL runtime and dev stuff from their website (not the pre-compiled libraries on the wiki) and build ScummVM with it, you should get a console-less version.

That is with MinGW, I'm not sure about VS2008+.

Collector · Post by **Collector** » Fri Oct 22, 2010 6:45 pm

I need to be able to do this without a special build of my own. I am a little surprised that this ability is missing. It is just a command line switch in DOSBox. I guess that all I can do is make a feature request, but I would imagine that it would be of so low priority as to never be implemented.

md5 · Post by **md5** » Sat Oct 23, 2010 12:36 pm

Collector wrote:I need to be able to do this without a special build of my own. I am a little surprised that this ability is missing. It is just a command line switch in DOSBox. I guess that all I can do is make a feature request, but I would imagine that it would be of so low priority as to never be implemented.

If someone is interested to do this, and it doesn't break anything else, then it'll be done, so I suggest you file a feature request

MusicallyInspired · Post by **MusicallyInspired** » Sat Oct 23, 2010 3:14 pm

DOSBox outputs the console to a text file instead of a console window with the command line so as not to lose the information should anything valuable come up. I'd suggest adding that to the feature request if you haven't already, Collector.

Collector · Post by **Collector** » Sat Oct 23, 2010 11:07 pm

MI, I had submitted a request before I saw your suggestion, but I guess that it doesn't matter now. It was very quickly rejected.

bobdevis · Post by **bobdevis** » Sat Oct 23, 2010 11:48 pm

Well, the mandatory command-prompt window (It's Windows so lets call it that) is only kind of semi-useful now.
If a crash or force-quit event happens it disappears. So in effect it shows you why stuff is going A BIT wrong, but not why stuff is going A LOT wrong.

Completely suppressing it by default OR making it persistent after a quit by default would both be better solutions then the current one, I think.

Ofcause, if any other default behaviour then the current one requires a lot of platform specific code, I understand why no-one wants to implement it

Collector · Post by **Collector** » Sun Oct 24, 2010 12:43 am

In most cases it is not needed. Of course you want it if you are trying to troubleshoot a game, but for just playing a game that has no issues it just gets in the way. Granted you don't see it if you run a game full screen, but with the size of modern monitors I and many others do not with older games. With DOSBox it is enabled by default, but is easily turned off and has no cross platform problems with it.

Mataku · Post by **Mataku** » Sun Oct 24, 2010 1:19 am

the buildbot snapshots don't have the console window.

Collector · Post by **Collector** » Sun Oct 24, 2010 1:49 am

Odd. You'd think that a developmental build would be when you would especially want the information displayed in it.

KuroShiro · Post by **KuroShiro** » Sun Oct 24, 2010 1:51 am

Collector wrote:Odd. You'd think that a developmental build would be when you would especially want the information displayed in it.

It most likely has to do with what I mentioned before, in that the newest default SDL libraries are set up to not have the console window, and the buildbot probably uses those libraries.

Qbix · Post by **Qbix** » Sun Oct 24, 2010 1:55 pm

edit: Ah missed the fact it was rejected
nvmd

md5 · Post by **md5** » Sun Oct 24, 2010 9:32 pm

Qbix wrote:edit: Ah missed the fact it was rejected
nvmd

Actually, there has been a long discussion concerning this on IRC. Some experimental code has been committed by m_kiewitz, but it's still open to discussion, so it has been reopened

Collector · Post by **Collector** » Mon Oct 25, 2010 12:18 am

Not to speak for him, but I imagine that Qbix was going to comment on how DOSBox handles this. Having missed all of the on going discussions I have no idea of what the general thought is currently, but I would imagine that it has more to do with the developmental aspects of what is possible/practical, but from a troubleshooting point, what is the usual procedure is to have the user start ScummVM from the command prompt, rather than from the shortcut, so that the console does not close when the game crashes. From a support point of view, what would be that much different to have the user start ScummVM in a different way to provide the information from the console that is not usually available after a crash. The installer could provide an additional shortcut in the start Menu, such as "ScummVM - Logged.lnk" or "ScummVM - Console.lnk".

Another approach for support could be to have it output to a log, such as the "stdout.txt" file for DOSBox, not only would this information be available, but would always be there. It could be attached to a post so as to provide complete information. It could otherwise be ignored and simply over written by the next ScummVM session.

Collector · Post by **Collector** » Thu Oct 28, 2010 1:04 am

md5 wrote:Actually, there has been a long discussion concerning this on IRC. Some experimental code has been committed by m_kiewitz, but it's still open to discussion, so it has been reopened

So I am assuming that it was still rejected after the discussion.

Supressing the console window

Supressing the console window

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