ScreenBlanker activation during games

[samo79]

My screenblanker modules will be always activated at some point when i play games at fullscreen, problem happen when i play them with my USB joypad, to skip them i can simply move the mouse or press somethings on the keyboard on the fly .. but problem still annoying because i don't want to disable completely the screenblanker module before play but also i don't want to be annoyed everytime by it when i play with my favourite games on GnGeo, OpenBOR or FPSE ..

For what i see a simple mouse movement is enough to prevent the activation, but as logic also moving the Joypad must be, at the end both of them are USB mice, so it should be the same ... altrough seems not !

Is there any method i can try to prevent the problem in a elegant manner or instead still some issue with ScreenBlanker or AmigaInput (?) than need to be improved to make the Joypad act similar to the the mouse behaviour to prevent the screenblankers ?

Thanks !

[tonyw]

You would expect that a movement of a joypad control (or ANY user input) should be enough to trigger the screensaver timeout again.

I'll write an enhancement request for you.

Done: BZ #7753.

[samo79]

Thanks a lot Tony !

I had this problem since beginning (the first 4.1 release i used at home) but i never had the chance to report the problem in time for an update, i'm still in hope that the next update 5 can finally enhance this specific aspect

Maybe it was not reported by others simply because at the time AmigaInput (and Joypad controls in general) had many problems in itself and not so many people was able to test it carefully and in any circumstance, i hope it should be easy to fix

[samo79]

BTW: This should be fixed also when a user try to play with a non USB JoyPad, for example on AmigaOne/Classic Amiga etc ..

My specific test (problem) was of course referred to a Sam440 machine when all device used is USB based of course ...

[djrikki]

Yeah I reported the same thing a couple of days ago:

http://forum.hyperion-entertainment.biz ... f=14&t=952

Kinda annoying when your in the middle of your favourite game and your screen goes black- did I hit p to Pause quick enough? Am I still alive etc...

[Daedalus]

Sorry for bumping an old thread, but does anyone know whether this is being looked at? I know I can disable the blanker before starting a game, but that shouldn't really be needed, and it's quite annoying when you forget.

I guess the reason it happens is that it's not USB input that's monitored, rather Intuition. and since gamepads etc. don't do anything with Intuition, it thinks that nothing's being touched and so allows the screensaver counter to count down.

I'm obviously not familiar with the exact mechanisms, but rather than changing the blanker to monitor AmigaInput as well as Intuition, would it be simpler to get AmigaInput to send a dummy keypress when it is used, maybe keycode 126 or a key up event which shouldn't have any other effect? Or a configurable dummy key so that users can adjust it not to interfere with multimedia keys or anything.

Thanks!

[chris]

If it's any consolation, I've seen the same problem on Windows - USB joysticks are not enough to tell the screensaver there is input.
Games should be enabling "game mode" via application.library to stop the screensaver kicking in, although I agree that AmigaInput events should be enough to tell the screensaver the computer is in use. I don't think sending dummy keyboard events is the right solution, although it could work as a temporary workaround (there are "MouseJoy" programs on Aminet which might suffice, dunno if any of them work on OS4 or with lowlevel.library though)

[jaokim]

I had an idea of creating a form of legacy applications/games wrapper that launches a program and registers with application.library. This could then for instance enable the game mode, but also supply application.library functionality using some ARexxing or so.

Shouldn't be too complicated.