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[for 0.17] "always on top" programs dont work with full screen factorio

Posted: Sat Jan 27, 2018 4:16 am
by ellisonch
I'm trying to stream playing Factorio. When I stream with other games, I run a program called "Restream Chat" that shows me viewers' chats from twitch and youtube. This program runs "on top" of all other windows. I've successfully used it with other games like Banished and Rimworld in their fullscreen borderless window modes. My understanding is that Factorio's fullscreen mode is supposed to be a borderless window.

However, with Factorio the chat program does not show up. My guess is that Factorio itself is also trying to be "always on top" and it clobbers the chat program. It works when Factorio is NOT in fullscreen mode, but then I can't choose a resolution (or get rid of the borders).

I'd like Factorio's fullscreen mode to work exactly like its actual windowed mode with respect to being "always on top". Factorio doesn't behave like other games do in borderless windowed mode.

I have Windows 10 x64 and am running Factorio 0.16.16.

Re: "always on top" programs dont work with full screen factorio

Posted: Sat Jan 27, 2018 5:07 pm
by milo christiansen
I'll second this, but in a slightly different way: Factorio does not play nice with alt+tab, specifically it never minimizes. I'm guessing these two things are closely related.

Re: [for 0.17] "always on top" programs dont work with full screen factorio

Posted: Sat Jan 27, 2018 8:46 pm
by posila
Hi, thanks for the report.
These kind of issue will be more likely to be handled in 0.17

Re: [for 0.17] "always on top" programs dont work with full screen factorio

Posted: Mon Apr 01, 2019 4:48 pm
by download13
Just wanted to show support for this item. I like to watch videos in the background while playing Factorio and right now it displays over top of the "Picture in picture" window that Chrome uses to display videos if you want to watch while not using your browser.

My current workaround is just to use my phone as a second display, but it's not ideal.

Re: [for 0.17] "always on top" programs dont work with full screen factorio

Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2021 6:21 am
by jackthesmack
This issue is still present in the latest version of Factorio. I can't use programs like OnTopReplica while playing Factorio in full screen.

Re: [for 0.17] "always on top" programs dont work with full screen factorio

Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2021 5:11 pm
by mrvn
It looks like this is something to do with having a "full screen" mode instead of having a window the size of the screen where any potential border is simply outside the screen.

If I hit "F11" in firefox to make it fullscreen then it shows the exact same behavior. I can alt-tab the factorio window on top of firefox but when I move the mouse back to firefox it gets moved on top after a short delay. Same with xfce-terminal in full screen mode. I assume everything with fullscreen mode will.

So this doesn't look like something factorio is specifically doing. Could still be some low level library doing it that's common to the three apps I tested, the windowmanager or Xorg. Odd though that windows and linux have the same problem. Can it really be that factorio, firefox and xfce-terminal all implemented this mis-feature the exact same way on their own? Same delay before moving to top too.