Automato doesn't appear to correctly capture the screen in ATitD's new client in fullscreen mode

[tizubythefizo]

Hey Jimbly,

With the -fullscreen exe target on the launcher for the new ATitD client set (which is the only way to run fullscreen without a title bar, as there currently is no windowed borderless mode) Automato seems unable to capture the games screen.

What's odd about this is that if I alt+tab or otherwise make atitd not the active window (the game doesn't minimize like true fullscreen mode. It's using ws_popup for fullscreen mode), Automato DOES pick it up and work correctly, but only while tabbed out. Tabbing back in/making atitd the active window kills Automato's ability to screen capture.

Below is how ATITD creates the window, if that helps (I got permission to share this with you).

if (Env_FullScreen) { Env_Client_X = GetSystemMetrics(SM_CXSCREEN); Env_Client_Y = GetSystemMetrics(SM_CYSCREEN); Env_HWND = CreateWindow(lpszAppName, lpszAppName, WS_POPUP | WS_CLIPCHILDREN | WS_CLIPSIBLINGS, 0, 0, Env_Client_X, Env_Client_Y, 0, 0, hInstance, 0); } else { Env_HWND = CreateWindow(lpszAppName, lpszAppName, WS_OVERLAPPEDWINDOW | WS_CLIPCHILDREN | WS_CLIPSIBLINGS | WS_CAPTION, 0, 0, Env_Client_X, Env_Client_Y, 0, 0, hInstance, 0); SetWindowClientSize(Env_HWND, Env_Client_X, Env_Client_Y); }

Is this likely an issue with how automato is getting atitd's screen capture?

[Jimbly]

That code appears to be what's often called "windowed fullscreen" or "borderless fullscreen" mode, and shouldn't generally be a problem, but possibly something's going wrong.

Just tried Automato on a different program running in borderless fullscreen and tried the Examples/TestCalibration script, and it was reading the window fine when fullscreen, but appeared to be scaled so the positions were all wrong. Is it reading the ATITD window at all for you and getting the wrong results, or not reading anything?

[Jimbly]

Just leaving a note here with the results of experimentation and conversations:

This appears due to a Windows 10 behavior change where "windowed fullscreen" apps switch to an exclusive fullscreen when in focus, and there appears to be no way to capture those windows (without doing process DLL injection or related things).

tizubythefizo reported that removing the WS_CAPTION style from a maximized ATITD window worked to get it looking like it's fullscreen for him, but still able to be captured. In my tests I sometimes (but maybe not always) ended up with a blank title bar at the top, so it didn't seem completely reliable (might depend on having the taskbar hidden and other settings). This can now be replicated in Automato with srWindowSetStyle(srWindowGetStyle() & ~0x00C00000). I had a little luck with similarly adding the WS_SYSMENU to an already fullscreen window, but it ended up getting slightly larger and spreading onto an adjacent monitor. There's probably some solution that could poke the ATITD window to make it actually windowed, not maximized, and larger than the monitor, and positioned such that only the client area was visible, but there's lots of ways that could go wrong (and the task bar would still get in the way). Some research indicates adding the GWL_EXSTYLE of WS_EX_LAYERED might allow reading more reliably, however this must be specified at window creation and might have other requirements. Poking that style seemed to do nothing. Anyway, probably no reasonable solution to actually capture from a fullscreen window at this point.

For anyone wanting to play with poking window styles through Automato in the future, there are API functions for it, and there's a test program that lists all of the current and available styles here: https://gist.github.com/Jimbly/4bc001741a63ed8d7e8a144e870a0044