How can you play fullscreen-specific games windowed mode?

Question

The question is pretty straightforward.

I have games such as Thief: Dark project, Thief: Metal age and Arx fatalis (Possibly the greatest RPGs of all time, but anyway) and these are fullscreen-only games.

Is there any way to make them windowed? Commands such as -window, -w, ALT+TAB or ALT+ENTER don't work with these games. I'm looking for some software or alternate way of making them windowed.

Asked by ThePlan

Answer

Unless the game has the option to run windowed built in, there isn't a native way to do so, however I can suggest a few workarounds:

• If the game is old enough to have a DOS mode, try running the game in DOSBox, it allows you to play DOS games in a window.
• Try installing a virtual machine using a tool like VMWare, once you run the the virtual machine in a window, even if the game is running in full screen it will only take up the VM's window.
• Look for a program that allows you to simulate a second screen as a window, then run the full screen game on the simulated second screen. A quick google search turned up a tool called SplitView, but there should be other tools for the job.

Please note at least the first two solutions require software emulation and might have some performance impacts compared to running these games "naturally", but given that the games are old in the first place, this shouldn't be an issue, unless your computer isn't too strong.

Answered by JohnoBoy

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