Minimize Startup Screen After Game Launch

[Wintertree Studios]

Whenever I launch a game and the startup video plays, the window remains in the background as I play the game. This wouldn’t be that bad if it weren’t for my playtime tracker plugin. If I were to, say, minimize the game to navigate to another window and accidentally click on the startup window, it says “game over” and then sends me back to the menu. When this happens, I believe my gameplay time stops being recorded (which I want to submit times to HowLongToBeat.com). I’d like it if there’d be some way to minimize both Launch/Big Box and the startup window to the tray after starting up a game, or minimizing them so that they can’t be clicked on. Combining the windows (as in the startup windows replacing the launcher window) would also be nice to remove clutter (assuming they’re not in the tray or something). Thank you.

[Jason Carr]

Hi there, unfortunately the way the startup screens work, this can’t be done. The startup screens themselves were somewhat of a nightmare to implement, because of the many Windows hacks required to make them work. The window has to remain in the background so that LaunchBox can tell when the game’s window closes, and it’s the only good way to do it for some games. So sadly, this isn’t something we can do.