[0.17.60] - Skype not visible 'above' Factorio on MacOS 10.14.6 (Mojave)

[OliB150]

Potentially not directly Factorio related, but I use Skype to chat with a friend during our multiplayer co-op game, back when we used 0.16.51 (Stable) Skype would change to the small window and appear in front of Factorio, allowing me to mute my microphone at any time. I've recently made the jump to 0.17.60 and suddenly this doesn't happen anymore. I've looked through settings for both Skype and Factorio but can't find anything that relates to this behaviour.
I've also noticed that when I do Cmd+Tab (equivalent to Alt+Tab on Windows) the pop-up graphic doesn't appear in front of Factorio either, but only for the first few times, then it's fine again.

I've attached the latest log file, purely for system config info, moreso than gameplay info, as it doesn't seem related to anything in game in my opinion at least.

factorio-current.log

(12.79 KiB) Downloaded 95 times

Let me know if you want any screenshots, or need to me test out certain different scenario's or different Factorio versions.

[AreYouScared]

this happens in windows when factorio is starting.

[posila]

I know the difference between 0.16 and 0.17 is that 0.17 uses macOS Spaces for fullscreen. Because we don't have macOS developers at the moment, there's no-one to decide what the best behavior for game on macOS should be. So I am moving the thread to Ideas and Suggestions

You can disable using of Spaces for fullscreen by setting environment variable SDL_HINT_VIDEO_MAC_FULLSCREEN_SPACES=0, but I don't know how to do that on macOS

[OliB150]

Thank you for the response, that does make sense as I had also noticed moving the cursor to the top of the screen brought the menu bar up, which I hadn't noticed before, but equally hadn't set out to try.

I would offer to assist with the macOS development, but I have no experience in game development, let alone for Mac!

[tehfreek]

The naive solution is to call `setenv()` before calling `SDL_Init()`. Not certain if that would work though.

EDIT:

Looking at the docs it says "This hint must be set before any windows are created.", so it probably would work.

[posila]

The naive solution is to call `setenv()` before calling `SDL_Init()`. Not certain if that would work though.

I meant set environement variable outside of the game, in the OS. I am not going to change it in the game at this time. The change was made by our former macOS developers, and the were pretty excited about it. And frankly, I don't consider inability of some other application to display dialogs over a fullscreen game to be an issue.