How can you make popup windows lose focus?

[jray]

Is there a way to mod the behavior of popup windows so that they don't shut you out of the main program?

You know the typical situation... you realize you need to change the orders for one of your units, but suddenly you get the "What would you like to build in this city?" dialog. There's no way out. If you think hard about what to build there, then you might forget about that unit order change. But if you just choose something to get the dialog out of the way, you'll be inundated with even more dialogs that won't go away, and when you finally escape from them, you'll forget what you were going to do. And worse yet, you've just made a bunch of shoddy production choices that you hope you can remember to go back and change, because there's no record of what you just did. ARGH!

So... is there anway to mod things so that you can jump out of one of these popup windows and come back to it? You'll be my hero if you know of one!

 

[SailorLazarus]

I don't know of one that exists. But one of our better python modders might be able to put something togather for you.

 

[Lunargent]

I'd love to see this as well.

The way it works for me is this:

1. hit enter to end my turn

2. the "what do you want to do in this city?" screen pops up

3.Multiple messages of "the enemy has been spotted near such and such" or "such and such resource was found" appear all over the place.

4. All attempts to see what is going on with the messages before the little symbols that tell you where they are vanish are thwarted because I simply must decide what must be done in this now irrelevant city this instant!

5. I make my way through the various city screens, knowing that I'll probably have to change many of the production queues based upon an assessment of the real situation once I can finally do something.

6. begin frustrated search for all the little messages that popped up, hoping I didn't miss an invader about to kill a worker or finding iron in some obscure corner of my empire.

7. Curse stupid inability to remove focus from the pop-up city screen to see what's really important.

Either there needs to be an ability to exit the pop-up city screens, or no enemy moves should take place while you are stuck in them.

 

[jray]

I'd love to see this as well.

The way it works for me is this:

1. hit enter to end my turn

2. the "what do you want to do in this city?" screen pops up

3.Multiple messages of "the enemy has been spotted near such and such" or "such and such resource was found" appear all over the place.

4. All attempts to see what is going on with the messages before the little symbols that tell you where they are vanish are thwarted because I simply must decide what must be done in this now irrelevant city this instant!

5. I make my way through the various city screens, knowing that I'll probably have to change many of the production queues based upon an assessment of the real situation once I can finally do something.

6. begin frustrated search for all the little messages that popped up, hoping I didn't miss an invader about to kill a worker or finding iron in some obscure corner of my empire.

7. Curse stupid inability to remove focus from the pop-up city screen to see what's really important.

Either there needs to be an ability to exit the pop-up city screens, or no enemy moves should take place while you are stuck in them.

I'd suggest checking the "Minimize Popup Windows" option. Most under-rated option EVER! It delays all the popup windows until the end of your turn AND represents them as little icons strung along the right-hand side of your screen. If you want to access them sooner, then no problem-- just mouse-over the icons to see what they are, and click on the ones you want to handle right away.

As a kludgy workaround, I try to keep one dedicated "idle unit" somewhere that is active every single turn, just in case I get a turn where all my units are busy (in which case the popup windows would assault me upon the beginning of the turn, as when you don't have Minimize Popup Windows selected...). I just press the "Skip" button for this unit every turn throughout the entire game. So basically I've given this unit a "Defense Against Popups III" upgrade . The downside is of course that you need to carry a completely useless unit throughout the entire game.

 

[Lunargent]

Thanks, I think I'll try both of those. I always have spare workers or some obsolete units sitting around in the capital that could both work for this function.

 

[jray]

Well, I did some further investigation, and it appears that the code for the popup dialogs is given to us in compiled Python format only, without the Python source provided . (It's in assets/python/system/wx). If anyone knows differently, please say so! But I guess we'll just have to hope that Firaxis lets us change this with the SDK when it comes out. *sigh*