MacBook Pro w/Crossover: full screen/window settings, and key bindings

[JarenCorax]

For those using Crossover to run Lord of the Rings Online, do you use full screen or windowed or full screen (windowed) (whatever that is)?

I found that running the game in full screen causes all my other app windows to resize down to whatever the full screen resolution is, which is...annoying. So far the best option seems to be to run it windowed, and then use the macos full screen feature to make the game fill the screen. This results in the resolution being "custom", but that seems to work okay.

I did try setting the full screen resolution to my screen's actual resolution, but then the UI is super-tiny and I found no controls to scale the UI.

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Also, since my built-in keyboard has no numpad or other keys, I figured I'd ask if other folks play that way and what they rebind keys such as insert and numpad keys to. I don't have room on my desk for a full-size keyboard, nice as it would be to have the extra keys.

[JarenCorax]

I have noticed that when I play windowed and use macos full screen feature, that the pointer location as the game knows it is off by some amount vertically. I don't know if it's the height of the title bar, the menu bar, or the stupid stupid notch, but it's an issue. If I find a workaround foro that I'll post it. If you know a workaround, please post it! :-D

[Tralfazz]

I strongly recommend using Full Screen Windowed.

There are good reasons to use Full Screen (such as if you wish to use a game output resolution different than whatever you set for your monitor in System Preferences) but it can cause issues (usually only when the client attempts to run for the first time) and the client minimizes to the Dock when not the foreground/focus application. Windowed can be useful if you want to have other things visible on your screen at the same time as the LOTRO client window but there are better ways to multitask; see below.

Whichever screen mode you choose to use, do so from the LOTRO client's OPTIONS->GRAPHICS menu, not by launching the game in Windowed mode and then using the MacOS tools to change to MacOS's (different) full screen mode. If you're doing that or something similar, that is the reason you are having issues with the position of your mouse cursor.

I recommend using Full Screen Windowed (as long as you are OK with the game client adopting the resolution set in System Preferences) and using multiple Desktops instead of swapping to other applications whose windows are running in the same Desktop. You can set simple keybinds to swap "left" or "right" through your Desktops, I think the default is control-leftarrow/rightarrow although I use command-leftarrow/rightarrow. Designate one Desktop for LOTRO and only for LOTRO (or maybe for LOTRO and Crossover and any other applications you run through Crossover), then use your Desktop cycle keybind to move to another Desktop to use other applications. This is much more efficient than tabbing to another application and allows LOTRO to run best, run borderless, and without the Dock and menu bar showing and taking up screen space.

There are some UI scaling controls in OPTIONS->UI SETTINGS but they are incomplete. Even so, you should be able to set up most things so they are easy to see and read regardless of your chosen game output resolution.

Your small keyboard might have an "embedded" alphanumeric pad which you access by holding the fn key (or some other key). Not all keyboards have such an "embedded" alphanumeric pad. An easy solution which doesn't require your keyboard to be at all special is to go through the LOTRO game client's OPTIONS->KEY MAPPING and change the binds for every key you don't have. Make liberal use of modifier keys. For example, PAN CAMERA IN defaults to the NUM 9 key. If your keyboard doesn't have a NUM 9 key, you can rebind that to CONTROL-+ (plus sign) or whatever else you might want. (Also note that for this example, panning doesn't really need to be bound to anything since your mouse scroll wheel also handles camera panning and there's no way to change that mouse wheel behavior in the key mapping options.)

As for your screen notch, in general, your brain will get used to it eventually and you'll barely notice it. If there is an element of your LOTRO UI display that the notch is preventing you from seeing, unlock your UI (default keybind is CONTROL-\) and move that UI element somewhere else. If you hate the notch and absolutely don't ever want to see it:
Go to SYSTEM SETTINGS->DESKTOP AND DOCK, scroll down to the AUTOMATICALLY SHOW AND HIDE MENU BAR setting and choose NEVER. There are third party utilities, most of them free, that can do this and other things to the top row of pixels on either side of the notch with just a bit more variation than System Settings provides. The notch is a physical part of your laptop screen that doesn't have pixels and it isn't hidden with magic, it's done by forcing your Mac to not use the uppermost row of pixels. This will make your screen a bit shorter (that is, smaller in the up/down or Y dimension) but some people really frickin' hate the notch and that's how you can get it out of your face forever. And that uppermost row of pixels are "extra" i.e. your display is a pretty normal size without them so you won't miss them much.

[JarenCorax]

Thank you for this detailed response! It has solved several of my problems and helped with issues I didn't know I had.

A new one has cropped up, however. The game is not recognizing ctrl+1 at all. It recognizes ctrl + all the other number row keys, but not that one. If I try to rebind the key, when I press ctrl+1, it asks if I want to rebind right (or left) ctrl.

(I also found out that Crossover is making the Command key behave as the alt key instead of the Option key. Makes me wonder what it thinks the Option key is! I shall continue to poke around.)

[JarenCorax]

Thank you for this detailed response! It has solved several of my problems and helped with issues I didn't know I had.

A new one has cropped up, however. The game is not recognizing ctrl+1 at all. It recognizes ctrl + all the other number row keys, but not that one. If I try to rebind the key, when I press ctrl+1, it asks if I want to rebind right (or left) ctrl.

(I also found out that Crossover is making the Command key behave as the alt key instead of the Option key. Makes me wonder what it thinks the Option key is! I shall continue to poke around.)

Ah, crud. Macos is somehow stealing ctrl+1 for the main desktop space. There's a keyboard shortcut in System Preferences for that. I have found it and turned it off WITH GREAT PREJUDICE.

[Tralfazz]

The game is not recognizing ctrl+1 at all. It recognizes ctrl + all the other number row keys, but not that one. If I try to rebind the key, when I press ctrl+1, it asks if I want to rebind right (or left) ctrl.

(I also found out that Crossover is making the Command key behave as the alt key instead of the Option key. Makes me wonder what it thinks the Option key is! I shall continue to poke around.)

Ah, crud. Macos is somehow stealing ctrl+1 for the main desktop space. There's a keyboard shortcut in System Preferences for that. I have found it and turned it off WITH GREAT PREJUDICE.

That might be one reason I rebound the Desktop swap buttons from CONTROL-leftarrow/right-arrow to COMMAND-leftarrow/rightarrow. It's so many years ago I don't recall why I did it at the time. It was long before I started messing around with WINE, though.

When a Windows application running in WINE is the foreground application, the CONTROL key remains the CONTROL key. The COMMAND key is treated as the ALT key on a Windows keyboard. The OPTION key is completely ignored. You can still send commands to MacOS and it will recognize the COMMAND key and the OPTION key as those two keys even with a Windows application running in WINE as the foreground application, but anything passed to the foreground Windows application treats COMMAND as ALT and OPTION is ignored.

And of course, as you discovered, it's important to not have conflicts with keybinds. That's true for any application, not just something running in WINE.

edit: Oh yeah, be sure you don't bind anything to ALT-F4. (Remember that your CMD key is read as the ALT key by any app running in WINE.) Or go ahead and do it to find out why. Hehe!
https://computer.howstuffworks.com/question266.htm
I mainly use the SHIFT key when I want to use a modifier combo in LOTRO or some other application running in WINE. ALT and CTRL can be used but you do have to be aware of any conflicts with specific ALT-X and CTRL-X keybinds you might create within an application because some are immutable Windows commands.