Why don't games have a "multi-monitor" mode?

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zamardii12

2[H]4U
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So here me out before you think i'm stupid, but when I say multi-monitor mode, what I mean is like the game that got me thinking about this to begin with. I was playing Planet Coaster, and I had the build drawer open from the bottom of the screen and I could not see enough of the build area. You can drag it up and down however you want, but I only had a horizontal viewing area of the building area at my preferred drawer height of only maybe 5 inches or less. And here I am sitting with a triple monitor setup with a monitor on both sides of my main center screen and I am thinking with all the games like this, RPGs with inventory management, and whatever... why isn't there a multi-monitor mode that uses the center screen for the action for say The Witcher 3, and then uses the right monitor to always have your inventory open or quest list/ journal or something? Wouldn't this make sense? There are plenty of games that use triple monitor setups like racing and flying simulators as well as others, but what I am talking about has never been done on a PC game before.

I remember playing ZombiU on the Wii U, and having the action on the TV while having my inventory and map on the tablet controller was incredible. Also in Mass Effect 3 on Wii U, I could have the map open on the controller and the action not stop on the TV. I don't see why this can't be done for PC games where a lot of people have multiple monitors.
 
It could be done, but it's a lot of development and testing work to support what is, in reality, a very small subset of their market.
 
zamardii12 said:
So here me out before you think i'm stupid, but when I say multi-monitor mode, what I mean is like the game that got me thinking about this to begin with. I was playing Planet Coaster, and I had the build drawer open from the bottom of the screen and I could not see enough of the build area. You can drag it up and down however you want, but I only had a horizontal viewing area of the building area at my preferred drawer height of only maybe 5 inches or less. And here I am sitting with a triple monitor setup with a monitor on both sides of my main center screen and I am thinking with all the games like this, RPGs with inventory management, and whatever... why isn't there a multi-monitor mode that uses the center screen for the action for say The Witcher 3, and then uses the right monitor to always have your inventory open or quest list/ journal or something? Wouldn't this make sense? There are plenty of games that use triple monitor setups like racing and flying simulators as well as others, but what I am talking about has never been done on a PC game before.

I remember playing ZombiU on the Wii U, and having the action on the TV while having my inventory and map on the tablet controller was incredible. Also in Mass Effect 3 on Wii U, I could have the map open on the controller and the action not stop on the TV. I don't see why this can't be done for PC games where a lot of people have multiple monitors.
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I have no idea. It wouldn't be hard to implement at all. Wouldn't even need any extra asset attention. We toyed around with this idea for my game project in college back in 2008, and using DirectX 8 it only took 20 minutes to integrate with about an hour of unit testing. But we disabled the code block because the test systems the game had to run on didn't have multiple monitors. It was more for fun to see if we could do it. Look at Fallout 4: they added a second screen experience with an external device. There's no reason they couldn't do the same on a local device within the same program instance.
 
Armenius said:
I have no idea. It wouldn't be hard to implement at all. Wouldn't even need any extra asset attention. We toyed around with this idea for my game project in college back in 2008, and using DirectX 8 it only took 20 minutes to integrate with about an hour of unit testing. But we disabled the code block because the test systems the game had to run on didn't have multiple monitors. It was more for fun to see if we could do it. Look at Fallout 4: they added a second screen experience with an external device. There's no reason they couldn't do the same on a local device within the same program instance.
Click to expand...

This is what I am thinking. Playing a RPG or RTS, or anything really which requires micro-managing should have this feature. It can't be that hard, but again I am no developer. I mean, there are Skyrim mods that completely overhaul the inventory management interface so I imagine if you created a duplicate instance of the inventory or something it could totally be doable.
 
I remember back in the days before surround and eyefinity... Supreme Commander let you fire up a 2nd screen.
 
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