Multimedia keys don't work in many games

[zzarko]

If I try to use multimedia keys on my keyboard when playing a game (usually to change the volume), the keys don't work in many cases (hedgewars, vdrift, supertuxcart, just to name a few, no matter if the game is fullscreen or not). I understand that these games grab keyboard input, but something like this shouldn't happen (other OS-es do it properly, so why not Ubuntu?). Having to close the game just to change the volume (and to start it again) isn't very pleasing solution. There is also a problem when different parts of the game have different sound levels, so it would be nice if volume could be changed during the game.

I'm not sure if this is gnome-settings-daemon's problem, so please change to appropriate package if this one is wrong.

There was a solution for some older kernels at http://users.softlab.ece.ntua.gr/~thkala/projects/actkbd/, but this isn't updated since 2007.