Re: Changing screen size along with screen resolution?

[Richard Cobbe <cobbe@directlink.net>]

Lo, on Tuesday, December 26, Lance Simmons did write:

> On Tue, Dec 26, 2000 at 05:42:36PM -0800, Nate Amsden wrote:
> > Lance Simmons wrote:
> > > 
> > > Is
> > > there a way to change resolution _and_ screen size at the same time?
> > > 
> > does the game support fullscreen?
> 
> Yes, it does. It's Heroes of Might and Magic 3, ported by Loki. I used
> it on Red Hat in fullscreen, with no problems. Then last May I switched
> to Debian and never got around to installing Heroes 3 again. Now I've
> installed it, and when I give the appropriate command for fullscreen, I
> get a 800x600 window taking up a quarter of my 1600x1200 desktop.
> 
> Isn't there a way I can _start_ X at 800x600 without having to modify
> my XF86Config file? I'm willing to start a separate X session on
> another virtual terminal. Reading the man pages for xinit and startx
> hasn't enlightened me.

Well, sort of.  This is a bit of a kluge, but it will work; I used to use
it for Loki's port of Civilization: Call to Power---it's much happer in
16-bit graphics, but I prefer to run other things in 32-bit color.

XFree86 doesn't appear to have a resolution command line parameter, but it
does have a color depth parameter.  If you can select one color depth for
HMM3 and another for your normal work, then you're set.  For the normal
color depth, put 1600x1200 first in the list of resolutions for the system;
for the HMM3 color depth, put 800x600 first and delete all higher
resolutions (or your virtual size will be larger).

Then start X with

startx -- -bpp 32   # HMM3; starts at 800x600 on virtual console 7
startx -- -bpp 16   # everything else; starts at 1600x1200 on VC 8.

or whatever color depths you choose.

Klugy, as advertised, but it's the best I can come up with.

HTH,

Richard