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Re: Default fullscreen mode



On Thu, Aug 24, 2006 at 11:54:06AM +0100, Enrico Zini wrote:
> I have a problem in my laptop, in that if I run a game and
> the game wants to go fullscreen, it's likely to set a
> video mode that won't play well with the LCD screen, and
> it's also likely that if I kill the game, the video mode
> won't be restored.

I've had a problem recently (again with prboom) whereby the
resolution it attempts at fullscreen caused X to lock the
machine.

This problem is made more confusing by the fact that most
people now will neither hand-write their Xorg.conf files,
nor will they even give debconf resolution hints (it will
infer it from DPMI for debconf priority <= medium, I think).

Even if a resolution is "supported", for many LCDs, it will
look awful.

I'm in favour of defaulting to windowed mode for software
rendering where appropriate, as it will result in things
working for the majority of users, and can be overriden if
desired.

I'll ask prboom upstream if they have an opinion on the
matter. I also think it would be interesting to look at what
the games in debian do as it stands (default fullscreen,
windowed, or explicitly ask).

> After restarting X yet another time, and having problems
> finding the right switch for prboom

In this case, I think that the lack of clarity on how to set
this is a bug in prboom.

> I started wondering if it wouldn't be a good idea to
> decide an env variable that tells games if they should
> start by default in fullscreen or in a window.

Do any games honour an environment variable already? If so,
what is it's name?

> Do you think it makes sense, and it's worth the effort?

Sounds like a good idea, if enough upstream buy in :)

-- 
Jon Dowland
http://alcopop.org/

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