Tip: Full screen issues and a solution or two

[Mobhack]

Originally Posted by cuckoo

Hey,

thanks for the replies! Interesting information.

I´ve got CD version. My favorite setting is 1024x768 full screen. Had the same problems everybody else had with Win 7 couple of years back, but after that none whatsoever.

Now that I tried with 1600x1280, full screen, instead of the screen going black it says something about SAL error and DirectDraw not being initialized.

You have the directx error since you are trying to drive the card at a resolution it cannot support. Wide screen flat panel monitors cant handle sizes that are bigger than their natural pixel size (1280 deep - bet your flat screen is 1080i, so a mere 1080 lines deep, ie massively retrograded compared to the CRT monitors of 10 years back..)

The fixed resolutions are all 4:3 aspect ratios, as used by monitors before wide screen letterboxes became the gold standard.

Use desktop resolution and not the 4:3 obsolete modes. This uses the current windows desktop resolution, and so does not try to squash a square screen into a squished down letterbox mode. Desktop mode was written precisely for these modern shallow letterbox LCD monitors.

Last time I played the game was about 2 months ago. It has got to be the graphics card drivers. Nothing else has changed... I asked here hoping someone more adept than me had a magic trick for this particular problem. There are some weird features with these new graphics cards that I don´t understand anything about. Maybe some of those conflict with something in sp or something...

The game is just smaller in windowed mod and rolling around the map feels awkward. Small things... but I guess I´ll start getting used to them.

Been playing SP for 15 years and will hopefully play another 15!

Windowed mode set to desktop resolution takes an hour or so to get used to - then you wont go back. It only takes a little experimentation setting the mouse scroll sensitivity zone up.

And its faster than 256 colour full-screen modes on modern video cards! - no stuttering when trying to scroll the map, and no sudden stops of units moving across it. Unless you have found a video card driver that someone has written to properly support the Jurassic MSDOS modes, windowed mode is it.

If the game is "too small" in windowed mode then
1) set the windows desktop to a lesser resolution, say 1300ish by whatever - experiment with what your driver offers till you find a satisfactory size.
2) Launch and play the game in windowed mode at desktop resolution.

2.1) But dont change desktop size while the game is active!

3) On exiting the game, simply reset the windows desktop size back to your normal preference.

[cuckoo]

Matching the desktop resolution with the game really does the trick. Windowed mode now looks and feels almost like it´s my beloved the full screen. I didn´t come to think of that. Thank you very much!

A major annoyance, not being able to scroll around the map with moving the mouse cursor to the edge of screen but having to find a spot at the edge of the game window, is also now gone.

Changing the screen resolution back and worth takes a few seconds but I guess I can live with that.