Tip Full screen issues and a solution or two

cuckoo · #1 February 4th, 2015, 01:06 PM

Full screen doesn´t work anymore. Only a 2 inch x 2 inch greyish square appears top left corner, otherwise the screen is black.

Same thing with both WW2 and MBT.

My graphics card updated it´s drivers twice within the time I didn´t play any SP so maybe that´s the problem. Has anyone else experienced problems with a GEFORCE GTX series cards? Mine is 750Ti. I´m also on Windows 7.

Windowed still works, but I hate it and I ain´t going to start looking for old video drivers..

shahadi · #2 February 4th, 2015, 08:07 PM

Still not enough information, but I had a similar experience and the fix was to lock the taskbar! My clock was off too, but I suspect it was the auto-hide on the Win 7 taskbar.

You might want to include a screen print, and the winspmbt display settings.Follow this link for more info.

-----

cuckoo · #3 February 5th, 2015, 10:03 AM

Task bar was already locked.

Not much use for a screenshot... It´s just black with a small square of messed up texture upper left corner. It appears after the loading screen with a changing ww2 photo where normally the start screen appears.

I have to ctrl+alt+del and close the program from the start task manager. There´s nothing on the screen to click to. The game fails to start.

I re-installed the game and tried the earlier versions while installing. Tried with DirectX also that is available on the 1.0 version. Tried different resolutions too...

I´ve got 24" wide screen monitor.

DRG · #4 February 5th, 2015, 10:39 AM

So what really is your objection to running the game windowed desktop ?

Mobhack · #5 February 5th, 2015, 10:42 AM

Have you set the screen size to desktop - or are you trying to force a particular 4;3 screen size onto a wide screen monitor? - the latter will often cause problems if your monitor or driver wont support 4:3 resolutions.

Have you turned the splash screen off in the game options programme? - Show introduction = no.

If it worked before - what changed?.

Full screen support is a relic of MSDOS and the outdated 4:3 aspect ratio monitors. Many modern video cards and monitors don't handle those modes well, if at all. Some don't like directshow (which is used for the splash screen) - despite it being a standard Microsoft Multimedia protocol that's well over a decade old...

Additionally many new wide-screen monitors/drivers wont show resolutions less than 1024 or so wide, and therefore in the free demo with its maximum 800x600 mode it may mean that full-screen is unobtainable since they will return an error code to the game and it'll barf. In that case, the free demo will require to be run in windowed mode using part of the screen. So - if you are a free demo user, or a CD owner who has deliberately chosen, a resolution less than windows allows (check your screen settings) - that could be why you are seeing problems.

In addition - on modern graphics cards the 256 colour full-screen mode is not well implemented resulting in a slower screen update (especially animations and scrolling issues), whereas windowed mode with the colour rendered to high colour modes is faster. So - again full screen is deprecated on modern machinery.

Add in the problems with windows post XP taking control of the 256 colour palette to make the game "go psychedelic" and once again - full screen 256 colour mode is not recommended on modern hardware.

All that means that for wide-screen support, windowed mode in desktop resolution (CD feature) is the way to go. If your hardware actually allows 256 colour mode full screen, does not mess up the palette, and does not cause video stuttering - then consider yourself lucky in your choice of hardware.

(But given the problems modern video hardware causes, I'm all for removing the MSDOS legacy full-screen 256 colour pallet mode just so that we don't get any more grief from it.)

Cheers
Andy

cuckoo · #6 February 5th, 2015, 12:34 PM

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.

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!

DRG · #7 February 5th, 2015, 01:07 PM

The left side of this screen shot is taken at 1152x864 fullscreen. The zoom level is default level 4. The right side is taken windowed desktop which in my case is 1920x1080. There is no difference in the size of the Icons on the screen.

The only difference is the purchase screens etc etc which will be , naturally, 640x480 but that can be fixed, if that is a problem, using the magnifier detailed in the sticky part of the main forum

Further....... the inserted area with the dropshadow was taken windowed desktop mode and the main part of the screenshot was 1152x864 fullscreen mode

Don

EDIT... I apologize for the screen shots.... the forum software turned nice sharp PNG's into low quality JPG's

cuckoo · #8 February 5th, 2015, 02:34 PM

Magnifier messed up the desktop icons... oh well, deleted lots of crap from the desktop while placing the icons back where they were.

I have a similar magnifying function in my mouse, but it´s not the same; although the map and the icons are of same size to full screen, everything else is smaller. Which sucks, but I will start getting used to it. Starting now ->

Mobhack · #9 February 5th, 2015, 07:02 PM

Quote:

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.

Quote:

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 · #10 February 6th, 2015, 10:15 AM

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.