Display issue

[cbreedon]

Hi All

I replaced an older monitor. I have 2. I replaced the secondary monitor and made no adjustments to the primary one. When I open SPMBT, the opening screen is fine but when I click on play SPMBT I get a slanted screen. See attached. Has anyone else seen this or have any help. Like I said I made no adjustments other than switching my secondary monitors out.

[cbreedon]

Looks like the file is too big. Here is the zip of the screen shot

[FASTBOAT TOUGH]

Go to mine below thread "BLACK SCREEN FLICKER" sounds like the same issue I had with the "stretch" and more.

First issue was to replace the PSU which was literally burning out. On Page 1.

Page 2 my last Post is more in line of your issue from the top down. My solution worked every time to fix the problem. This involved doing an "offline" scan from the OS MS Security software.

But haven't done that in a very longtime now since. Simply put, all my issues just vanished and never came back.

Very strange.

Something somewhere at my end or other simply "fixed itself".

Regards,
Pat


Hope this helps.

[FASTBOAT TOUGH]

tRYING TO GET READY FOR WORK-MADE TIME TO JUST NOW OPEN YOUR "ZIP" AND CAN CONFIRM THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT I HAD GOING ON AS WELL-GOTTA RUN!!

REGARDS,
PAT

[cbreedon]

I've tried all your solutions nothing seems to have fixed it. All I did was switch out the secondary monitor... weird and frustrating

[Mobhack]

You get that result when you try to open the game in a fixed resolution that your monitor cannot handle. The game options programme does not matter - it is a windows desktop programme. The game is launched by it, and the game is a DirectX programme, and if you tell it it is in full screen mode, it will try to use the entire monitor like in games of days of yore, because SP is a game of days of yore - just updated to actually play nice with windows if you play in windowed mode. Not full screen!

Full-screen mode remains but is unsupported, we don’t care if it works on whatever hardware you happen to have. If it does so, good for you - but the next say video driver update you get may nuke that.

Full-screen mode is only there for the odd end user who nay be using some version of video driver and monitor combo that allows the old 4:3 pixel ratios in full-screen modes.

Windowed mode is the supported mode for the game. So if you have the free demo version, then you are stuck to a 800x600 mode window. (I don’t think anyone is masochistic enough to try 640x480, even if that was the game's original dimensions way back when!).

Windowed mode is there to be used in Desktop Resolution, where it takes full advantage of your modern widescreen monitor. That mode is the main selling point for the paid version of the game.

[Mobhack]

Originally Posted by cbreedon

I've tried all your solutions nothing seems to have fixed it. All I did was switch out the secondary monitor... weird and frustrating

And so your old secondary monitor was old, and happened to support the full-screen resolution you were using. Switching back may work, but maybe not if you also loaded a new video driver - unless you can find the exact older one you used before the monitor swap.

"Modern" hardware and software for windows - drivers, monitors, video cards etcetera often have no inbuilt support for "long gone and unneeded by modern consumer" modes like 4:3 resolution, or smaller full-screen modes, perhaps not even supporting 1280x, let alone 800 and 640 seems to have disappeared in a puff of indifference 10-15 years back.

Don't use full-screen mode, use windowed mode. Or, if you insist on full-screen mode then find yourself the right combination of obsolescent video kit that still supports it. We do not support full-screen mode, but its still in there for historical reasons but only for the very few who still have obsolescent video kit that "knows" about stone-age windows graphics modes.

[cbreedon]

I have only used windowed and desktop screen size. I did try other options today but got the same result. I switched between GDI and DirectX as well. I have the full version.
My primary monitor is 1920*1200. That is the screen the game deploys on. I just played around and put the screen size to 1280*1024 it works. I guess it works but doesn't take up the screen.

[Mobhack]

Looks like this weird resolution of 1920x2000 - WUXIA - is a "new thing". At least there are a couple of such monitors available at the local PC world, and a couple of those are in the 120-159 quid bracket.

And it also look like it is one that breaks the game's screen size requirements like the old one for 13 inch laptop screens (1024x700 or whatever it was - it was over 5 years back, a few lines off the screen saved the manufacturers a few pence per item). The game expects the X and Y pixels to be divisible into 4-pixel chunks like all other monitor resolutions were - except for that cheapo laptop screen, which needed special code. I just happened to have such a laptop at the time, so testing was a breeze!

But I won't be doing any special code for that size since
- I can buy a WUXIA monitor for a reasonable price
- But the new Dell i7 Inspiron "S" model I bought for just under a grand in November wont drive a monitor size greater than standard HD 1980x1068.

(To anyone thinking of the "S" model dell Inspiron - yes, its nice and small and takes up less desktop space. But, the graphics output is limited, the sound card has to be rammed up to 100 to hear anything, and the fans make an electric whine/moan noise, some sort of induction mode to make it quieter - no whirring so you get annoyed by the moaning of the cooling thingy. The one in the full-sized case may have been a better choice for me...)

As I would need a brand new computer and monitor to properly test the fix, it wont be happening since I have just done that recently.

Try setting your windows screen size to regular FHD 1980x1080 mode and then launch the game in desktop resolution in windowed mode - see if that works properly. If so, you have yourself a workaround.

[Mobhack]

1366x768 was the weird and wonderful display resolution these cheapo laptop 13 inch or 14 inch screens used, one had to shave 6 pixels off the game window width for these or kaboom.

I forgot to ask - do you have windows set up to use the taskbar as recommended - situated at the bottom of the screen and set to be Non-Hiding?

Not having that set-up can make the game crash, but some end users have reported that they can use hiding taskbars, side task bars etcetera - windows can be weird. But if you have a taskbar that is not set up to be the bottom of the screen, or one that is set to auto-hide usually brings problems with the game. If you do - try the recommended settings for the taskbar and see if that helps.