Toggling fullscreen may be working again

[Dominus]

Hi all,

after some testing I decided to take a chance by commenting out an SDL test before switching from windowed mode to fullscreen. This test seems to have prevented this switch for Exult resolution smaller than 640x480.
On OS X 10.6 and 10.5 (al intel) this is working fine now.

I really need people here to report back whether it is working for them now and on which OS they tested.
Snapshots for Windows and OS X (10.4 upwards, both intel and ppc) are availlable. Source code is availlable as well. As usual all can be found on our download page.

Thanks
Dom

[Dominus]

Colourless has put in much more work and made it much more stable now, jfyi

[monotremata]

I just left it at the default resolution (320x200) and full screen toggles on and off just fine..

10.5 PPC here.

[Dominus]

Thanks for confirming

[Gruck]

Works for me again too. This had been a problem for ages. The new music loading is nice too, it prevents stalling of the game when music tracks change. Double thanks!

[Dominus]

Gruck on what OS are you running Exult? And thanks for taking the time to confirm

[Gruck]

Windows Vista

[_Olarin]

10.5 intel mac here, and everything seems to be working properly for me again too.

[Mimu Bunnylin]

Tested on a Win98 (with SE2ME and other enhancements, which should not affect results, but cannot be discounted), graphics driver ATI Catalyst 6.2. Changing the desktop bit depth made no difference in results.

Windowed mode gave no trouble at any resolution or scale factor.

Requesting fullscreen at 320x200 or 320x240, scale factor 1, makes Exult switch the screen to 640x480 resolution, with the game view in the top left; the view is not drawn properly, and sections only refresh as the invisible mouse cursor is moved.

320x200 at scale factor 2 results in an odd sight. The resolution becomes 640x480, the view is still not drawn properly, and the palette gets all wonky. The fade in from black looks a little suspect, too. The cursor remains mostly invisible, but I could click interface elements with careful aiming. The BG intro is all neon-colored, except for the Guardian's speech, which looks perfectly normal.
http://mooncore.eu/mimu/gfx/exultodd.png
http://mooncore.eu/mimu/gfx/exult_mintygreen.png

320x239 at scale factor 2 makes the view update properly, but retains the outworldly palette. The in-game video options dialog confirms the engine was running in 320x239 at x2. Switching to 320x240 at x2 fixed the palette.

So... something is not right. This system can run old DOS games that natively call for 320x200, by switching into 720x400 resolution (weird, but looks perfect). If I tell my own Windows-native game engine to use 320x200 at true color, the call to winapi ChangeDisplaySettings returns an error, but 320x240 works without a hitch (I get a frame buffer of 320x240, though the resolution becomes 640x480, the system apparently scales the output automatically). SDL is, naturally, a wholly different beast...

[Dominus]

confirmed... Just yesterday Colourless rewrote some rendering code and that seems to break Windows 9x fullscreen. Just days ago, when I started this thread fullscreen on Windows 9x in my Virtual Machine worked fine, now it doesn't
It'll probably take some days until it is fixed, keep a look on the changelog for when it is fixed.

Edit: actually it got fixed right away
And some new video options added as well

[Mimu Bunnylin]

OK, tested again. Requesting a fullscreen resolution of below 640x480 is still broken, but the new options make it a bit easier to find a good view/game resolution combination. I'm still a bit concerned that going above 320x200 engine resolution might break some scripts... the palette appears to be correct under all conditions now.

Minor issue: if game resolution is set to Auto, opening and closing the Video options dialog without changing anything resets the screen anywa (ie. screen goes black for half a second).

I'm very glad that you're still holding on to win9x support. There are yet a few oldskoolers around... Thank you!

[Dominus]

did you test with a new snapshot?

With the new video options we now distinguish between Exult's display resolution (how big the window is and how big the fullscreen rendering is) and the game viewing area (game res. right now in the video settings).
When you set the game res to 320x200 you can safely set the main Resolution higher (actually it should only show you supported resolutions) as this will leave the game view at 320x200 and thus keeping the game safe

I know it is confusing and right now this is still work in progress by Colourless and will improve. I tried my best to describe it in the documentation (fresh out of the press, today ) http://exult.info/docs.php#resolution

[Mimu Bunnylin]

Yes, the snapshot should have Colourless' changes from the 24th (the last in the changelog). The new options work well enough to get the game running smoothly, as long as I keep the monitor resolution above 640x480. And really, what more could I hope for?

[Dominus]

doesn't sound too good
How is it behaving when you set SDL_VIDEODRIVER=directx (or if you did that originally, if you set it to windib) as described at http://exult.info/faq.php#w9x_issues?

[Aldbaran]

i had to set the SDL_VIDEODRIVER=directx or it wouldnt work for me.........


so i need to use the .bat file, for this to work?

[Dominus]

Aldbaran, can you elaborate? In what way wouldn't it work for you? And how does it work for you with directx set - all fine?
If it is working fine you either need the bat file approach or you permanently set this environment setting. But it's been a while for me since wun9x, so I don't remember how to set it permanently

[Aldbaran]

well i have been using Exult 1.4 since i can remember.....my old harddrive went to "heaven" ....and since then i never played ultima VII again.

now when i reinstalled the latest snapshot, i was impossible to use on fullscreen.

Mouse would leave a trail, the letters would be missing and the mouse arrow disappear.....and after a lot of hit and miss....i managed to get to the game...but it was out of scale.....couldnt see the the writtings...

Then i decided to make that bat file with SDL_VIDEODRIVER=directx and exult.exe in a bat file like it was saying, (the sound was working for me)....and it worked.

The snapshot i am using now was downloaded a cuople hours ago.

the big difference between what i use now in terms of specs comparing to before the hard drive burn...is now i have a GeForce 9800 GT while before it a Geforce of series 8 (cant remeber the exact) and now i have a Intel Quad while before it was a slower cpu

so....thats it

[Dominus]

Why in whoevers name are you running win9x on an intel quad?

Maybe our new rendering code broke it or the drivers for the card broke it or...
Are you using the latest drivers from nvidia?

[Mimu Bunnylin]

Of course, I really should have remembered to try videodriver=directx. That eliminated all fullscreen issues. I could even run Exult in 512x384.

[Aldbaran]

Well i guess i could move up to Window 7 now...


other than that...funny you ask the about the drivers....well yes before i even posted i made a major update on Wndows XP....and it did installed (according to it) the lastest nVidia drivers...in this case:

Driver Version 258.96


I am checking on NVIdia now if thats the latests for 9800 GT

[Aldbaran]

And i just check on nVidia website.....those are the latest drivers:

258.96...so i am updated....so it must be your rendering code?

[Aldbaran]

well... posted on the Bugtracker under the name Teidicus

[Dominus]

so, what OS are you using? Windows XP or Windows 9x? This is important to know

[Jaesun9]

Did a fresh install of the 2010-08-31 00:44 build. Stated Exult and then went to the settings options and selected full screen and worked fine for me.

Nvidia 258.96 Drivers
Windows 7 (32-Bit)

I went back to windowed mode, and one thing I did notice (for me) is if you select any of the Scaling options then select OK the window suddenly becomes scrunched up small and unreadable. Tempting fate, I exited Exult and started it up again, went back to full screen mode. All is fine, then selected a scaling option again and after I hit ok, again all the text/graphics are bunched up. Additionally I then alt-tabbed out of Exult, only to find that it was now making my cursor invisible, so I had a bit of difficulty trying to exit Exult.

I did not try to change any scaling options while in a game yet.

[Jaesun9]

gah! my kingdom for an edit button, I also just wanted to ask what was the switch back and forth to full screen mode key command? (I swear it was ALT ENTER)?

[MV]

---------
| EDIT |
---------

I'll take that kingdom now.....

[Aldbaran Galicia]

Windows XP Professional

[Dominus]

@jaesunw: it can very well be that the menu setup stuff is not working correctly. I have to admit that I haven't tested those settings after Colourless mad his recent rendering changes. Please try the settings in the games (and I will take a look at the menu setup).
thanks for reporting back.

[Jaesun9]

Ok I played around a bit in game again specs are:

Build 2010-08-31 00:44
Nvidia 258.96 Drivers
Windows 7 (32-Bit)

I tried 640 x 480, 800x600, 1024x768 resolutions (and using Super2xSaI Scaler), switched between full screen and Windowed mode repeatedly and can report no problems at all on my end. (The game is so beautiful in 1024x768)!

The Hot Keys (ALT ENTER and also F4) to switch to full screen work IN GAME, but not from the main menu.

The Main Menu is kind of bugged (for me), in that In game I set the game resolution to 640x480 and Super2xSaI I then click ok to accept these settings and saved my game then exited. I start up Exult, and if you choose any scaling options from the Main Menu, and then click OK, the Main Menu window will suddenly re size to 320x240, so the text is all scrunched up and un-readable (If you then exit Exult, and start it up again, the window size goes back to 640x480 and everything is fine). So basically just change any video options IN GAME, and not the Main Menu for now.

Let me know if you need more info?

[Aldbaran]

Thanks Jaesunw, it just happens like you said

I managed to play the game with bat file i made....but its better now..

[Dominus]

@Aldbaran, if yoo delete your exult.cfg then install exult from the latest snapshot again (especially to easily give the paths to the U7 games), then start Exult without the bat file and only change the display stuff from the in game video settings, does it then work for you?
The main menu setup is broken at the moment but Colourless is looking at it, so the in game settings are the way to go for now.

[Aldbaran Galicia]

Ouch i wanted to say ..i managed to play WITHOUT using the bat file

I am playing at 1024x768 resolution (and using Super2xSaI Scaler).

[Dominus]

Colourless replaced the pre-games menu setup with the in-game setup gump. Please give it a try, with it it should be able to control Graphics and Audio options outside of the games now.

[Gruck]

Works fine for me.