Re: Full screen problem
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Full screen support is a relic of MSDOS and the outdated 4:3 aspect ratio monitors.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
|