Full-Screen Mode

[Chaplain]

I just received a new Toshibe Satellite Pro 6100. 1400x1050 screen resolution and a GeForce4 420 with 16MB of video RAM. Pretty sweet for a laptop. :cool:

BUT - OH NO! It does not support full-screen video modes! :o It can only show windowed video modes. So far not one of my games, not even Steel Beasts, will run. Every game either requires full-screen video to run, or, even more disappointing, has a short video clip right at the beginning that requires full-screen video. An example is F-16 Multi-Role Fighter. I know the game will run in a window, but I cannot get past the silly video clip. :casstet:

I ask you, Ssnake & Al, to consider this as you work on Steel Beasts 2. I know that SB Gold had the option of skipping the intro. Please do that again with SB 2. Some of us (well, at least one) will be left out if you don't.

[9erRed]

Greetings,

As a note here...Will holding down the "shift' key not buypass the intro movie?
Also check the .ini file for some of the other games as there is normally a setting to "enable" windowed mode. And see what Ssnake or Mr. Delaney have to say.

Thats all......good luck..and is it the Video card or the motherboard that won't allow "full screen" Vid modes?

Later ..... 9erRed ..... out

[Sean]

Thats all......good luck..and is it the Video card or the motherboard that won't allow "full screen" Vid modes?


Laptops come with everything squeezed onto one board. This is a longshot, but is there setting in the BIOS that will let you change that?

[Chaplain]

I had already spoken with Toshiba tech support. That is the way the computer was designed - there is no way around it. (I just didn't imagine having to ask, "willl this high-speed, video-accellarated laptop play games? 'Only if they don't access full-sreen mode.'"

I will definitely look into your suggestions, 9erRed. I hope that will save at least some of the games I have.

[bewing77]

I have an old Toshiba Tecra 8000 laptop, and it initially had the same problem. BUT there was a BIOS setting that's called "stretch display" or something like that. It make lower resolution games and such stretch out to full screen. It looks a bit blocky, but it may be worth looking into.

[Ssnake]

Chaplain,

I say the Toshiba guy was either lazy or clueless. There almost always is an option to make the notebook stretch the image across the entire screen, and yes, it's a BIOS thing. Toshiba may have disabled that option in the BIOS though which MIGHT be the reason. Or it is something that you have to set through one of the tools on their CD-ROMs.

[Chaplain]

It's not the display-stretch option. That works - If I turn the Windows resolution down to 800x600, I can display the screen either as a little box in the center or stretched to fill the entire LCD panel.

What fails is anything set to run in full-screen mode. For example, if I try to set the built-in Pinball game to Full Screen, it immediately resets itself to be a window on the larger desktop. All of the "real" games and simulations that I have, though, either run in full-screen (SB, Longbow 2) or have a video clip at the beginning (Delta Force 2, F16 MRF).

It acts similar to Doom, long ago, running on Windows 95. When you lauched the program it initially went to a minimized state. You had to click on the task bar to get it to come back up, and sometimes it simply crashed. In my case now, the program minimizes and then does nothing. It says it is running, but it will not respond to any commands.

None of the compatibility settings seem to make a difference. The only thing I can imagine is that there might be a way to adjust direct-X or the GeForce settings directly, but I have no idea where to start with that.

[Chaplain]

I can add a bit more - Direct3D does not work. I tried to test it and the screen flickers and says I cancelled the test by pressing a key (which I did not). I tried loading DirectX 9, and that did the same thing.

The DirectDraw looks wrong in the full-screen mode test, too. The test passes, but I see the taskbar flickering in-and-out at the bottom of the screen during the test. I don't think that is supposed to happen.

I don't expect you guys to fix this, of course. Just pointing out what has happended. I don't suppose SB 2 will run without Direct3D, will it?

[Ssnake]

Ah... now I understand. You either have a hardware, or a driver problem. And no, SB2 won't react any different from other games. What Notebook do you own? Is there a web site at Toshiba's that describes it?

[Werewolf]

I just received a new Toshibe Satellite Pro 6100. 1400x1050 screen resolution and a GeForce4 420 with 16MB of video RAM. Pretty sweet for a laptop. :cool:

BUT - OH NO! It does not support full-screen video modes! :o It can only show windowed video modes. So far not one of my games, not even Steel Beasts, will run. Every game either requires full-screen video to run, or, even more disappointing, has a short video clip right at the beginning that requires full-screen video. An example is F-16 Multi-Role Fighter. I know the game will run in a window, but I cannot get past the silly video clip. :casstet:

I ask you, Ssnake & Al, to consider this as you work on Steel Beasts 2. I know that SB Gold had the option of skipping the intro. Please do that again with SB 2. Some of us (well, at least one) will be left out if you don't.

FWIW - Laptops were never meant to be used as gaming platforms and very few games are designed with a laptop in mind. If a game runs on a laptop at all (and there are some) then consider yourself lucky.

It's tough enough for designers to make their games run on the myriad configurations that exist in desktops. I doubt if any game developer will add laptops to their test platform list.

You don't pound nails with a wrench and you don't play games (at least not graphically intensive full screen ones) on a laptop. Use tools for the purpose for which they were intended.

[Hell_Hound]

You don't pound nails with a wrench and you don't play games (at least not graphically intensive full screen ones) on a laptop. Use tools for the purpose for which they were intended.


Maybe you don't pound nails with a wrench. ;)

I read once that the definition of Computing Science is "Selecting the proper wrench with which to hammer in an improvised screw."

[Chaplain]

Ssnake, this is a Satellite Pro 6100, 1.8 GHz model. The web-based tech support link is:

http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/su/su_sc_modItemList.jsp?ProductMenu_0=Portables&ProductMenu_1=Satellite+Pro&ProductMenu_2=160273&BV_SessionID=@@@@1346381528.1047674404@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccciadchkgjfeehcgfkceghdgngdgli.0&moid=160273&smoid=true&ct=DL&ListType=Model&x=13&y=13

It seems that the hardware does not support all video modes, which really seems silly when Toshiba is advertising the GeForce4 420 Go as a major selling point. Why would they design it like that?

I understand what you are saying, Werewolf. However, my last computer was a laptop and it played all of the games I liked with few issues. Note the list of games I noted earlier - even Longbow 2, which it seems that most people cannot get to run on new desktops. I wouldn't expect to play the most complex games at full realism on my laptop, but I expect most games to at least run. on a brand-new, relatively high-power system.

[Skip]

Chaplain, is it just the intro to SB that fails or do you get to the game itself before it fails? If it's the intro then you might try creating a shortcut to the file "tankSim.exe" in the SB "release" folder. This will start SB without the intro that "SBLoader.exe" will run prior to starting "tankSim.exe".

[Ssnake]

I have a Satellite Pro 5100, and it runs both SB Gold and SB2. It has the GeForce 440 Go. I think I installed the NVIdia reference driver for the 440 Go chipset since the stuff Toshiba installed first sucked. Maybe that's something you should try, too. Send me an email, I'll be looking a bit closer into this.

[Chaplain]

YES! Ssnake, you were right on. Even though the NVidia site said "Do not use these drivers with the 420 Go or the 440 Go," I loaded them anyway. Now, Direct3D works and so does SB. :D I am assuming that all the other games will follow suit.

That you for your efforts, guys.

Now, I just need to set up a web site for simulation nuts who bought Toshiba laptop computers. Or has that been done already?

[chrisotto]

I have a Satellite Pro 5100, and it runs both SB Gold and SB2. It has the GeForce 440 Go. I think I installed the NVIdia reference driver for the 440 Go chipset since the stuff Toshiba installed first sucked. Maybe that's something you should try, too. Send me an email, I'll be looking a bit closer into this.

He has SB 2 on the Laptop...

I'll be getting a private detective in Germany - I wouldn't leave you laptop unattended anymore...

Btw - what's then the MAC address of your WiFi port?

:D