Bizarre Screen Rolling Glitch in Low Res Games

[Broski270]

I have this new problem today and I've been trying to fix it for hours where when I am in a low resolution game (full screen) and my mouse goes to the right, the screen will scroll and this sliver of blue space shows. What happens is the whole screen shifts towards the left as it scrolls to the right. The best I can describe it as is something similar to the way StarCraft's and Command & Conquer's screens shift, except with the fact it is my entire screen shifting while I'm trying to play an FPS game. I noticed that the blue is the same shade of blue as the virtual desktop background. I disabled the virtual desktop, I have no idea what is going on. Its hard to describe and I tried getting a screenshot but it froze my computer. I am running on Ubuntu 12.04. I started having this problem in Wine 1.4 and I even tried upgrading to 1.5 but I am still having the same problem. I also deleted my old Wine prefix and made a new one but I'm having the same glitch! Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[olivierfrdierick]

Hi

It seems that the virtual desktop in wine can't be smaller than 640x480.

I guess its "full screen window" cannot be smaller than 640x480 too.
If your game runs at, say, 320x200 wine will switch your screen to 320x200, but draw a 640x480 window (partially off-screen to the right and bottom).
You'll see your game full screen at first, but if you go to the right or bottom, the system will scroll you through the rest of the 640x480 space provided.
This is only a supposition from me, but it makes sense.

Did you try to scroll back to the upper left ?

At which resolution are those games running ?

If you can (and weren't already doing so), run them at 640x480 or more.

[Broski270]

Hi

It seems that the virtual desktop in wine can't be smaller than 640x480.

I guess its "full screen window" cannot be smaller than 640x480 too.
If your game runs at, say, 320x200 wine will switch your screen to 320x200, but draw a 640x480 window (partially off-screen to the right and bottom).
You'll see your game full screen at first, but if you go to the right or bottom, the system will scroll you through the rest of the 640x480 space provided.
This is only a supposition from me, but it makes sense.

Did you try to scroll back to the upper left ?

At which resolution are those games running ?

If you can (and weren't already doing so), run them at 640x480 or more.

I was running them at around 800x600 and as low as 640x480. I play no games at 320x200, ever. If I scrolled back to the upper left, it won't lock 75% of the time and when I'm trying to aim a gun, my mouse goes off the screen a pushes the screen out of my view. I have tried wiping out my .wine directory twice, starting completely fresh and am still having this very frustrating glitch. I didn't have this issue in the past several weeks that I've been using Wine, and now this just comes out of nowhere. Do you have any idea how to fix it? I appreciate your help.

[olivierfrdierick]

I have multi-monitor support through Matrox TripleHead.
For full screen applications (mostly games), I cannot let wine switch screen resolution automatically.
wine set the refresh rate to a default value that is unsupported by my monitor/triplehead combination.
I have to change screen resolution with xrandr beforehand to the desired resolution, and set a virtual desktop of the same size in wine.
This way, I control the screen refresh rate/resolution and have wine run the application full screen.
For some games, menus/cutscenes are shown at lower resolution and the blue desktop background is visible but I can bear with that.

Try setting a virtual desktop to the resolution of the game and set the screen resolution to the same value with xrandr before launching the game.
When wine closes you set your screen back to its normal resolution with xrandr again.

This is for example what I use for The Godfather (running at 1280x1024 on a 3840x1024 triple screen setup)

Code: Select all

$ xrandr --size 1280x1024 --rate 58
$ wine godfather.exe
$ xrandr --size 3840x1024

I know your issue is not related to refresh rate, but this workaround might work.
If not, you may also check in wine's regedit if the HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Wine/Explorer/Desktops key looks sane.

[Broski270]

Thanks for the advice! It seems to be working when I do what you said. I appreciate your help!
Speaking of the regedit thing, mine has no value in it. Does that mean anything?

[olivierfrdierick]

I'm glad I could help.

For the registry settings, this is what I've seen with wine 1.4.1 and earlier:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Wine/Explorer] doesn't exist until a virtual desktop is enabled.
Once virtual desktop is enabled (I set it to 800x600 for this example) the key contains:

Code: Select all

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\Explorer]
"Desktop"="Default"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\Explorer\Desktops]
"Default"="800x600"

After disabling virtual desktop, both keys remain, the "Desktop" value is removed and the "Default" value is reset to "640x480".

[Broski270]

I'm glad I could help.

For the registry settings, this is what I've seen with wine 1.4.1 and earlier:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Wine/Explorer] doesn't exist until a virtual desktop is enabled.
Once virtual desktop is enabled (I set it to 800x600 for this example) the key contains:

Code: Select all

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\Explorer]
"Desktop"="Default"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\Explorer\Desktops]
"Default"="800x600"

After disabling virtual desktop, both keys remain, the "Desktop" value is removed and the "Default" value is reset to "640x480".

So I'm guessing it isn't anything that applies to me since I don't use the virtual desktop?

[olivierfrdierick]

If you never enable virtual desktop, this part applies to you.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Wine/Explorer] doesn't exist until a virtual desktop is enabled.