Full Screen ZC Makes Me Sad

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07-16-2017, 10:38 PM
Modus Ponens

Full Screen ZC Makes Me Sad

[Edit: before I said my problem occurred in both ZC and ZQ, when in reality, it only happens as described in ZC — there's an entirely different problem in ZQ]

Hey guys, I guess I haven't posted in... like at least five years or more. Hi.

So, this thread talks about a bug that plagues me as well. If I run ZC in full screen, it flickers the whole time that the game is running. It's like it's showing the game properly for one frame, and then the next frame it's all blue with some stuff on the left side of the screen.

Proper frame, and glitch frame, rapidly alternating between the two. (Note that these two frames do not perfectly correspond to one another — I moved Link around a little bit between them, but ZC crashed while I was trying to take screenshots and I didn't feel like launching it again.)

As you might be able to see from these images, it appears that the glitch frame is actually the data from the proper frame, but kind of squished against the left side of the screen and without proper color palette information. I don't suppose that diagnosis will help at all, but there it is.

For the record, I'm running 2.50.2, launched from the ZC Launcher with the launcher's Screen Mode set to "Full Screen". I'm running Windows 10 Pro (version 1703, build number 15063.413) on a Retina Macbook Pro, with its NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M graphics card, in case any of this matters.

As an aside, I can't tell you how nice it is to see that ZC is still around after all these years, and in such good hands. Please keep it up!
07-17-2017, 12:10 AM
Saffith

Try setting
doublebuffer = 1
in the zeldadx section of ag.cfg.
07-17-2017, 01:12 AM
Modus Ponens

Radical. Thank you, Saffith, that helps very much. However, problems persist.

First of all, your solution is actively defeated by the launcher, who seems to gleefully overwrite the doublebuffer setting when I use it to launch ZC. If I launch it directly via zelda-w.exe, everything's fine. Is there a way around this?

Secondly, I goofed in my initial report (which I have now edited): I said that that behavior occurs in both ZC and ZQuest. In reality, the glitchy behavior I described does not happen in ZQ, though it still doesn't work. In ZQ, when I try to enable fullscreen, it tries to open a full-screen-sized window. It remains visible with only black contents for a few moments, and then it disappears. A few moments later, it tries and fails again. This repeats several times, before ZQ finally gives up and goes back to windowed mode.

Any thoughts on this matter?
07-17-2017, 02:21 AM
Gleeok

Sounds like it is running through the available supported hardware (GPU) display settings and failing? I'm not sure. What does allegro.log report? Triple buffering started to become a problem once windows went to 8 (false positives result in crashes) and 10, so I would make sure triple-buffering is not set in the config file (If you say it gets reverted by ZL?). Triple-buffer is officially permanently deprecated now in 2.50.3.

Are you running wine, and does the Mac build work any better?
07-17-2017, 06:24 AM
Modus Ponens

Hi, Gleeok. No, I'm not running Wine, I'm using Boot Camp to run Windows natively. It doesn't seem that triple-buffering is ever being set.

Here's my Allegro dump:

ZQuest v2.50 (Build 29)
Allocating tunes buffer (16.00k/16.00k)... OK
Allocating map buffer (1008.84k/1.00M)... OK
Allocating combo buffer (5.98k/1.01M)... OK
Allocating string buffer (680.00k/1.67M)... OK
Allocating door combo buffer (159.50k/1.83M)... OK
Allocating dmap buffer (234.00k/2.06M)... OK
Allocating combo buffer (1.62M/3.67M)... OK
Allocating color data buffer (314.11k/3.98M)... OK
Allocating tile buffer (8.50M/12.48M)... OK
Allocating tile grab buffer (511.88k/20.98M)... OK
Allocating trash buffer (97.66k/21.07M)... OK
Allocating item buffer (31.12k/21.10M)... OK
Allocating weapon buffer (2.50k/21.10M)... OK
Allocating guy buffer (70.00k/21.17M)... OK
Allocating combo class buffer (33.30k/21.21M)... OK
Allocating combo undo buffer (1.62M/22.82M)... OK
Allocating new tile undo buffer (511.88k/23.32M)... OK
Resetting new tile buffer...OK
Allocating file path buffers (14.00k/23.33M)... OK
Initializing Allegro... OK
Loading data files:
Fonts.Dat...OK
ZQuest.Dat...OK
QST.Dat...OK
SFX.Dat...OK
OK
Initializing sound driver... OK
gfx mode set at -2 8bpp 800 x 600
Loading Quest: c:\Users\Modus Ponens\Desktop\- Gams -\Zelda Classic\Quests\NewThing.qst...

Decrypting...okay.
Opening...okay.
Reading Header...okay.
Made in ZQuest 250 Beta 29
Reading Rules...okay.
Reading Strings...okay.
Reading Doors...okay.
Reading DMaps...okay.
Reading Misc. Data...okay.
Reading Misc. Colors...okay.
Reading Game Icons...okay.
Reading Items...okay.
Reading Weapons...okay.
Reading Maps...okay.
Reading Combos...okay.
Reading Combo Aliases...okay.
Reading Color Data...okay.
Reading Tiles...okay.
Reading Tunes...okay.
Reading Cheat Codes...okay.
Reading Init. Data...okay.
Reading Custom Guy Data...okay.
Reading Custom Link Sprite Data...okay.
Reading Custom Subscreen Data...okay.
Reading FF Script Data...okay.
Reading SFX Data...okay.
Reading Item Drop Sets...okay.
Reading Favorite Combos...okay.
Done.
Removing timers.
Cleaning aliases.
Cleaning subscreens.
Cleaning sfx.
Cleaning script buffer.
Cleaning qst buffers.
Cleaning maps.
Cleaning tile buffers.
Cleaning misc.
Cleaning midis.
Cleaning undotilebuf.
Cleaning datafiles.
Cleaning bitmaps...... OK.

This is after opening ZQ (via zquest-w.exe), attempting to switch to fullscreen, seeing it fail, and then quitting the program.
07-17-2017, 07:13 AM
Gleeok

Oh right, ZQuest... Forget what I said about triple-buffering then. Sorry. I don't see the cause off hand, but points of interest:

Is there a screen resolution in ZQuest that your computer will support? If not then fullscreen is probably impossible without DXGL or something similar. (800x600 is 4:3; does ZC run fullscreen at 800x600?)
I couldn't add custom resolutions in ZQ (too much work at the time; impractical) at the time they were added to ZC, but I can take another look if it's something that users really want. I just always thought that people preferred ZQ to be in windowed mode. I don't think I've ever run ZQ in fullscreen since 1.93.

Do we have a Mac guy at all?
07-17-2017, 11:46 AM
DarkDragon

You can force arbitrary resolutions in the master branch (assuming you are fine with the resulting aliasing artifacts).

Quote:

Do we have a Mac guy at all?

Sadly no...
07-17-2017, 12:00 PM
Saffith

Quote:

Originally Posted by Modus Ponens

First of all, your solution is actively defeated by the launcher, who seems to gleefully overwrite the doublebuffer setting when I use it to launch ZC.

Strange, it shouldn't do that... It wasn't already running when you edited ag.cfg, right?

Quote:

In ZQ, when I try to enable fullscreen, it tries to open a full-screen-sized window. It remains visible with only black contents for a few moments, and then it disappears. A few moments later, it tries and fails again. This repeats several times, before ZQ finally gives up and goes back to windowed mode.

Scaling the new interface up in ZQuest wasn't allowed until after 2.50.2, so I don't know what it'll do if 800x600x8 isn't supported. A newer version might work.
07-17-2017, 02:15 PM
Modus Ponens

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gleeok

Is there a screen resolution in ZQuest that your computer will support?

I don't know. How do I change the ZQ screen resolution?

Quote:

(800x600 is 4:3; does ZC run fullscreen at 800x600?)

800x600 doesn't show up as an option in the drop-down list of resolutions in the launcher. Is there a way to manually specify that? (Presumably in ag.cfg?)

Quote:

I couldn't add custom resolutions in ZQ (too much work at the time; impractical) at the time they were added to ZC, but I can take another look if it's something that users really want. I just always thought that people preferred ZQ to be in windowed mode. I don't think I've ever run ZQ in fullscreen since 1.93.

It isn't a big deal. I think I probably do actually prefer to run it windowed, like you said, because it's so much easier to switch to other applications that way. If you get the option in, I might use it sometimes, but it's far from a priority on my personal wants list.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Saffith

Strange, it shouldn't do that... It wasn't already running when you edited ag.cfg, right?

Ooh, good catch. I think that was the problem. I just checked ag.cfg without the launcher open and confirmed the doublebuffer setting, and then closed that and launched ZC via the launcher, and everything is fine there.

BUT...
when I have ZC in fullscreen mode and I Alt-Tab to another program, it's bad. Last night I tried it a couple times, and when I tabbed back to it, it was put into that glitched state I mentioned in my first post. Today I can't replicate that because it just crashes altogether when I Alt-Tab away. So maybe this is a different bug, or maybe it's related, but there it is.

Fortunately, things seem pretty agreeable at this point: I'm able to run both ZC and ZQuest and I'm happy with how it's working, so long as I'm careful to toggle Fullscreen before I want to switch programs from ZC.
07-17-2017, 03:06 PM
Tim

That tab-out issue also happens on a PC running Win 10, so no surprise there. That one's not a Mac issue.
07-17-2017, 03:13 PM
Modus Ponens

I gotta say, I don't know everything about computers, but I think for all intents and purposes, I'm using a PC. I mean, I've got Windows 10 natively installed and running on my Intel hardware.