Steam game (HL2) full-screen problem

[jonnycat]

Hi, the specs of my hardware/software are at the bottom of this post.

I installed Steam successfully under Wine, and installed Half Life 2. When I go to play the game something is wonky with the full screen resolution, as if it thinks each pixel is a lot larger than it actually is (like the monitor is 4x as big and the pixels are 4x as big).

As I move the mouse around in this state, when it hits a screen edge it moves the screen over until it hits the end.

I recorded a short movie (~2MiB) detailing this behavior, which you can watch here:
http://tinypic.com/player.php?v=30bej2c&s=6

Any idea what is going on here? I am able to play the game without a problem on the same machine under another distro using nVidia driver 280.13 (I don't know if this is an nVidia driver issue or not).

Thanks for any suggestions.

================================================== =====================

SPECS (FC17, 8800GT):

abrt-addon-kerneloops-2.0.10-4.fc17.x86_64
akmod-nvidia-295.53-1.fc17.1.x86_64
kernel-3.3.4-5.fc17.x86_64
kernel-3.3.7-1.fc17.x86_64
kernel-devel-3.3.7-1.fc17.x86_64
kernel-headers-3.3.7-1.fc17.x86_64
kmod-nvidia-3.3.7-1.fc17.x86_64-295.53-1.fc17.1.x86_64
libreport-plugin-kerneloops-2.0.10-3.fc17.x86_64
nvidia-settings-1.0-18.fc17.x86_64
nvidia-xconfig-1.0-16.fc17.x86_64
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-295.53-1.fc17.x86_64
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs-295.53-1.fc17.i686
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs-295.53-1.fc17.x86_64
3.3.7-1.fc17.x86_64
nvidia 12344969 40
i2c_core 38028 10 i2c_algo_bit,i2c_i801,videodev,v4l2_common,tveepro m,bttv,msp3400,tuner,tuner_simple,nvidia
# RPM Fusion - nvidia-xorg.conf
#
Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "nvidia"
EndSection
[jon@FC17Box ~]$ lspci |grep VGA
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G92 [GeForce 8800 GT] (rev a2)

[jonnycat]

Okay I did some more experimentation with this, and I have some more information. The game displays properly in windowed mode; the problem is in fullscreen mode (even at 640x480).

When there is a dialog on the screen, in game or on the desktop, I am unable to use the mouse to move the screen around.

If I kill the process while in the game (using CTRL-ALT-ESC), I get back to the desktop, but the problem is carried over:
http://tinypic.com/player.php?v=fmnnle&s=6

If I logout the video is reset and the display behaves normally.

Any ideas appreciated.

[jonnycat]

Okay, it looks like this problem has somehow been fixed, although I'm not too sure how.

I did two things: downloaded another game (ETQW demo) that was neither Steam/Valve based, nor which used Wine, and installed it. Before I played it, I went into the nVidia X Server Settings and changed the GPU Scaling Method from Stretched to Centered.

When I played ETQW, it rendered itself in fullscreen mode just fine.

After closing ETQW, I loaded up Steam, and went to play HL2, and it also rendered itself in fullscreen mode just fine.

To determine if it was indeed the GPU Scaling Method which was the fix, I changed it back to Stretched mode, and rebooted.

Oddly enough, with all the settings back to the way they were, HL2 continued to render itself properly in fullscreen mode.

So, I don't know what did it, maybe it was installing ETQW demo, maybe it was just fiddling with the nVidia settings, but it's working properly now, so YAY.