Black Screen when Fullscreen on 8800GT

[ianhyphen]

Hello! I'm trying to play Salem on my 1080p television. Unfortunately, the default GUI is scaled too small for me to play from a distance.

I tried using the console command to switch to fullscreen. My plan from that point to change my resolution until the GUI is easy to read.

So, when I type :fs 1 into the console, the whole screen goes black; I can only see the cursor. I waited for about 5 minutes before giving up.
I know the game isn't frozen because I can click the black screen once and type :fs 0 and the game comes back.

*Oddly, if I "Print Screen" the black screen and paste it into Paint, I get an image of the game in fullscreen! This only occurs after I Alt+Tab out of the game, then back in (I have to do it twice, in fact).
If I "Print Screen" before Alt+Tabbing, I get an image of whatever is running behind the game (i.e. my desktop, this window, etc...). This leads me to believe it's some kind of redraw/update/refresh issue, but I've never had the pleasure of Java/OGL game dev.

Also, while in fullscreen, I can alt + tab out and the win + tab ("Aero") allows me to see the game rendered in full screen. However, as soon as I switch back to the actual game, it goes to the black screen with the cursor.

Here is what I mean:

Is there a way for me to scale the GUI without using fullscreen + lower resolutions? Is there a workaround for the black screen?
Thank you for any assistance!

Addt'l info:

Windows 7 x64
GeForce 8800GT (WHQL 314.07 - latest official drivers)
Java 1.7.0_015 (latest)
Intel C2D E6750
6GB RAM

[MagicManICT]

You can simply resize the window via dragging the borders or maximize button.

For some reason, full screen mode is working for some but not for others.

[Kandarim]

You can simply resize the window via dragging the borders or maximize button.

For some reason, full screen mode is working for some but not for others.

this, however, doesn't solve his problem of a GUI which is too small

If you end op changing the screen resolution, why would you need to use the actual fullscreen feature? just maximize your window and then change the resolution?

[ianhyphen]

If you end op changing the screen resolution, why would you need to use the actual fullscreen feature? just maximize your window and then change the resolution?

The console command I used to change resolution is :fsmode {width} {height}
It only applies to the fullscreen resolution. This way I don't have to change my desktop resolution to play the game at 720p.

Currently, I'm changing my desktop resolution (in windows) to 1280x720 and playing with the window maximized. It works, but it's in no way ideal to change my desktop res whenever I play. Plus, it makes multitasking while playing a pain. For example, my browser window is now huge and ugly.

Thanks, though. Your reply gave me the idea to change Windows' resolution instead of in-game.

[MagicManICT]

this, however, doesn't solve his problem of a GUI which is too small

You're right, but other than fixing code, there's nothing I can come up with to resolve this issue. I'm not sure if it's a core problem with OpenGL (haven't seen it in OpenGL software prior to Salem), the JOGL API, Java itself, or an issue in the client code. So far it's a strange enough problem and enough people reporting it I don't think it's a driver issue, but I could be wrong. More research is needed.

[ianhyphen]

So far it's a strange enough problem and enough people reporting it I don't think it's a driver issue, but I could be wrong. More research is needed.

I only wrote about the issue because I didn't see any NVIDIA 5xxx+ cards as having issues reported. I'm happy to help research the issue if there are specific things you or anyone would like me to try. I'm savvy; you won't have to step-by-step with me.

On the other hand, I don't mean to complain at all; I'm perfectly content playing with the workaround as suggested by Kandarim.

[MagicManICT]

I'm not familiar at all with the workings of how OpenGL handles things like fullscreen and windowed. Any graphics programming I've done has been with DirectX. I know Windows up through XP supports five graphics modes, each of which is handled differently. (Not really sure if that has changed with Vista and newer and DX10 and Aero, or if the modes are still the same its just a matter of how the desktop handles the layout.)

[loftar]

I'm not familiar at all with the workings of how OpenGL handles things like fullscreen and windowed.

It doesn't, quite simply. OpenGL is just for rendering; it leaves window management to the platform, in this case Java. I use AWT's GraphicsDevice.setFullScreenWindow() to switch to fullscreen mode. I still don't know why it doesn't work on some systems, though. I haven't been able to reproduce the problem myself, so it's a bit hard to debug.

[ianhyphen]

I use AWT's GraphicsDevice.setFullScreenWindow() to switch to fullscreen mode. I still don't know why it doesn't work on some systems, though. I haven't been able to reproduce the problem myself, so it's a bit hard to debug.

I don't suppose this Stack Overflow post helps (it describes the issue exactly, though)?

"Disabling the Direct3D pipeline (-Dsun.java2d.d3d=false) fixed the problem for me."

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4608 ... usive-mode

[MagicManICT]

Digging up the article that switch is published from: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/1.5.0/doc ... flags.html

This document describes several unsupported properties that you can use to customize how the 2D painting system operates. You might use these properties to improve performance, fix incorrect rendering, or avoid system crashes under certain configurations. For example, on a small set of Microsoft Windows computers with bad DirectDraw or Direct3D drivers, the use of hardware-accelerated rendering might cause system crashes. You can use properties to specify that on these computers, the Java 2D system shouldn't use DirectDraw or Direct3D.