Revisiting the old chestnut of full screen vs windowed

[winston]

Well, I've just implemented the fully-resizable window for Oolite (windowed mode used to just run whatever you had set as full screen, but as a window, and only gave you window sizes that matched full screen sizes). Windowed and full screen modes are now independent, and the defaults for both are independent. If you have no GNUstep defaults at all (i.e. you've probably never run the game) full screen defaults to whatever your current X resolution is, and windowed defaults to an 800x600 window (which you can of course now drag the corners of to resize).

Which has made me revisiting the question: new users - should they get full screen in whatever their X resolution is by default, or an 800x600 resizable window by default? (I could change this if it's deemed worthwhile to a percentage of their current screen resolution). Personally, I expect games to start full screen - but not everyone agrees with that point of view! There's certainly arguments for starting windowed (it's safer - if something gets screwed up or the game hangs, the user doesn't have to switch to console mode and kill -9 the game)

[Rubinstein]

There's certainly arguments for starting windowed (it's safer - if something gets screwed up or the game hangs, the user doesn't have to switch to console mode and kill -9 the game)

Exactly for that reason I voted for windowed. I hope I got you right and you were talking about the very first start of Oolite, not every new game session.

Personally, I'm playing in fullscreen exclusively and of course I want to let the game start in fullscreen. But since the game is using the last saved resolution, that's perfect for me.

[winston]

Yes - you're right - this is just for the first time Oolite is ever run (after that, your settings are saved in your GNUstep defaults)