Why does ScummVM still use 256-colours for fullscreen?

[marzipan]

I don't really like to play ScummVM in fullscreen under Windows atm because of its tendency to refresh my monitor's display so that it can change the refresh rate/Hz setting, switch my display to 256-colour mode, and possibly align the game display incorrectly so that I have to go to my monitor's settings and choose "auto-adjust".

DOSBox actually one-ups over ScummVM in this aspect by offering a variety of display modes to the user such as surface (which has the same effect as ScummVM), overlay (where a new display is essentially created over the top of the current one, keeping the current display settings), opengl, direct3d, etc etc etc. I'm a particular fan of 'overlay' as - when set up correctly - you can play away in fullscreen without worrying about your monitor's refresh rate being changed, your color depth setting being altered (and hence refreshing any windows you may have open that you didn't want refreshed), and the display alignment working correctly from the start.

Would it be relatively easy to port these DOSBox renders over to ScummVM? You did include its OPL emulation after all.

At the very least I would like to be able to play fullscreen in 32-bit colour mode.

[eriktorbjorn]

switch my display to 256-colour mode,

Not really an answer to your question, but... 256-colour mode? That sounds strange. I thought ScummVM - the SDL backend, at least - used 16 bpp internally at all times, not 8 bpp. (And even then, I believe SDL itself may choose to use a different graphics mode internally, though it probably tries not to, to avoid the overhead.)

[marzipan]

Well, maybe I'm wrong about it - but I'm just going by the assumption that (I'm pretty sure from past usage) when getting out of fullscreen the display would garble colours of pink, light blue and green for a split second before returning to Windows - a common trait I've seen with apps coming out of a 256-colour mode. I'll give it another try though and see if I'm misremembering.

[DrMcCoy]

the display would garble colours of pink, light blue and green for a split second before returning to Windows - a common trait I've seen with apps coming out of a 256-colour mode

This might also happen when the fullscreen 16bpp mode SDL gets for ScummVM is different from the windowed one. For example, one might be RGB555, the other RGB565.

[Collector]

There has been similar issues with fullscreen on Vista/Win7 using surface for the output in DOSBox. It is an SDL issue. Of course on DOSBox it can easily be fixed by selecting a different output mode in the conf file.