Introversion

Hello there,

I have just installed Uplink 1.54, downloaded from Introversion today.
The game is working correctly, but some features consistently appear below the visible edge of the screen or outside the window. The most annoying case is the world map. In its default, stowed-away status, it looks bigger than it should. When unfolded, only the top 2/3rds are visible and no buttons can be seen or reached: the only way out is to log out. The game can hardly be played that way.
Other items include for example Graphics options: I can only see the top 2 rows of buttons, meaning no more than 16 bit color depth for example.

The host is running Ubuntu 10.04, Nvidia accelerated driver, dual-screen. I have tried switching back and forth between Compiz and Metacity, between windowed and full-screen modes, to no avail. The only resolution I can choose is 3200x1200, which matches my X resolution. However, if I configure X to use only 1 monitor, the problem goes away after 1 game restart.

Additionally, I would like to mention that when such graphics issues arise, the user can be left in a situation where the Exit button is hidden. Uplink seems to intercept pretty much any keyboard input, including Alt-TAB for example, which effectively locks the user INSIDE Uplink. The only way out I can think of is to switch to console and manually kill the Uplink process.

Thanks for any light you might shed.
Cheers,
Romain

I don't have Uplink on Linux, but if it is like the other IV games, it takes the list of supported resolutions from the X server, and has its problems with widescreen modes, and the NVidia driver is bad at giving good automatic resolution choices in multiscreen mode. What you need to do there is to configure X to allow you to switch to single screen usage on the fly, full documentation here: http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/L ... er-13.html
The MetaModes line is the most important. You have two 1600x1200 monitors, right? Try
Option "MetaModes" "1600x1200,1600x1200; ,1600x1200"
or
Option "MetaModes" "1600x1200,1600x1200; 1600x1200, "
which should add the 1600x1200 resolution to the Uplink list and, if activated, use only one monitor (which one is determined by the line you pick). If you want the other monitor to still be active, play in windowed mode with disabled window decorations.

Hi,

Thanks, the metamodes indeed helped a bit: Uplink is now capable of running in 1600x1200 even though X is set to TwinView.
However, that does not really solve the issue of the dual-screen mode. I like playing in dual-screen (I do in Windows) because there's so much more space available for the LAN HUD and other tools. I miss that in Linux

Cheers,

Romain

That's where my ability to help ends; experience from the other IV games suggests that it may not be possible to get the extreme widescreen to work in a satisfactory manner.

Duly noted. Thanks for the tip though, and let's see if IV comes up with a fix for this issue.

Cheers,
Romain