Plea to contestants

pymike on 2008/09/26 16:09 of Entry PyMike 007

Yo,

Quite a few times, when I run the entry games, they load in fullscreen. And most of the time it flips out my monitor (gives me an "out of range" message) on Ubuntu, so I have to reboot my computer. It's a bit cumbersome having to check all the main.py files to make sure the games aren't starting in fullscreen, so by default can ya'll start your games in windowed mode, and just add an option for fullscreen or something?

Also, am I the only one getting this error?

Thanks

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Comments

j-1 on 2008/09/26 17:23:

I'm getting it too. I think it has to do with my monitor not supporting resolutions that are a multiple of 800x600px. I tried adding the appropriate resolutions to /etc/X11/xorg.conf, but I couldn't get it to work. This is the reason our game starts in windowed mode, by the way.

Also, you don't have to restart the computer to exit the games. Just press Ctrl-Alt-F1 and kill the process (killall python). Also, the games should still be able to detect events, so you can quit if you know the commands.

phren on 2008/09/26 18:19:

My monitor doesn't flip out but my Windows does, all windows that I have open get put into random positions and sometime my shortcuts get shuffled around. Luckily games don't force 256 colors though, since that would probably screw with my windows color settings too. :D

pymike on 2008/09/26 21:43:

@j-1: Yeah, I actually just restart X (ctrl+alt+backspace), but windows users probably wouldn't know what that means, so saying that I reboot is just as effective.

@phren: Yipe! That's gotta be annoying

richard on 2008/09/27 09:06:

Gee, it's a good thing pyglet doesn't do stupid things to monitors to force resolution changes :)

Archwyrm on 2008/09/28 00:13:

This is why I typically run games on a second X server. One of these is pretty easy to start. Desktop environments like KDE and Gnome often provide a way to "start a new session" or something like that. Or you can even run a game directly from a terminal:

cd path/to/game/
xinit `which python` run_game.py -- :1

This will start a basic X server with just your game and no window manager. You can then switch back and forth with ctrl+alt+f7 or f8. Any further X servers are after f7, so for :1 press f8 (the first one is :0, of course). You can replace the arguments after 'xinit' and before '--' with whatever you want, however whatever command you run needs to have an absolute path, so I use `which python` (note the backticks), which in this example inserts '/usr/bin/python'.

j-1 on 2008/09/28 19:51:

Everyone, for next time: If you do not understand how to play a game, it's a DNW. Period.

bencoder on 2008/09/28 20:42:

I disagree personally, j-1. If you don't understand how to play a game then that more likely indicates a flaw in the game or documentation than a failing of your ability, I would say, so doesn't warrant a neutral/disregarded vote.

j-1 on 2008/09/28 21:05:

I would say it does. Documentation is separate from the game. A help feature is nice and all, and should be taken into account for the Production category. A lack thereof, however, shouldn't lower the score of the actual game. Someone who is unable to play through the game because they don't know the controls cannot give a fair vote, for the same reason as if the game would have crashed before they could experience anything worth voting for.

j-1 on 2008/09/28 21:12:

Anyway, it would be nice if this could be cleared up in the rules, so that everybody votes on the same premises.

Tee on 2008/09/28 21:49:

I agree on clearing it up in the rules, disagree on marking DNW for games that you don't know how to play. It's true that you didn't experience the game if you didn't know the controls, but it's more of a responsibility of the developer to put clear instructions, while DNW in most of the cases is more on the side of the player or player's computer. I agree it's a shock treatment to have a game rated down so severely due to lack of clear instructions, it is unfair, but it does stress how important they are. In my opinion, instructions aren't separate of the game and they should be part of the rating.

Of course, there are people who will disregard a game if the instructions aren't in-game but in the readme, I don't think they should do that either, but putting lack of instructions at the same level of a game not working sounds a bit too much for me. I would say that the lack of instructions falls about at the same level of a bugged first level (even if there's an awesome game later) - it's a small error of the developer, but a good judge should keep trying (he might think it's a loss of points, that's ok, but at least he should either keep trying or not vote at all if that error doesn't let him experience any of the game).

Just my opinion.

Archwyrm on 2008/09/28 23:38:

What in the world does this have to do with screen resolutions..?

Tee on 2008/09/28 23:58:

Heh, excellent question. Someone went off topic and I just replied. :P

gcewing on 2008/09/29 00:06:

Perhaps the DNW option should be replaced with something more generic that just means "I can't give this game a rating for some reason, but I would still like to comment on it". Then in the comment you can explain the reason -- it crashed, you couldn't figure out how to play, didn't have the dependencies, etc.

Tee on 2008/09/29 00:38:

Sounds good.

illume on 2008/09/29 01:12:

@Pymike, please make sure you file a bug report with ubuntu.

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bugs

cheers,

j-1 on 2008/09/29 15:07:

@Archwyrm: Sorry. I must have confused this with another thread.

I approve of gcewing's suggestion.