Sunday, June 6, 2010

Running full screen games under Wine, with Visual Effects enabled

I've recently began playing around with Ubuntu Linux (I'm using 10.04, or "Lucid Lynx"), and so I'm dual-booting between Windows and Ubuntu.

I have some games that I'd like to play under Linux. For that reason, and as a proof of concept, I installed Wine. The game I tested was Zuma Deluxe. It ran beautifully! Then one day, it stopped working. When I ran it, the "Zuma Deluxe" icon appeared in the taskbar, and the screen resolution changed, but all I could see was the Ubuntu desktop. If I went into the Wine configuration, and set "Emulate a virtual desktop" on, it worked again, but in a window on my desktop, not in full screen mode.

It turned out that I had enabled the "Visual Effects" in Ubuntu (Settings -> Preferences -> Appearance -> Visual Effects). When I disabled those, I could play Zuma again, without emulating a virtual desktop. But I like Visual Effects, and I also like Zuma in full screen!

I've just discovered a setting in Wine that works. Go to "Configure Wine" (Applications -> Wine -> Configure Wine). Go to the "Graphics" tab, and uncheck the options to allow the window manager to control and decorate the windows. Zuma is now working, in full screen, with Visual Effects enabled again!