http://www.maketecheasier.com/run-fullscreen-games-in-linux-with-dual-monitors/
which is a lot nicer written.
Hello everybody!
I'm using two monitors on my Linux machine: The 13" 1366x768px inbuilt one of my laptop and my 24" full hd monitor. I don't need to say, that those do not really match to display one application over both of them. Unfortunately though, many games based on the well known sdl library try to do exactly this: When in fullscreen, they only offer me resolutions like "3286x1080" after the notebook's resolution (nothing in between). When opening in windowed mode, they calculate the middle of the screen by taking both screens into consideration, thus opening between them.
All I want to do, though, is having fullscreen games opening with full hd resolution on my external monitor, and windowed games in the middle of just this monitor.
I was quite happy lately, when I discovered that wine/crossover will open all windows on the external monitor if I tell xrandr, that it is my "--primary" screen, using "xrandr --output HDMI-0 --primary". This doesn't work for native, sdl-based games of course, although it kind of fits in here, so I thought to mention it.
So, today I got my bluetooth controller and I really wanted to play psychonauts with it. It, too, featured the said issue, and this time I just didn't want to give up. After some heavy googling, I finally came up with the SDL_VIDEO_FULLSCREEN_HEAD variable mentioned HERE (archwiki ftw!), and -thank god- it worked as expected. So for you it is:
$: SDL_VIDEO_FULLSCREEN_HEAD=0 ~/.steam/root/SteamApps/common/Psychonauts/Psychonauts
I hope this helps someone out there. I wish happy gaming.
Sincerely
suluke
Related:
A topic on a mailing list also discussing a similar solution can be found here: http://icculus.org/pipermail/psychonauts/2012-June/000000.html
