Linux games switching to windowed mode on their own?
 

Not sure why this is happening, but I've seen it happen a few times now. I'll give the latest example:

I was playing UFO:Al (which seems like a neat game, btw), and I switched it to fullscreen. A few (10?) minutes later, it switched itself back to windowed mode.

Most games have done this lately. Some games (breakout) even pause themselves while they switch to windowed mode and I can't play them until I can get them back to fullscreen.

This is certainly annoying, but I don't know how to track it down.

Thanks

Even more interestingly, I let the game sit there for a minute, and it switches /back/ to full screen mode on its own as well.

Now I'm just plain confused. I could see something external possibly grabbing control and forcing a full screen game into windowed mode, but I wouldn't imagine it both giving back control and being smart enough to put it back into full screen as well.

Help!

Do you have a wireless keyboard or mouse? I've seen low battery situations where the keyboard emits garbage chars.

Or how about something stuck in your keyboard?

Nope, both are USB and directly connected. I'm really at a loss to even figure out where to /begin/ looking for this issue, but it sure is annoying!

Top doesn't show anything jumping in the process list during that period of time either.

I don't recall the key combination that switches between full screen and windowed mode, but I would first rule out anything emitting that shortcut.

Another area to consider would be any messaging, text pop-ups, alerts, or anything that force windowed mode so the messages could be displayed. This occurs under Windows frequently.

Try killing various services that are not critical to the GUI environment one by one and testing after that. I'd start with various applets that show status via animated icons, etc.

I dont understand - what makes you think the game cant do it itself? When playing videos in youtube inside ff for example, you can fullscreen the video and then go back to inside the browser. If a *plugin* can do it, a program can too? (annother eg. - xine, which'll play DVDs fullscreen (obviously! ))

Not that I don't think something /can/ do it, but I've never seen something grab focus, but then know the windowed state and put it back afterwards. Usually it requires a user-command to go back to fullscreen

Well, to rule out that shortcut, I've just let the game sit there for several minutes, and it will still do it with zero input from me.

I have no popups at the time the game goes to windowed ... at least, none that are visible on the screen. I /do/ think there's some kind of messaging or system check going on, but just because that seems the most likely culprit, not because I can find what it is :)

As to killing services, this is a fresh install of FC9 (fresh being less than a month old). I don't have any applets running that I'm aware of (no icons in the top bar other than the network status bar). I killed the nvidia service, but I don't see any others that should be killed.

I think I got a clue recently ... I /believe/ the problem is the screen saver.

I think when I haven't touched my keyboard (mouse only) within a game for the screensaver limit, the screensaver tries to kick on temporarily, but then it notices the mouse movement and allows control back to the game.

Not 100% sure this is it because I haven't had as much time to just sit and play games this week, but if it is, I'm still not sure how to fix it (other than disable screensaver during games?).

This may be one of those little processes I suggested killing.

ps -aux

and find one that looks like the screensaver. Sorry, I don't know its name.