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jellyfish3232's avatar

My screen seems to go wonky when I launch Portal. Is this bad?

Asked by jellyfish3232 (1852points) December 2nd, 2011
11 responses
“Great Question” (0points)

Alright, so I just launched the Steam version of Portal for the first time on this computer… Windows 7, 2 gigs RAM, insignificant or nonexistent video card. When it launched, the… screen resolution (Not sure if that’s right terminology) went all wacky on me. When I opened task manager to close portal, for example, the image was magnified to may times the normal size and the icons were all huge. It went back to normal when I quit. Is this bad? Also, is there any danger of it getting stuck like that one day? Normally I wouldn’t care so much as it’s probably an easy fix, but the computer belongs to my parents so I don’t want to break it…

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Answers

HungryGuy's avatar

Portal is a fantastic game. But you need a beefier computer to run it (or at least get yourself a decent graphics card).

Or maybe GLaDOS is messing with you…

Lightlyseared's avatar

Portal is runing in at a much smaller resolution than your normal windows desktop (probably 800×600), so while it is ruunning windows is forced to display the desktop at the same resolution as Portal so everyting looks a bit wierd.

jellyfish3232's avatar

@hungryguy I know, it looks great… How much beefier? Would I be able to squeeze out a few frames per second?
@lightlyseared Ah, that explains it. By that logic, then, it couldn’t get stuck that way? I just need to satisfy my paranoia.

Ela's avatar

It did the same thing on my lappy. I wasn’t able to fix or run it with out a new grafics card.
I ran it on my desktop instead.

The cake is a lie…

jellyfish3232's avatar

The cake isn’t a lie.

DeanV's avatar

@Lightlyseared is right. It’s just running at a tiny resolution. It won’t get stuck like that, but it will be disorienting when alt-tabbing or control-alt-deleting. I’d just see if you can run it on a different computer.

El_Cadejo's avatar

Its totally fine IMO. How often is one alt tabbing out of a game anyway? Its not going to get stuck or anything and if by chance it did, changing it back is easy enough. You’ll be fine. I wouldnt say you need a better comp unless you’re noticing actual problems with the game lagging and such.

jellyfish3232's avatar

By some strange twist of fate, the game runs seamlessly on this poor excuse for a computer. The graphics are less than stellar, yes, but certainly discernible. I can run Portal faster than Minecraft – that doesn’t make sense at all!

jellyfish3232's avatar

In other words… This was a triumph…

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