set_gfx_mode(3)

NAME
set_gfx_mode

SYNOPSIS
#include <allegro.h>

int set_gfx_mode(int card, int w, int h, int v_w, int v_h);

DESCRIPTION
Switches into graphics mode. The card parameter should usually be GFX_AUTODETECT, GFX_AUTODETECT_FULLSCREEN or GFX_AUTODETECT_WINDOWED, or see the platform specific documentation for a list of the available drivers. The w and h parameters specify what screen resolution you want. The v_w and v_h parameters specify the minimum virtual screen size, in case you need a large virtual screen for hardware scrolling or page flipping. You should set them to zero if you don't care about the virtual screen size. Virtual screens can cause a lot of confusion, but they are really quite simple. Warning: patronising explanation coming up, so you may wish to skip the rest of this paragraph :-) Think of video memory as a rectangular piece of paper which is being viewed through a small hole (your monitor) in a bit of cardboard. Since the paper is bigger than the hole you can only see part of it at any one time, but by sliding the cardboard around you can alter which portion of the image is visible. You could just leave the hole in one position and ignore the parts of video memory that aren't visible, but you can get all sorts of useful effects by sliding the screen window around, or by drawing images in a hidden part of video memory and then flipping across to display them. For example, you could select a 640x480 mode in which the monitor acts as a window onto a 1024x1024 virtual screen, and then move the visible screen around in this larger area. Initially, with the visible screen positioned at the top left corner of video memory, this setup would look like:
   (0,0)------------(640,0)----(1024,0)
     |                  |           |
     |  visible screen  |           |
     |                  |           |
   (0,480)----------(640,480)       |
     |                              |
     |   the rest of video memory   |
     |                              |
   (0,1024)--------------------(1024,1024)

What's that? You are viewing this with a proportional font? Hehehe. When you call set_gfx_mode(), the v_w and v_h parameters represent the minimum size of virtual screen that is acceptable for your program. The range of possible sizes is usually very restricted, and Allegro is likely to end up creating a virtual screen much larger than the one you request. On an SVGA card with one megabyte of vram you can count on getting a 1024x1024 virtual screen (256 colors) or 1024x512 (15 or 16 bpp), and with 512k vram you can get 1024x512 (256 colors). Other sizes may or may not be possible: don't assume that they will work. In mode-X the virtual width can be any multiple of eight greater than or equal to the physical screen width, and the virtual height will be set accordingly (the VGA has 256k of vram, so the virtual height will be 256*1024/virtual_width). Currently, using a big virtual screen for page flipping is considered bad practice. There are platforms which don't support virtual screens bigger than the physical screen but can create different video pages to flip back and forth. This means that, if you want page flipping and aren't going to use hardware scrolling, you should call set_gfx_mode() with (0,0) as the virtual screen size and later create the different video pages with create_video_bitmap(). Otherwise your program will be limited to the platforms supporting hardware scrolling. After you select a graphics mode, the physical and virtual screen sizes can be checked with the macros SCREEN_W, SCREEN_H, VIRTUAL_W, and VIRTUAL_H. If Allegro is unable to select an appropriate mode, set_gfx_mode() returns a negative number and stores a description of the problem in allegro_error. Otherwise it returns zero. As a special case, if you use the magic driver code GFX_SAFE, Allegro will guarantee that the mode will always be set correctly. It will try to select the resolution that you request, and if that fails, it will fall back upon whatever mode is known to be reliable on the current platform (this is 320x200 VGA mode under DOS, a 640x480 resolution under Windows, the actual framebuffer's resolution under Linux if it's supported, etc). If it absolutely cannot set any graphics mode at all, it will return negative as usual, meaning that there's no possible video output on the machine, and that you should abort your program immediately, possibly after notifying this to the user with allegro_message. This fake driver is useful for situations where you just want to get into some kind of workable display mode, and can't be bothered with trying multiple different resolutions and doing all the error checking yourself. Note however, that after a successful call to set_gfx_mode with this driver, you cannot make any assumptions about the width, height or color depth of the screen: your code will have to deal with this little detail. Finally, GFX_TEXT is another magic driver which usually closes any previously opened graphics mode, making you unable to use the global variable screen, and in those environments that have text modes, sets one previously used or the closest match to that (usually 80x25). With this driver the size parameters of set_gfx_mode don't mean anything, so you can leave them all to zero or any other number you prefer.

SEE ALSO
set_color_depth(3), request_refresh_rate(3), screen(3), gfx_capabilities(3), allegro_error(3), create_video_bitmap(3), get_desktop_resolution(3)