Overview
Here’s a way to play the game on full screen if changing the menu options doesn’t work for you. e.g. the game becomes invisible and you see your desktop but your whole pc is basically unresponsive.
1. Description of a problem
For some reason the game (on some PCs) does not handle well going into full screen and essentially crashes and freezes your PC. As far as I can tell this is quite a popular issue and I also struggled with it. As far as I know, it seems that the game itself has problems transitioning from one resolution to the other and crushes before it can save the change. The reason for that will be apparent in the fix section below. (I found the fix by accident)
2. Possible fix to the problem
Ok, so the game does not handle the change well, so how to fix it…?
Firstly go to
<Game Path>ContentSeriousSam2
It’s most likely something like
steamappscommonSerious Sam 2ContentSeriousSam2
You can go there easily by going to your game library on steam, right clicking Serious Sam 2 and going into properties, then local files and browse local files.
Once you are in this folder look for the file named “Sam2.ini” the extension may be invisible to you.
Next Open this file in the notepad, or right click it and click “Edit”
Look for the section
gfx_iAPI =
DON’T CHANGE IT
Make sure it’s 2, so
gfx_iAPI = 2;
Next look at the one bellow,
gfx_bFullScreen =
Make sure it’s set to 1, so
gfx_bFullScreen = 1;
This Enables full screen without going into the game menu, basically it sets full screen to true, but that’s not enough yet, since this game considers Full Screen and Windowed as 2 different modes that have 2 different resolutions.
Bellow this one you have:
gfx_pixResWidth =
gfx_pixResHeight =
These 2 are Full Screen Resolution. You have to set this to the same resolution as your computer screen, for me it’s
gfx_pixResWidth = 1920;
gfx_pixResHeight = 1080;
Now Save the file, don’t change its extension!
DONE!
Now, Open the game through Steam and check if it works.
You can change options in the menu, BUT do not touch the resolution, full screen, or anything related to it, nor the autodetect or default. You can edit anything in the Advanced Options menu as you please. If something breaks again, go through all the steps again.
I hope this helps some people who like this game but were not able to play in, just like I couldn’t till today. 🙂
3. How it should look after the change
This Is how this section of your options (Sam2.ini file) should look after you have gone through all the steps.
gfx_iAPI = 2;
gfx_bFullScreen = 1;
gfx_pixResWidth = 1920;
gfx_pixResHeight = 1080;
Note that your resolution may be different.
You can edit other options in this file, BUT I’d only advise it if you know what you are doing.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.