Phantasmagoria defaults to low quality video

[Die4Ever]

I'm sure this is how the game worked on original hardware (then again the dosbox that Steam provided didn't seem to do it? maybe it does a cpu speed test that is bugged in ScummVM?), but it seems like an obsolete decision.

I think ScummVM should override the default to fullscreen video. I was just watching a twitch streamer and he was very confused about the tiny intro video and we had to figure out how to fix it.

[Die4Ever]

I was able to get the log and config file from him, I've now attached those files

[Die4Ever]

also here is the video of the stream, you can see he first runs the game in the default dosbox from Steam, then you can watch him download and install ScummVM ​https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1267526797?t=0h33m9s

[sluicebox]

It looks like everything is okay here, as we do initialize phant1 to full screen video. That setting (flag 127) is then persisted to PREF.DAT by the game scripts. The user can also change it in the game UI.

What happened here is that the player ran the game in DOSBox first, where Sierra's interpreter would have initialized flag 127 based on the "videospeed" value in the RESOURCE.CFG that came with Steam. I don't know what that is, but if it's less than 426 then it would initialize to half screen, write that value to PREF.DAT, and ScummVM would then read that back on subsequent plays. Or, if Steam includes a PREF.DAT that's already set to half screen, that would do it too.

Either way, a fresh phant1 in ScummVM always defaults to full screen video. The solution here, as the player found, was to toggle the Full Screen within the game's UI, all of which is the same experience as in the original.