Pillars of Eternity & wrong screen on multi-monitor setup
Plintslîcho Aug 15, 2021
Ahoy there!

Recently I got myself a second monitor. Some games, for example Pillars of Eternity and Shadowrun Dragonfall, always start only on the leftmost monitor, which is not my primary monitor and not the monitor I game on. Unfortunately, unlike other Unity games, there's also no possibility (I have found yet) to configure the screen the games should fire up on.

Has anyone here managed to start either of these games on a multi-monitor setup on the primary/right monitor instead of the leftmost one?

Of course, I could always start these games in windowed instead of full screen mode and move the window to the correct screen. But I don't consider that as neither practicable, nor as a proper fix.

My setup: secondary monitor left (position 0, 0) via DVI, primary (gaming) monitor right (position 1920, 0) via DisplayPort.


My System Info

Linux Distribution: Arch Linux (Kernel 5.13)
Desktop Environment: Xfce 4.16
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon RX570 8GB
GPU Driver Version: amdgpu 21.0

Last edited by Plintslîcho on 15 August 2021 at 4:20 pm UTC
whizse Aug 18, 2021
Yeah, that's a problem that comes up from time to time. Some previous discussions here and here if you're interested.

I think the best suggestion is still to use devilspie2 with a config for each game. There's a an example of such a configuration here.

HTH!
PublicNuisance Aug 20, 2021
What I have done to help with these issues was go into the keyboard shortcuts option and add shortcuts to move the app to another monitor. So for instance my issue was usually a game starting on my right monitor instead of my left and now I just press Shift + left arrow to move it to my left monitor. I am non Mate so for me it is under Control Center>Keyboard Shortcuts, i'm not sure which DE you use but there is probably something similar.
whizse Aug 20, 2021
Quoting: PublicNuisanceI am non Mate so for me it is under Control Center>Keyboard Shortcuts, i'm not sure which DE you use but there is probably something similar.
That's clever!

On GNOME this seems to be set to Shift+Super+(Left, Right, Up, Down)
Cyril Aug 21, 2021
Quoting: PublicNuisanceWhat I have done to help with these issues was go into the keyboard shortcuts option and add shortcuts to move the app to another monitor. So for instance my issue was usually a game starting on my right monitor instead of my left and now I just press Shift + left arrow to move it to my left monitor. I am non Mate so for me it is under Control Center>Keyboard Shortcuts, i'm not sure which DE you use but there is probably something similar.

Does it work when the game is fullscreen too? If yes that's great!
PublicNuisance Aug 21, 2021
Quoting: Cyril
Quoting: PublicNuisanceWhat I have done to help with these issues was go into the keyboard shortcuts option and add shortcuts to move the app to another monitor. So for instance my issue was usually a game starting on my right monitor instead of my left and now I just press Shift + left arrow to move it to my left monitor. I am non Mate so for me it is under Control Center>Keyboard Shortcuts, i'm not sure which DE you use but there is probably something similar.

Does it work when the game is fullscreen too? If yes that's great!

I just installed POE to test this and it works even when fullscreen on my system.
Plintslîcho Aug 21, 2021
Thanks for your help guys.

For the time being, dragging and dropping the game's window is the best solution for me, personally.

Thanks PublicNuisance for the idea of keyboard shortcuts. Xfce4 doesn't provide shortcuts to move windows between monitors. But I'll keep your idea in mind in case I change to a different desktop environment in the future.
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