website/content/posts/cs2_4-3_resolution.md

+++ title = "Fixing 4:3 Resolution in CS2 on Linux with NVIDIA GPU" date = 2024-10-17 description = "How I fixed the 4:3 resolution in CS2 with an NVIDIA graphics card and Linux" +++

I don't consider myself a gamer, but I've been playing the Counter-Strike series since CS 1.6. Every now and then, I enjoy staying up all night playing this broken game.

Ever since I started playing Counter-Strike, I’ve preferred using a 4:3 stretched resolution on my 16:9 monitor. When I switched to Linux as my daily driver, the only game I really cared about was CS:GO.

CS:GO ran perfectly without any tweaks on my Void Linux system with a 1050ti laptop graphics card. I could play with the stretched resolution, and I even got more FPS than I did on Windows.

My problems started with the release of CS2. The 4:3 resolution didn’t work at all, some resolutions were missing, and there didn’t seem to be a solution (except for some Wayland fixes). There’s a GitHub issue about it.

My first idea was to set a custom resolution through xrandr. I followed guides like this one, but that didn’t work for me.

For a while, I just stuck with the standard 16:9 1920x1080 resolution. But today, I opened the nvidia-settings GUI. After tinkering with some advanced settings in the resolution section, I think I finally fixed my issue.

In the X Server Display Configuration section under advanced options, I adjusted the ViewPortIn and Panning settings. I’m currently using a 2560x1440 resolution, so for 4:3 stretched, I set the resolution to 1440x1080.

Here are the settings that worked for me:

• ViewPortIn: 1440x1080
• ViewPortOut: 2560x1440+0+0
• Panning: 1440x1080

That fixed the issue, but I didn’t want to manually open nvidia-settings every time I wanted to play CS2. After reading the Arch Wiki article on nvidia-settings, I found that I could use this command to get the current resolution information:

$ nvidia-settings -q CurrentMetaMode

So ~I wrote~ ChatGPT wrote a small bash script to switch between my regular resolution and the CS2 resolution.

#!/bin/bash

# Define the commands for the two modes
MODE1="nvidia-settings --assign 'CurrentMetaMode=DPY-4: 2560x1440_144 @2560x1440 +1920+0 {ViewPortIn=2560x1440, ViewPortOut=2560x1440+0+0}, DPY-3: nvidia-auto-select @1920x1080 +0+180 {ViewPortIn=1920x1080, ViewPortOut=1920x1080+0+0}'"
MODE2="nvidia-settings --assign 'CurrentMetaMode=DPY-4: 2560x1440_144 @1440x1080 +0+0 {ViewPortIn=1440x1080, ViewPortOut=2560x1440+0+0}'"

# File to store the current mode
STATE_FILE="/tmp/current_resolution_mode"

# Check if the state file exists
if [[ ! -f "$STATE_FILE" ]]; then
    # If the state file doesn't exist, create it and set it to mode 1
    echo "1" > "$STATE_FILE"
    CURRENT_MODE=1
else
    # Read the current mode from the state file
    CURRENT_MODE=$(cat "$STATE_FILE")
fi

# Switch between the two modes
if [[ "$CURRENT_MODE" -eq 1 ]]; then
    # Switch to mode 2
    eval "$MODE2"
    echo "2" > "$STATE_FILE"
    echo "Switched to resolution mode 2"
else
    # Switch to mode 1
    eval "$MODE1"
    echo "1" > "$STATE_FILE"
    echo "Switched to resolution mode 1"
fi