How to properly fullscreen a game?

This may sting you in your arse a bit. Y'see, CTF has a funny way of stretching the game out, and to my knowledge, there isn't a better way but to set a higher resolution. If you want, you can have it keep the aspect ratio, but that isn't full fullscreen.

The Ultimate Fullscreen extension is pretty great for maintaing good fullscreen pixel fidelity.

Except UFS does not use real fullscreen but windowed fullscreen.

Yes, unfortunately Fusion 2.5 doesen't do "Real" Fullscreen very well, for pixel art at least. It ends up distorting pixels, when it shouldn't be stretching them at all etc. The only workaround, like JimJam said, is to use the Ultimate Fullscreen Object. This will make your game use what's known as Windowed Fullscreen, making it fit any screen size, displaying pixel perfectly. It can add black bars to fill up any off screen space that is a different aspect ratio also, so it's got you covered for different screen sizes.

Your game will still cover the user's screen, like real fullscreen, but it's actually running windowed. Don't lose sleep over it though, just go ahead and roll with it

Ultimate fullscreen works fine. dont worry about that little queue of people ready to tell you, "its not real".... sigh!

Just click the link in my sig, then click the wrench monolith, then click "Ultimate Fullscreen"

What's the difference between native fullscreen and "windowed fullscreen," performance wise? I imagine that Windowed is a little slower, since it technically keeps the desktop in memory behind it, using up RAM. But I'm just speculating. Either way, it should be mostly negligible on modern machines.

Anyone got a solid answer on this?

Pretty much that native fullscreen has better performance than windowed. With low res games, it shouldn't be a problem though. Higher resolution games though, it might be more noticeable. I think there's a issue with FRAPS not being able to record, or it crashes or something, whilst using windowed fullscreen however, at least with games made in MMF2/Fusion2.5. That problem "may" have been fixed, but I'm not sure.

The problem with FRAPS only occurs if you use UFS extension and attempt to change the frame. At least when I last time checked!

Indeed there's a huge difference in performance, especially on heavier games.
However even the lightest of games can feel choppy if not in real fullscreen. I can't say why this happens, but it happens and there is nothing we can do about it. (I think it's Windows related somehow.)

Quote from danjo

Ultimate fullscreen works fine. dont worry about that little queue of people ready to tell you, "its not real".... sigh!

Yeah I prefer windowed fullscreen over a resolution change anyway.

I run games in windowed fullscreen and have not really ever noticed a performance difference between that and running fullscreen. This is with regular AAA games. Of course your mileage may very if you're running a really old computer.

I've heard about the FRAPS bug before, and I see it as a bug with FRAPS, not UFS I use Bandicam all the time with UFS with no problems at all.

On most systems, changing the resolution will probably make pixels look like blurry, antialiased garbage. To my eye, even glaringly inconsistent pixel sizes are better than that mess, so I can't imagine wanting to mess with the user's resolution in today's day and age, unless you are making a 3D game and reducing resolution is a valid way for the user to increase performance if their machine is too slow.

In the old days of CRT monitors, screens actually could display multiple resolutions. Now, the LCDs are really only lined up for the max resolution, and lower resolutions are emulated with ugly antialiasing algorithms.