Try an external monitor, I bet it will go away. Install the Powerstrip.

https://www.philscomputerlab.com/powerstrip.html

Either increasing the game's resolution or enabling scaling should fix it. Usually both the graphics chip and the display itself support scaling, it's up to you which one to use (either an option in the graphic driver settings or a keyboard shortcut for the display's scaling).

Ancient laptop checking-in 😀

1root@tosh:~$ neofetch 
2       _,met$$$$$gg.          root@tosh 
3    ,g$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$P.       --------- 
4  ,g$$P"     """Y$$.".        OS: Debian GNU/Linux 9.13 (stretch) i686 
5 ,$$P'              `$$$.     Model: P7020CT/6.4 Version 1.0 
6',$$P       ,ggs.     `$$b:   Kernel: 4.9.0-19-686-pae 
7`d$$'     ,$P"'   .    $$$    Uptime: 73 days, 18 hours, 28 minutes 
8 $$P      d$'     ,    $$P    Packages: 626 
9 $$:      $$.   -    ,d$$'    Shell: bash 4.4.12 
10 $$;      Y$b._   _,d$P'      CPU: Mobile Pentium II (1) @ 0.3GHz 
11 Y$$.    `.`"Y$$$$P"'         GPU: Neomagic Corporation NM2200 [MagicGraph 256AV] 
12 `$$b      "-.__              Memory: 48MB / 180MB 
13  `Y$$                         
14   `Y$$.                      ████████████████████████ 
15     `$$b.                     
16       `Y$$b. 
17          `"Y$b._ 
18              `""" 

The above beast has an option in the BIOS to stretch non-native screen resolutions to fit. Your photo has what looks like a PIII sticker, so the hardware might not be vastly different from my tosh. Worth a look.

HTH

dominusprog wrote on 2023-09-26, 12:55:

Try an external monitor, I bet it will go away. Install the Powerstrip.

https://www.philscomputerlab.com/powerstrip.html

yep, it goes away on external monitor.

So... What causes this and is there a fix?

So... What causes this and is there a fix?

A resolution mismatch and disabled scaling. If your laptop screen's resolution is 1024x768, but you run the game at 640x480, then it will be displayed at 640x480 in the center of the screen.

As already said, increase the game's resolution to make use of the whole screen area of most probably 1024x768, or enable scaling in either the graphics driver or display to stretch the 640x480 (or whatever lower resolution it is) to fill the screen.

By the way, this has nothing to do with an external monitor. On my 20" LCD I can disable scaling, too, which makes lower resolution appear the same as on your laptop screen.

Starcraft doesn't have any resolution options FYI.