Crossroads
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Joined: 7/5/2009
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No, that’s all right, this is the Tech Support forum, tech talk absolutely allowed. And with that, I think I will just air my little grievances out, let us hear what you guys think?
First, a step back, to 2014(ish), and the 2.x updates for John Tiller’s Campaign Series. What the three game bundle was before 2.00 was really three separate games, different projects, different compiles. They looked and felt the same, they were developed at the same time after all. Rising Sun, the latest addition, yet differed from East Front with certain aspects in the game.
What Berto, our lead programmer did, was to merge those three separate projects into one project, with one base code. Then, with compile flags, we could compile the three different exes for the three games.
For the User Interface, which is the topic here, JTCS 2.00 for the first time, Berto implemented the classic MFC app MDI main window with objects such as Resize, Minimize, Close that you would expect to see there.
(For the game itself – the “front end” where you select scenarios etc, that was a different code base, and not by John Tiller either, but an unknown Talonsoft programmer. That was not touched at the time.)
Underneath From there, the Main dialog then has the Menu sections, and in the document window itself, we have the game interface itself: map, units, and various dialogs that you can activate or pop up by themselves.
This was 2014. We then started to build the Middle East game, using the JTCS 2.x base “World War 2” codebase as a baseline.
(A short note: not a line of TakeTwo’s Divided Ground codebase was used, Middle East is all about us, and Berto in particular).
In 2014 HD resolution was already a mainstay, which worried us in the fact that the tactical feel so integral to Campaign Series started to deteriorate. Just a lot of small hexes in a large display. For Middle East 1.00, we introduced a new 2D Zoom level to alleviate that. What was “JTCS Normal 2D view” became Zoomed-out view, and a new Normal 2D View was introduced.
We then added a completely new zoom level to both 3D and 2D, redesigning the 3D hex layout completely. Much more tactical now, large hexes, units with plenty of space around them.
At the time 4K started to come around, we were really worried in that “will adding new zoom views never end”. But then Microsoft introduced Desktop scaling. Problem solved.
Or was it? Here we are.
I completely agree that it is cumbersome that you have to change the Desktop Scaling perhaps per game. 150 for Campaign Series, 200 for some other, back to default for the third game?
We’ve done our part!
Why has Microsoft not implemented a Properties setting where you set the scaling for that particular app? One for Microsoft Word, the other for Campaign Series? It should be possible, it most certainly is at their desk.
Campaign Series is a standard fully compliant (as far as we know) MFC app. Withing the main MDI window frame, it should be perfecty possible for Microsoft to target scaling / zoom level for that particular frame. Why have they not done it? Are they planning to? I would assume so. Does anyone know?
And it is not only Desktop Scaling. The one quite recent Windows feature we were quite excited about was Font scaling. Since a certain W10 update, it’s been there. So far I haven’t seen it to have any effect, anywhere. It does not change my MS Word, MS Excel, it certainly is having no effect on Campaign Series Vietnam.
This would seem to be a perfect tool to enlarge the font related things only. As we’ve diligently used MFC dialog objects only, then, changing the text scaling here should neatly enlarge the font on our Menu items, or on Dialogs, neatly possible enlarging that said menu object or dialog object as that is under all under Microsoft control.
TL;DR I do agree that what you are asking is very reasonable, and I would like to have that too. Launching an app under certain scaling option should be a simple thing, and most certainly a Windows thing.
All this does not mean that we would not try to alleviate things ourselves, too.
But it certainly feels we’re doing something Microsoft should be doing.
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