Widescreen support (Full Version)

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Jensemann -> Widescreen support (4/15/2009 9:36:06 PM)

Hi

sorry if this has been adressed elsewhere, but will admirals edition have widescreen support. My laptor uses 1280 x 800, and i have to play WitP in windowmode to keep the text sharp.

so please include this:)




Don Bowen -> RE: Widescreen support (4/15/2009 9:44:57 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Jensemann

Hi

sorry if this has been adressed elsewhere, but will admirals edition have widescreen support. My laptor uses 1280 x 800, and i have to play WitP in windowmode to keep the text sharp.

so please include this:)




No, there is no change in basic display options. Not easy, or we would have done it.





Jensemann -> RE: Widescreen support (4/15/2009 10:11:27 PM)

ok, to bad... Thanks for the quick answer though



Cmdrcain -> RE: Widescreen support (4/17/2009 7:24:13 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Jensemann

Hi

sorry if this has been adressed elsewhere, but will admirals edition have widescreen support. My laptor uses 1280 x 800, and i have to play WitP in windowmode to keep the text sharp.

so please include this:)







I use WITP full screen in 1680x1050 and no problem with text

However you say a Laptop, which has a smaller screen then my 24"

You should be able to reset laptop to something like 800x600
before play game I'd think




Akos Gergely -> RE: Widescreen support (4/17/2009 8:49:39 AM)

No matter what, if WitP/AE doesn't support the resolution then the text etc. will be distorted a bit as they won't be matching the phsyical pixels...

This is the only sore point with AE for me (to be honest I don't even know why the original developers did not include higher resolutions when even Uncommon Valor had a switch to change between 800X600 and 1024X768 and in 2004 there already were a lot of TFTs supporting 1280X1024 and even a lot of wide screen ones.)

But the main thing for me is the hope that in the future higher resolutions might be supported...



Erik Rutins -> RE: Widescreen support (4/17/2009 1:29:55 PM)

Check your driver options. The vast majority of folks we've had complain about fixed resolution games weren't aware that they could adjust their scaling in their video drivers to eliminate any distortion.



Dili -> RE: Widescreen support (4/17/2009 1:40:44 PM)

In a big screen your 800x600 will be big too. There is also an option to degrade the screen resolution. I'am remembering i always played witp windowed.



Grotius -> RE: Widescreen support (4/17/2009 2:59:32 PM)

quote:

Check your driver options. The vast majority of folks we've had complain about fixed resolution games weren't aware that they could adjust their scaling in their video drivers to eliminate any distortion.

I use an nVidia card -- but I am not sure I see this option. I see "change resolution," but I can do that with Windows, and I'm not sure it's what you mean.

I also see "change flat panel scaling," but the only relevant option seems to be "use nVidia scaling with fixed-aspect ratio." It doesn't seem to let me define that aspect ratio, though. Is *that* the option you mean?

Also, does this mean we have to scale our video resolution every time we play the game?



drw61 -> RE: Widescreen support (4/17/2009 6:06:40 PM)

I have a ATI Radeo HD 3450 video card. I had to go into the card software (ATI Catalyst Control Center) and turn on the image scaling attribute to "Maintain aspect ration"
It will be different for you depending on the video card and software you have.

Hope this helps,

quote:

ORIGINAL: Grotius

quote:

Check your driver options. The vast majority of folks we've had complain about fixed resolution games weren't aware that they could adjust their scaling in their video drivers to eliminate any distortion.

I use an nVidia card -- but I am not sure I see this option. I see "change resolution," but I can do that with Windows, and I'm not sure it's what you mean.

I also see "change flat panel scaling," but the only relevant option seems to be "use nVidia scaling with fixed-aspect ratio." It doesn't seem to let me define that aspect ratio, though. Is *that* the option you mean?

Also, does this mean we have to scale our video resolution every time we play the game?




Akos Gergely -> RE: Widescreen support (4/18/2009 10:35:24 PM)

Hi Erik,

thanks for the tip but probably I haven'T made my point clear. Witp supports 1024X768 resolution in 32 bits. Now that is a 4:3 aspect ratio. If you scale this to TFT resolutions and don't use a windowed mode it gets distorted no matter what, since TFT panels have a fixed amount of pixels (called native resolution and it is mostly 5:4, 16:10 or nowadays 16:9 ratio). This results in a really strangely distorted screen, simply becouse the software generated resolution does not match the pixel pitch layout of the panel. Now on a 32" Full HD LCD TV with 16:9 ratio this gives a rather messy look, trust me (I've tried a lot of setups). One can also run the program with scaled back resolution but that would simply use the middle 1024X768 pixels of the screen with the rest of it going blank - no big difference to the windowed mode but one looses the desktop which might come in handy otherwise.

So unless the software resolution can be altered I don't see a realy change in this issue.

Please anybody correct me if I'm wrong, probably I've missed something...hopefully..



Reg -> RE: Widescreen support (4/19/2009 1:12:54 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: csatahajos

Hi Erik,

thanks for the tip but probably I haven'T made my point clear. Witp supports 1024X768 resolution in 32 bits. Now that is a 4:3 aspect ratio. If you scale this to TFT resolutions and don't use a windowed mode it gets distorted no matter what, since TFT panels have a fixed amount of pixels (called native resolution and it is mostly 5:4, 16:10 or nowadays 16:9 ratio). This results in a really strangely distorted screen, simply because the software generated resolution does not match the pixel pitch layout of the panel. Now on a 32" Full HD LCD TV with 16:9 ratio this gives a rather messy look, trust me (I've tried a lot of setups). One can also run the program with scaled back resolution but that would simply use the middle 1024X768 pixels of the screen with the rest of it going blank - no big difference to the windowed mode but one looses the desktop which might come in handy otherwise.

So unless the software resolution can be altered I don't see a realy change in this issue.

Please anybody correct me if I'm wrong, probably I've missed something...hopefully..


There are actually three ways of handling the game/display resolution mismatch which should be supported by your monitor or video card*.

  • 1:1
  • Maintain Aspect Ratio
  • Fill display


You can use the second method to (almost) fill the screen without aspect distortion. However you will still get some image fuzziness as the pixels will not line up with the display cells and some interpolation will need to be used. (See In a window? thread over on the BTR forum).

Either way, your desktop is still accessible with the Alt-tab key combination. There are several other threads on this topic so have a look around (best of luck with the forum search engine [8|]).

To display low-res games to the best effect, I believe you can't go past a large CRT monitor which natively supports the resolution. [:D]


Edit: * Not all system setups are the same. For instance my laptop's ATI Catalyst Control Center video card software only supports "Full screen" and "1:1" (centered) Image Scaling. Fortunately my 24" external monitor does support Fixed Aspect Ratio scaling through the monitor settings.

Something to look out for when you next upgrade your hardware. [;)]





jwilkerson -> RE: Widescreen support (4/19/2009 1:39:09 AM)

I've played on 1920x1200 mode, full screen for years, I don't see any distortion, in fact the hexes are better proportioned, than on a narrow aspect monitor, since in the code they are a bit "squished" in the horizontal dimension.
[:)]



Akos Gergely -> RE: Widescreen support (4/19/2009 7:37:48 PM)

Well I've tried all what you say (in fact I've spent hours with this when I upgraded to an LCD TV). I've played Witp windowed for long before so in fact the windowed mode looks much better on the big screen but the fully scaled picture is badly widened to 16:9 and looks horrible. I can still set the aspect ratio to 4:3 then it looks OK so so, but does not offer that much more above the windowed mode.

On the other hand this is still just enlarging the viewable area of the map in actual display size. Unless we get real wide resolutions we can not see more of the map at the same time (just imagine in 1920 one can have full Australia in one view).



jwilkerson -> RE: Widescreen support (4/19/2009 8:14:04 PM)

Right, changing the game to a different resolution is "easy up to a point" the issue comes in rescaling things like all the various text pieces on all the screens. All of these are placed according to specific pixels, so all of this would have to be tediously redone. Essentially all the screens would have to be redone - so we could've either done that (ONLY) or done what we did - and as players - we prefer the rules changes. But there is a completely new map and pretty much all new art - so lots of new things to look at. And the scale of the new map is such that the size of the Pacific becomes much more evident. So instead of all of Australian on the map, now if you're lucky, you might be able to get half of Queensland on the screen!
[:D]



Akos Gergely -> RE: Widescreen support (4/19/2009 11:21:41 PM)

Yep, understood and it's good news :). I was just wondering why it was not implemented back on the original when in UV it was done (though from 800X600 to 1024 but back then it was the biggest common res. I guess). Thanks for the input anyways, really appreciate what you've put into AE-Witp.



ETF -> RE: Widescreen support (7/27/2012 12:15:03 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson

I've played on 1920x1200 mode, full screen for years, I don't see any distortion, in fact the hexes are better proportioned, than on a narrow aspect monitor, since in the code they are a bit "squished" in the horizontal dimension.
[:)]


Is this hard to do? My LCD easily can handle it. How does one change this for ingame performance. Is there a setting in the preferences outside the program?



ETF -> RE: Widescreen support (7/27/2012 12:18:45 AM)

ok So if I do

Best way is to use it in windowed mode, with the " -w" command after the .exe name? How would I go about changing this? In Win 7?



ETF -> RE: Widescreen support (7/27/2012 12:36:17 AM)

Ok I have in my short cut "C:\Matrix Games\War in the Pacific Admiral's Edition\War in the Pacific Admiral Edition.exe" -f -px1920 –py1200 -skipVideo -w

My Windowed screen though is very small. Take only about 40% of my monitor space. Anyway to stretch it a tad??

Thanks



Dan Nichols -> RE: Widescreen support (7/27/2012 3:13:57 AM)

You are giving it conflicting instructions. The -f tells it to use full screen and the -w tells it to use windowed mode. Then you are giving it -px1920 -py1200 which is probably full screen resolution.

Here is mine that works fine in windowed mode.

"C:\Matrix Games\War in the Pacific Admirals Edition\War in the Pacific Admiral Edition.exe" -w -px1680 -py1050 -multiaudio -archive -cpu2 -skipVideo -dd_sw



ETF -> RE: Widescreen support (7/27/2012 11:26:14 AM)

oh ok thanks sir. May I ask is -cpu2 dual core? What is -dd_sw? And mutliaudio? Archive?



ETF -> RE: Widescreen support (7/27/2012 11:29:16 AM)

Ok tried this for starters

C:\Matrix Games\War in the Pacific Admiral's Edition\War in the Pacific Admiral Edition.exe" -px1920 –py1200 -skipVideo -w

same result though. Still only using about 40% of my 24 inch monitor. Hmm maybe I should reboot the machine and try again.....

will try 1680 x 1050 next time.....



Reg -> RE: Widescreen support (7/27/2012 11:42:31 AM)

I can see your problem. If you look very carefully you will see the dash in front of the px is a different length* than the dash in front of the py (you cut and pasted the line didn't you?).

Try deleting the dashes and replacing them with the minus on your keyboard.

Don't feel bad as you will have been about the 597th person caught by this one!! [:(]
It is caused by the auto correct feature on the text editor used to create the document you were reading.

* (They are called the "em dash" and "en dash" for those interested enough to look them up on Google...)

You are also missing the " at the start of the line (I assume you just missed copy and pasting it to the forum).




Reg -> RE: Widescreen support (7/27/2012 11:56:51 AM)


These all work for me on a 1920x1200 monitor: (you may need to play with the flags to suit your setup)

Fullscreen:

"C:\Matrix Games\War in the Pacific Admiral's Edition\War in the Pacific Admiral Edition.exe" -d -altFont -cpu2 -dd_sw -px1920 -py1200

"C:\Matrix Games\War in the Pacific Admiral's Edition\War in the Pacific Admiral Edition.exe" -d -dd_sw -px1280 -py800

Windowed (should be smaller than your monitor)

"C:\Matrix Games\War in the Pacific Admiral's Edition\War in the Pacific Admiral Edition.exe" -wd -altFont -cpu2 -dd_sw -px1600 -py1200

"C:\Matrix Games\War in the Pacific Admiral's Edition\War in the Pacific Admiral Edition.exe" -wd -altFont -cpu2 -dd_sw -px1680 -py1050

Best of luck,



Reg -> RE: Widescreen support (7/27/2012 12:11:26 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: ETF

oh ok thanks sir. May I ask is -cpu2 dual core? What is -dd_sw? And mutliaudio? Archive?


The following information is extracted from the WhatsNew.pdf file in your WITP-AE game folder. Well worth a read!!

-cpu# : (cpu1, cpu2, cpu3, cpu4) Switches set the cpu affinity for multi cpu systems. If used alone, the -cpu# switches will keep the game running on the CPU specified all the time.

-dd_sw : Handles DirectDraw via Software. We’ve found this can make a huge difference on many systems as far as reducing interface lag and making button clicking in-game more responsive. On a few newer systems this can cause some visual glitches and slow combat animations though, so give it a try and remove it if it’s not ideal on your system.

-multiaudio : Invokes a fix that changes audio timing for multicore machines.

Try these switches in different combinations to see what works best for your system as what works well on one may not be ideal for another. However, we have yet to find a system that didn’t benefit at all from at least one of these switches performance-wise, so test them out!

-archive : Put data reports in archive directory (inside the save game folder)

I hope this helps,



Shark7 -> RE: Widescreen support (7/27/2012 3:26:06 PM)

Let me ask a dumb question regarding video.

Currently, I have the widescreen setup with my command line switches, so it works fine.

However, I have recently gotten a new computer with an ATI Radeon 7770 (this is my first Radeon, I've been a GeForce user for years) and I've noticed on some of my older games, it automatically resized the games to fit the screen. Would AE also work this way with this card?

I'm just curious if the command line switch is necessary with these newer cards.



Dan Nichols -> RE: Widescreen support (7/27/2012 3:46:40 PM)

I would say yes they are. The Command Line switches tell the program how to display the screen.



ETF -> RE: Widescreen support (7/28/2012 12:56:56 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Reg


These all work for me on a 1920x1200 monitor: (you may need to play with the flags to suit your setup)

Fullscreen:

"C:\Matrix Games\War in the Pacific Admiral's Edition\War in the Pacific Admiral Edition.exe" -d -altFont -cpu2 -dd_sw -px1920 -py1200

"C:\Matrix Games\War in the Pacific Admiral's Edition\War in the Pacific Admiral Edition.exe" -d -dd_sw -px1280 -py800

Windowed (should be smaller than your monitor)

"C:\Matrix Games\War in the Pacific Admiral's Edition\War in the Pacific Admiral Edition.exe" -wd -altFont -cpu2 -dd_sw -px1600 -py1200

"C:\Matrix Games\War in the Pacific Admiral's Edition\War in the Pacific Admiral Edition.exe" -wd -altFont -cpu2 -dd_sw -px1680 -py1050

Best of luck,




Thanks Reg so much. The 1920 x 1200 looks great just really hard to see the finer details. Must be my 42 year old eyes. Seemed exactly the same. Thanks though for all your help.
Went back to the old 1280x800.



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