Hi all,
I recently got a new laptop with a nice widescreen monitor. All my previous games were made in 320 x 240 resolution, and they look all stretched out now. In looking through the setup options there doesn't seem to be a way to make it look right, aside from playing it in a window. The "force alternate letterbox resolution" option is greyed out.
Is there any way to fix this or am I just stupid?
Well, I had this problem with my previous laptop. With this laptop I'm using the picture is automatically resized to correct proportions. I'm really not an expert in this area but I'd advise you to see if you could find some drivers and utilities for the graphics card, that your laptop uses, that automatically maintains the aspect ratio of the picture.
Just see what graphics card you have from the Screen Properties and google for drivers and utilities for it. With luck you'll find what you need.
So to sum up, you're not stupid and it can be fixed. In most cases at least. Just not with the AGS setup alone.
Possibly your video card settings (right-click windows desktop -> properties -> settings -> advanced) will allow you to center the image with black bars on the side. But this option depends on your video card drivers and doesn't exist on all laptops.
I've been trying to draw people's attention to the issue of widescreen monitors (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=33578.msg439247#msg439247) for a while now, but it seems to be a problem that nobody understands until they get a widescreen computer of their own. I'm shopping for a new laptop too these days, and it's pretty much impossible to get a standard 4:3 monitor anymore.
Edit: You might be interested in my later post in the same thread (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=33578.msg439751#msg439751) that shows off some interesting behaviour when running Blackwell Unbound windowed in a resolution bigger than the current desktop. This is exactly how it looks on-screen.
Windowed with the 3x filter?
Yeah, this has been discussed quite a bit in the thread that GarageGothic has linked to.
The effect in your screenshots is rather strange, it looks like it's running with half a letterbox in the bottom one. My monitor isn't large enough to run 1280x960, but I tried running a 320x240 game with the 2x filter and the letterboxing appeared to work correctly .. could you take a screenshot that includes the window border so that we can get a better picture of what's happening?
There wasn't any window border when I took these screenshots, because the game resolution was 1280x960 and the desktop resolution 1280x800. In other words, it's no mystery that part of the screen was cut off, but I'm quite fascinated with how the GUI has automatically been relocated to the top of the cropped screen. My first reaction wasn't "whoa, a bug" but rather "cool, I wish we could control this behaviour".
Unfortunately I've returned the borrowed laptop I grabbed these on, but this is as exactly as it appeared. I also grabbed a screenshot of the main menu, to show the very obvious offset of the GUIs:
Yeah I had this exact same problem, GG. The GUIs shifted all over the place.
Is there's no possibility of a "widescreen monitor option" where the the playing area shrinks to the proper size and black bars are put on the left and right side of the screen?
A few Blackwell customers mentioned that their game looked "fuzzy" but played just fine in windowed mode. I never thought to ask if they had a widescreen monitor.
SSH: Good idea, but the plan was to avoid using windowed mode altogether.
Yeah, this behaviour is because AGS doesn't always distinguish between a 640x480 game, and a 640x400 game running letterboxed -- which means that the GUI co-ordinates can get mixed up.
Really I think the whole resolution system in AGS needs a bit of an overhaul. I don't think that the option to run in 320x240 vs 640x480 is actually very useful these days, so it would be better to have a fixed game resolution and then allow graphics filters to be used on top of that if the player wants to.
Well I found a dirty solution but it works.
My display properties allowed me to set my screen resolution to 800 x 600. When I ran my game at 640 x 480 after that, it looked fine.
Quote from: Pumaman on Fri 29/02/2008 22:15:01
Really I think the whole resolution system in AGS needs a bit of an overhaul. I don't think that the option to run in 320x240 vs 640x480 is actually very useful these days, so it would be better to have a fixed game resolution and then allow graphics filters to be used on top of that if the player wants to.
Yes, and probably remove that low game resolution limit (i.e. only even coordinates at high res.) at the same time, seeing that speed and size is probably not that big a problem nowadays and this would aviod flooding of these forums with similar posts about thinks like object placement and masks not working. (hint hint :=)
If your graphics card allows it, you can get around this problem as I discovered after I asked for support for 16:10 screens running 320x240 and 640x480 games. It puts black bars down either side of the screen.
In my very biased opinion of a person who has a 16:10 screen, you should eliminate 4:3 resolutions since in the days of lcd and widescreen, these formats are becoming antiquated. 16:10 is the future. You can still choose alternate letterbox mode in the setup.
Quoteso it would be better to have a fixed game resolution and then allow graphics filters to be used on top of that if the player wants to
So you mean that our games will be restricted to one resolution only of your choosing and the graphics is scaled up to fit the monitor or do you mean the game will have a fixed aspect and all other aspects are scaled up dynamically?
I'm not sure if thats what you meant but I think if you are going to overhaul the resolution system I strongly suggest an automatic resolution system as I suggested in this thread:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=33578.60 (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=33578.60)
If it is in the hands of the developer, then we can actively choose whatever resolution to support and even multiple aspect ratios. Instead of simply stretching our graphics to fit 4:3 and 16:10 aspects, we can tailor our games to work with both at native resolution.
I think we need more control over game resolution, Chris, as opposed to less. But thats just my opinion.
Cheers,
Paul.
Interesting.
But fixing this for newly created games won't help with the 1000+ games already in the database...
This is probably pushing it, but would it be possible to have a patch for the AGS runtime that you can download together with any old game, to fix its resolution?
As a half-measure to improve the engine's flexibility, would it be possible to allow the window to expand to fill the screen creating a black border around the game window?
Then users could turn their taskbar off and have a more immersive experience with windowed games. If it was possible to disable the top bar until the mouse moves up to the top of the screen that would also be handy.
As someone already mentioned, most new 16:10 monitors will auto-adjust for the lower screen modes properly (my Samsung 22" does), and the ones that do not often have driver updates or software that will do it. The only problem I've ever had, in fact, comes down to digital input, and that's because it blurs low-res images. Analog has no such problem, and setting games to display at 640x400/480 also fixes it. I don't think we should get rid of 4:3 screen resolutions because people are buying widescreen monitors, no more than I would say stop playing 2d adventure games because 3d is the standard. Saying that you should abandon something because it's no longer the standard is a rather narrow and simplistic view.
WHOA SLOW DOWN GUYS!!! :D
Nobody is abandoning anything! All that has to be done is the following:
- Add support for automatic aspect detection
- Add a layout editor so that the developer can tailor their game for either 4:3 or 16:10 aspect ratios.
- Add support for windowed play with black background instead of desktop. (I was sure this had been done already. Guess not yet).
These few features add onto what has already been established and should not obstruct the compatibility of older games. These features are also a hell of a lot of work for poor Chris so I don't expect this kind of overhaul for another few betas yet. As long as CJ feels he is able then I'm sure the demand will be met. Poor bugger though. It's a lot to ask so soon. :-[
Cheers,
Paul.
Edit: Misspelled compatibility. Darn spell checker changed it to comparability. Fixed.
Is anyone still interested in or excited about what has been suggested above? I sure as hell am. This topic already seems to be plummeting into the abyss of forgotten threads. :'(
Cheers,
Paul.
I'm still mainly interested in my original suggestion (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=33578.msg439247#msg439247):
Quote1) An offset value (Game.ScreenOffset or similar) ranging from 0-40 (in the engine's 320x200 grid), which would position the 240/480 pixels high image within the 200/400 pixel tall viewport of the screen. A 640x480 image with an offset of 15 would thus have 30 pixels cropped from the top of the screen and 50 from the bottom.
2) Winsetup support for the feature (possibly just having the "Force alternate letterbox" checkbox work in reverse if a game is 320x240 rather than 320x200).
And additionally:
3) A 800x500 widescreen alternative to the 800x600 resolution.
One thing's for sure - I'm not going to continue developing 4:3 games unless AGS gets better support for multiple aspect ratios.
Thats all great, but wouldn't my extensive idea I suggested naturally solve those problems for you anyway? If we can kill two birds with one stone, yadayadayada. ;)
As CJ commented, I really do think the resolution system needs an overhaul.
Cheers,
Paul.
Of course it would be great if as many features as possible were implemented, but everything takes time and I'd rather see some basic support of multiple aspect ratios implemented as a first priority. Let me put it like this: If I know that the engine supports different aspect ratios, I can develop my game with that in mind (customizing the GUI for each resolution, design my art to fit either aspect ratio etc.). This is something that is currently holding me back, whereas automatic aspect ratio detection doesn't make any difference while I'm still working on the game. It would be nice to see it implemented before release, but still it's no big deal to me whether the end user needs to check a single box in winsetup or not.
Filtering modes are already available, so I'm not really sure what you're asking for there?
We've spoken about this before actually. I'll admit my entire suggestion is spread over two threads but its basically outlined above. Most of what I suggested lies in the suggestions thread rather than this one but I'll quote myself for clarification's sake:
QuoteQuoteBy allowing us to customize those to either resolution, we could make the best of both aspect ratios.
GarageGothic is right and as I have suggested a few times already I think we need to be able to control 'screen layout' in the editor along with the other features found in the default game setup exe.
Paul.
On quite a few occasions already, I have reinforced this idea with suggestions on how to go about such a feature. My point is, this idea would be an important part of a greater feature set in an effort to overhaul the resolution system.
Ironically, as much as we both crave resolution independant development, I imagine the easier task on Chris' part would be to code in support for automatic resolution detection.
So again, I agree with you; First things first. :)
Cheers,
Paul.
Edit: We are chasing the same animal GarageGothic ;).
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=33896.msg440632#msg440632 (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=33896.msg440632#msg440632)
We're both suggesting the same thing in other words, however, I have thought ahead a bit and added a bit more to the idea regarding resolution detection and a GUI based setup screen.
I strongly reccomend these three things should be given equal attention and should be worked on in conjunction with one another. They are essentially directly related features.
Sure, I know we're arguing the same cause here, and I didn't mean to detract from your suggestions. I just felt that the three bullet points in your "All that has to be done is the following" post didn't directly address the issue I'm currently struggling with (although the development aspect is a prerequisite of the automatic detection suggestion).
Ahh! Sorry you posted before I could reply. It's a grand idea GarageGothic and one I choose to support you on.
I'm sure Chris can see the importance of this feature and I imagine it will eventually come to be.
I was getting worried when this topic ended up on the second page of the technical forum :o so I had to revive it. I'm sure glad we both feel it is important and must be addressed at some point in the near future.
Many cheers,
Paul.
I just made some experiments, and it's perfectly possible to re-compile a 640x480 game to 640x400 resolution and control the screen offset through creative use of SetViewport. The main problem is that you'd have to distribute the game in both a 4:3 and a 16:10 version, which could confuse some people and lose you a download - it would be much easier if this choice could be made in winsetup instead. Or through auto detection as suggested by subspark. Of course this would have to be a feature "allowed" by the developer, not something you could activate for any game since they might not support it.
Another problem is that screen coordinates for GUIs lock to the smaller viewport, causing misplaced GUIs as shown in the screenshots from Blackwell Unbound (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=33578.msg439751#msg439751) that I posted in another thread. Since most GUIs would have to be placed/sized differently in a 16:10 game anyway, this is not too big a deal, as long as it happens consistently (haven't done much testing of that). But nevertheless it's somewhat annoying.
Releasing two versions of the game both with a winsetup executable that allow you to choose which aspect ratio to use for the game is a great temporary solution. I imagine this would indeed be a reasonable prerequisite for future control over screen layout for a single release.
Thumbs up.
Cheers,
Paul.
Quote from: GarageGothic on Tue 18/03/2008 11:44:42
3) A 800x500 widescreen alternative to the 800x600 resolution.
Right, I decided to take the plunge and get a widescreen monitor so I could see what all the fuss was about.
Having done so, I do understand your point, and I think adding an extra couple of widescreen modes to AGS wouldn't be a bad idea.
The problem is, I'm having trouble finding out if there are "standard" widescreen resolutions that all monitors support. For example, wikipedia claims (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_resolutions) that 768x480 and 1024x640 are standard resolutions, yet my monitor doesn't support either.
On the other hand, my monitor does support 960x600 which is not listed on wikipedia.
And then, when running a 640x480 game on a widescreen monitor it'd be great for AGS to initialize a 768x480 screen and add black borders to the sides. But that resolution doesn't work on my monitor at least.
So what's the solution? I'm not sure. Potentially AGS could try to find the nearest available resolution and then add 4 borders, or stretch the image. But neither of those are very satisfactory solutions.
I guess this is the problem with adventure games having fixed size backgrounds, whereas most games these days are 3D so the screen resolution isn't particularly important.
Well even today's modern 3d games these days scale their graphics to match the native desktop resolution rather than switch the actual monitor resolution. I suggest, given AGS' non-resource hungry engine, that the graphics be smooth-scaled up to match whatever resolution the user was using on the desktop. This is not only a convenient way of supporting all resolutions but it is more convenient for the end user too. Games that switch the monitor's resolution always end up bugging up the desktop layout and sometimes forgetting to switch back to the desktop resolution. This can be a near disaster in a 640x400 situation. You wouldn't even be able to access the display properties without having to guess your way around using the keyboard. It has happened to me before but then again, AGS was always pretty good at switching back my original res.
Screen scaling (incorrect term?) is suitable for all games and makes things easier all round.
Modern games like Crysis and Unreal 3 titles use screen scaling to maximize compatibility with an unlimited range of monitors.
Edit: This should help:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa970067.aspx (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa970067.aspx)
Cheers and good luck with this,
Paul.
"Modern games like Crysis and Unreal 3 titles use screen scaling to maximize compatibility with an unlimited range of monitors."
3D games are resolution independant because they are vector based, they don't do any upscaling, they simply render at the desired resolution. Whichever resolution that is, the raster elements (the textures) are getting distorted constantly, so they have to be filtered. Pixel art games on the other hand are drawn for one resolution and are completely ruined by scale filters in most cases.
However, scaling isn't a bad option if there is no filtering when doing the scale, in fact as a safe mode it'd probably be the best thing to do, perhaps have it as an option on the setup program. Full screen, native desktop resolution, do the rendering at standard game resolution and then rescale without filtering. We'd still have bars of course but only as long as AGS is tied to certain resolutions, and it seems to be moving away from that.
You obviously haven't played Crysis nor do you know what I am really talking about. I'll try to explain it better, sorry.
Any 3D game is vector based, but at what resolution you choose to draw those vectors is a completely separate issue. I'm not talking about resolution of content, but the resolution itself.
Perhaps you would like to visit the link I posted, scotch, and see what this is all about.
Cheers,
Paul.
QuoteYou obviously haven't played Crysis nor do you know what I am really talking about.
Oh, really.
I didn't disagree that Crysis renders its 3D scene to whatever resolution you want, obviously it does like virtually all 3D games, and I was backing up the suggestion of using the desktop resolution for best compatability. All I was pointing out was that while Crysis rasterizes graphics on the fly to arbitrary resolutions and aspect ratios, it is not a good idea to do the same thing with pre-drawn sprite art. Especially I wanted to point out that not many people would want their sprite art "smooth scaled", but that's not disgreeing with the whole idea.
If this was implemented it'd have to take care not to mess up the aspect ratio, to avoid texture filtering and inconsistently scaled texels. Not all resolutions are good candidates for scaling between, and there are some non obvious decisions to make.
QuotePerhaps you would like to visit the link I posted, scotch, and see what this is all about.
I did, it's about how the changes to the user interface scaling in Vista affect automation programs that assume absolute coordinates... I guess you googled for "screen scaling" and assumed it was relevant? Crysis does nothing that is known as "screen scaling". Please leave the rude tone behind on the tech forums, we're not all idiots.
QuoteIf this was implemented it'd have to take care not to mess up the aspect ratio, to avoid texture filtering and inconsistently scaled texels.
Yeah I agree. I guess the aspect changes would call for automatic black bordering for 4:3 and 16:10.
QuoteAll I was pointing out was that while Crysis rasterizes graphics on the fly to arbitrary resolutions
Sorry I misunderstood you scotch. No offense intended whatsoever. I get a little short sometimes when people misread my posts and reply as if I had never posted. Your not guilty of this in any way and I agree with your statements on many levels.
QuoteI guess you googled for "screen scaling" and assumed it was relevant?
Yeah I was on my way out of my apartment and did a quick google search. Its obviously not relevant afterall, perhaps you could find some valid information on the scaling technique I am talking about.
Cheers mate, ;)
Paul.
The stretch-to-desktop-resolution thing is a possibility, but wouldn't work in a lot of situations. For example, if the game res is 800x600 and the player's desktop is 1024x768, the resulting scaling would look pretty awful; whereas if the game was 320x200 then it would probably be more acceptable.
Also, I'd need to investigate the performance of stretching to full screen, especially since many people run desktop resolutions like 1600x1200 these days. It's just a shame that there doesn't seem to be a set of standard widescreen resolutions, like there are for 4:3 resolutions.
QuoteIt's just a shame that there doesn't seem to be a set of standard widescreen resolutions, like there are for 4:3 resolutions.
You can say that again. :'(
The Direct X scaling method in the 3D gaming world seems to be pretty sharp and clear. You have to remember that the graphics is being scaled up from (in my case) something like 1024x768 to 2560x1600. It looked good because the pixel size wasn't blocky due to actual resolution change but instead a smooth interpolation was presented. It may not wont work as well with lower resolution games like 640x400 or 320x200 but the principle is the same. It is going to look better overall and solve more problems than not if the graphics are scaled to match your desktop rather than run in a blocky and 'interlacy' native resolution on your monitor. There are some very smooth scaling techniques that really do seem to increase resolution when it is really not. I don't move in programmer circles normally but I get the feeling there is some very free source code for this kind of thing over on major development sites. There might be something GPU-wise in the AMD/Nvidia DirectX SDK samples. Microsoft would have its own knowledge base for this technique. I thought I had the link yesterday but scotch brought it to my attention that it was unrelated after all.
Cheers, :D
Paul.
Quote from: subspark on Tue 05/08/2008 00:45:11The Direct X scaling method in the 3D gaming world seems to be pretty sharp and clear. You have to remember that the graphics is being scaled up from (in my case) something like 1024x768 to 2560x1600. It looked good because the pixel size wasn't blocky due to actual resolution change but instead a smooth interpolation was presented.
No, it depends on the graphics. If the graphics are photorealistic it won't look so bad (though enabling interpolation may even make it look better in this case). However, for
pixel arts such kind of scaling would be awful, in fact, alternating double and triple pixels would be very noticiable and ugly (things can only go worse if interpolation is enabled here). (Actually if it's just 320x240 or 640x480 scaled up to 2560x1600, the result may not be that bad, as a pixel block with say, 5 screen pixel width may not look that difference from one with 4 pixel width.)
Unfortunately we don't have much choice for "modern" LCDs (this is the primary reason I dislike LCDs and won't get one, as I change resolutions A LOT).
QuoteActually if it's just 320x240 or 640x480 scaled up to 2560x1600, the result may not be that bad, as a pixel block with say, 5 screen pixel width may not look that difference from one with 4 pixel width
I'm not quite with you mate. Could you clarify your argument for me please? I'm not sure I follow.
Cheers,
Paul. :)
Quote from: Pumaman on Mon 04/08/2008 19:27:09It's just a shame that there doesn't seem to be a set of standard widescreen resolutions, like there are for 4:3 resolutions.
It's not quite as standardized as 4:3 monitors, but there are a few common 16:10 resolutions:
1280x800
1440x900
1680x1050
1920x1200
2560x1600
Pretty much all recent 16:10 monitors out there have one of these as their native res. My monitor's is 1440x900, and it's been a while since I played a 640x400 (16:10) AGS game, but I have to play the 4:3 ones windowed.
This is, I think, an important point. Games will look much better if they're scaled to each monitor's native res. How feasible this is, I don't know. Does pixel-based scaling have to be power-of-two based to look good?
Quote from: subspark on Tue 05/08/2008 00:45:11
The Direct X scaling method in the 3D gaming world seems to be pretty sharp and clear. You have to remember that the graphics is being scaled up from (in my case) something like 1024x768 to 2560x1600. It looked good because the pixel size wasn't blocky due to actual resolution change but instead a smooth interpolation was presented.
Are you saying that you ran Crysis at 1024x768 and your monitor is scaling it up? Because otherwise, if your monitor's native res is 2560x1600, then the game is running at 2560x1600 with no scaling.
QuoteAre you saying that you ran Crysis at 1024x768 and your monitor is scaling it up?
No. I am saying that I ran Crysis at 1024x768 and the game scaled it up to 2560x1600. Although it was stretching the aspect ratio from 4:3 to 16:10, it didn't look too bad.
But when I changed the game resolution to 1280x800, the game scaled it up by a power of 2 without ever changing the monitor's resolution and it was difficult to detect the individual pixels due to the superb interpolation going on.
You have to understand that on a monitor such as mine (30" 16:10 Dell), running monitor resolutions like 1280x800, 1 game pixel uses 4 actual screen pixels, making the pixels themselves very obvious and distracting. The same for a 20" 4:3 monitor running 320x240. If you scale and interpolate those pixels as smoothly as in Crysis or other games not necessarily 3D either, you forget that there's scaling going on because it is so smooth it becomes invisible. I'm not sure what interpolation algorithm Crytek used for Crysis but the same technique would certainly help AGS become more convenient with differing resolutions and aspect ratios.
My point is that this is a new feature in modern games (2D or 3D) and should be considered for AGS because of it's convenient benefits.
Cheers,
Paul.
Hello there, excuse my english, it's not my home language.
When I started to read this topic, I didn't understand at all what was Subspark talking about crysis interpolating to greater resolutions and I must say I thought he was just plain wrong... but, after searching for info about it, he isn't at all.
Crysis have the same resolution related issues than Doom III had when it came out, that's why you couldn't choose a lot of resolutions in Doom 3 (formerly 640x480, 800x600 and 1024x768 if I recall correctly, as I never played it with higher res due to lack of hardware :P ).
The problem comes with the intesive use of pixel shaders, wich are graphics functions you send one time to the Graphic card and let it (the GPU) do the dirty work for you pixel by pixel in your screen.
This is mainly used to perform Bump mapping (and normal mapping, wich is a variant of it), non gauraud shadings (phong and bling types) and heavy screen efects like Bloom or Glow (wich involve modifying every pixel in the screen to render the global effect) as well as reflection distorsions.
The fact is, when you use pixel shaders for every thing (like crysis do ::) ) the more the resolution of the screen, the more GPU power you need because the more pixels have to be processed, wich quickly goes to an exponential issue with your GPU, even with paired cards (SLI and stuff).
Another problem they face is the diference between efects performed for a resolution and another bigger one don't render equally, so they have to test the resolution carefully.
Thus, they found a trick to let every body play at their monitors native def; they render in a standard/under control resolution and then they rescale to the desktop.
The technical part involves rendering the game to the texture memory and then use this texture to render 2 poligons streched to fill the screen size.
I don't know if they are using a special filtering method to do this, but I don't think they could any way. (but hey, those guys worked with Nvidia directly for this game, so every thing is to be expected from them ;) )
Sooo, for AGS this technique should work too, as it has already been used in emulators like Dosbox, Mame, BlueMSX and even NeoRage mainly thru OpenGL (because it is easy to implement and portable to other systems).
I thought AGS was all ready using this kind of tips because of the D3D9 driver implementation, but it seems you use DX acceleration for drawing segments of graphics (sprites and the like) in the same way one would use Direct Draw to do this.
To make AGS really screen resolution independent, you should:
1- Declare a D3D window like if you were to render a real 3D game
2- Define a texture with a pointer on it (in order to be able to render on it on the fly)
3- Fill your D3D windows with 2 triangles forming the screen rectangle together (as every thing should be done with triangles unless you use OpenGL, but you would have other issues however :P )
4- Assign correct UV coordinates to the triangles for the texture to be correctly applied over them (as UV coordinates are normalized from 0 to 1)
5- Assign your texture to those poligons
6- Render your game to the texture memory segment defined before
7- Update your D3D window
All emulators using OpenGL HW accel are using this method, as it is really simple to implement and don't makes you change your core engine.
The only diference for the core engine of AGS is it should render to another segment of memory than your actual back buffer.
However, if you are using well optimised methods to render your sprites, this could be an issue, because rendering directly to a texture could (perhaps) not allow you the use of some particulars methods ( I don't know, as I'm only figuring out how AGS works internaly ;) )
If you are really serious on that, you should search about "render to texture" topics in Nvidia forums or simply Google it.
About the "standard" Wide Screen resolutions, as far as I've seen, Inspired is right, they are:
For sure:
1280x800
1440x900
The higher res aren't fully "standardized" because not so many monitors suport they ;)
But you really can count on this two.
To be really sure, you just have to search for recent laptops of every brand, they all are wide screen, and this resolutions are the standard.
However, keep in mind that the latest drivers of Nvidia and ATI do support left and right black bars for correct aspect ratio when using 4:3 resolutions on 16:10 screens (as it has been a real issue for gamers since wide screens appeared).
Actually, I make my game in a tiny Packard Bell laptop with a screen resolution of 1280x800 with correct aspect ratio preserved in full screen, thanks to the Nvidia drivers (8600 card).
I would want to point to a funny thing that happens with TFT screens:
I was hoping for AGS to support bigger resolutions (because making a game in lesser resolutions could be cool and nostalgic, but it's not well viewed from the point of view of modern players). And thus, I was very happy for the new 1024x768 resolution, wich I found to be the minimum to expect from a modern game.
But, in fact, in a TFT screen, the image is much more distorted by the stretching in 1024 than in 800!
That's because 1024x768 is more close to full/real resolution of actual TFTs than 800x600, and then, what happens is: in 1024 you often have a pixel wich became only one monitor pixel, but the others become 2 pixels. Wich makes a weird appearance, like "waves" in your screen.
800x600 usually gets 2 pixels (or more) to make one, and don't look so bad so!
Thus TFT screens really pisses me off! How happy was I with my huge 19" CRT monster over the table ;D
(but, hey, TFT have benefices, because now, I have 4 monitors of 21" over the table ;D )
(just in case you wonder for what I should use so much monitors, I make 3D animations for living... and 1 monitor is for internet and emule, of course xD )
Man, I didn't realised how long my post was... :-[
sorry :P
Your english, visionastral, is excellent, and your understanding of the screen scaling process is astounding.
Thanks for explaining it for us. I wasn't sure where to start looking for technical answers so thank you for your research.
2560x1600 is the maximum resolution a 16:10 widescreen monitor will allow under current GPUs and as a result I think it can be considered standard as well.
By TFT do you mean LCD? I also run an animation studio (visual effects to be more precise) and use many screens as you do. Good to see a fellow 3D animator enjoying the wonders of AGS.
Cheers,
Paul.
Thanks visionastral. Have to say, I also assumed subspark was talking out of his ass, but your explanation makes sense.
Quote from: subspark on Fri 08/08/2008 23:06:42
No. I am saying that I ran Crysis at 1024x768 and the game scaled it up to 2560x1600. Although it was stretching the aspect ratio from 4:3 to 16:10, it didn't look too bad.
But when I changed the game resolution to 1280x800, the game scaled it up by a power of 2 without ever changing the monitor's resolution and it was difficult to detect the individual pixels due to the superb interpolation going on.
You have to understand that on a monitor such as mine (30" 16:10 Dell), running monitor resolutions like 1280x800, 1 game pixel uses 4 actual screen pixels, making the pixels themselves very obvious and distracting. The same for a 20" 4:3 monitor running 320x240. If you scale and interpolate those pixels as smoothly as in Crysis or other games not necessarily 3D either, you forget that there's scaling going on because it is so smooth it becomes invisible. I'm not sure what interpolation algorithm Crytek used for Crysis but the same technique would certainly help AGS become more convenient with differing resolutions and aspect ratios.
The thing is, with pixel graphics, you rarely want smooth scaling, because it makes the pixels appear blurry. Somewhat like the screenshot in this thread (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=30404). You generally want each pixel to be perfectly sharp, and in no way interpolated. In other words, you want it to look like your screen resolution is natively 320x200 or 640x480 or whatever.
The only reasonably successful way to make pixel art look smoother in high resolution is through the HQ2x (http://www.hiend3d.com/hq2x.html) (or 3x or 4x) filters (aka Scale2x (http://scale2x.sourceforge.net/)). AGS already has support for those, though.
Quote from: InSPIREd on Fri 08/08/2008 21:07:43
1280x800
1440x900
1680x1050
1920x1200
2560x1600
Thanks, I think you're right about this.
However, the problem is that the lowest of these is 1280x800, which is an even larger resolution than AGS's current maximum (1024x768). Although it could be supported, most people don't want to have to draw graphics at that sort of resolution (which would also increase file size dramatically).
One option would be to make a 640x400 game, which could be doubled up with the 2x filter to 1280x800 full screen, but I think what we're after is a widescreen resolution in between -- something like 960x600 -- where the resolution is at the sort of level that people would want to use for their games. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to exist...
Subspark, nice to see I'm not the only 3D animator missing good old graphical adventure games ;)
TFT is the same as LCD, in fact, they were called LCD in the begining, but when the technologie upgraded, they called it TFT because there was extra electronics inside to get a better control of the liquid cristal matrix. They now call it LCD once again, but it's just words after all, it's the same thing.
About 1280x800 in a 30", well, the pixels are obvious depending on distance to the screen ;D after all, it's aprox the HD-Ready resolution (1280x720)...
Ok, the more resolution the better, but don't forget we are doing 2D, wich means you will have to store all this graphics in HD animating.
Just for example: the game I'm making has a main character of 300x475 pixels in order to make short close ups at 30fps (after all, if it looks good, it will have to move good, don't you think?)
Right now, with 5 screens in 800x600 (test rooms) and without the backgbround theora movies, it makes me 90Mb... so, I asume the final game to have a weight of 4Gb aprox... (hopefully, the game should be worth download it ;) )
And we are talking about 800x600 res! Figure it out with "only" 1280x720 pixels...
Yes, 800x600 isn't much, but you know what? After testing it on the 21" and 32", I would expect it to be pixelated and howfull, but infact, it looked very good (wich surprised us a lot, I have to say).
But it makes sense, because, after all, the resolution of a standard DVD is only 720x576 (even in 16:9) and no body complains about it (even if FullHD is cool, DVDs don't look bad at all).
You only have to worry about aliasing (pixelation)! If you make a game with "low" res (800x600) but perform a good antialias filter for the backgrounds and the characters (I'm asuming one make it in rendered 3D) there shouldn't be any problem at the end, even with 30" screens; the only issue will be the lack of detail, not bad looking graphics (think about DVDs on a 50" plasma! it's only 720x576!).
Snarky, you are right, any body wants blurry graphics in pixel art, but in this LCD/TFT times, Graphical Hardware streching is allways better than monitor stretching alone. If you don't make the stretch yourself, the monitor will do it for you after all... (that's because I never understanded the hype for LCD and Plasma technologies, as CRT as FAR superior in quality terms. Marketing, I suppose :-\ )
About HQ2 filters, personally, I don't like it at all, because it changes a lot the way the graphics were designed in the end. It's like aplying a "median" filter from Photoshop over a resized image.
I prefer using the extra res bringed by actual PC to simulate real old monitors/TVs artifacts (like noisy conections, Interlaced behaviour or screen distortions.)
Quote from: visionastral on Mon 11/08/2008 19:04:02
Snarky, you are right, any body wants blurry graphics in pixel art, but in this LCD/TFT times, Graphical Hardware streching is allways better than monitor stretching alone. If you don't make the stretch yourself, the monitor will do it for you after all... (that's because I never understanded the hype for LCD and Plasma technologies, as CRT as FAR superior in quality terms. Marketing, I suppose :-\ )
You can do stretching that preserves sharpness, though. In fact, it's the simplest resizing algorithm of all: nearest neighbor (with antialiasing, if you like). Besides, any decent video card should allow you to activate all VGA resolutions (even if you have to manually enable them) and get better results, but I guess not everyone has a decent video card in their computer.
LCD has some advantages (greater sharpness, primarily), but it's mostly about the convenience of flatscreen versus the bulk and backbreaking weight of a CRT. I have a 21" LCD screen for my desktop, and there's no way I could fit a 21" CRT monitor on that desk.
Visionastral -- Am curious where all the overhead for your 5-room game is coming from. I'm working on a 800x600 32bit game that has (right now) 21 rooms, several of them animating, and 180 sprites plus a lot of sounds and music. Uncompressed the compiled folder is a little less than 40 meg, and that includes a bunch of stuff I'll probably weed out. To reduce the size of stuff I've been using dynamic sprites, guis, overlays, etc. a lot, figuring execution speed isn't a factor for most of what I'm doing.
It's about size of characters * frames per second * 8 directions animation I suppose. They are quite big after all, buts its "needed" for cool closeups (you know, the film effect ;) )
300x475 x 4 (32bits) x 250 frames = 142500000 bytes, so 136 Mb uncompressed (ags does a good job compressing it after all ;) )
Quote from: freshpaint on Mon 11/08/2008 19:28:34
Visionastral -- Am curious where all the overhead for your 5-room game is coming from. I'm working on a 800x600 32bit game that has (right now) 21 rooms, several of them animating, and 180 sprites plus a lot of sounds and music. Uncompressed the compiled folder is a little less than 40 meg, and that includes a bunch of stuff I'll probably weed out. To reduce the size of stuff I've been using dynamic sprites, guis, overlays, etc. a lot, figuring execution speed isn't a factor for most of what I'm doing.
Ah -- say no more. I have yet to master an 8 frame sideways walkcycle!
QuoteThanks visionastral. Have to say, I also assumed subspark was talking out of his ass, but your explanation makes sense.
Thanks for your confidence in me snarks. :-\
Quote from: Pumaman on Mon 11/08/2008 18:36:03
Quote from: InSPIREd on Fri 08/08/2008 21:07:43
1280x800
1440x900
1680x1050
1920x1200
2560x1600
Thanks, I think you're right about this.
However, the problem is that the lowest of these is 1280x800, which is an even larger resolution than AGS's current maximum (1024x768). Although it could be supported, most people don't want to have to draw graphics at that sort of resolution (which would also increase file size dramatically).
One option would be to make a 640x400 game, which could be doubled up with the 2x filter to 1280x800 full screen, but I think what we're after is a widescreen resolution in between -- something like 960x600 -- where the resolution is at the sort of level that people would want to use for their games. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to exist...
Well, 720x450 would let you 2x scale to 1440x900
Thanks for taking this issue up again, CJ. Unfortunately I was on a month-long holiday at the time, but now here are my two cents:
While I agree that it would be great if as many users as possible could play their game in their native resolution, I think it's more important to find widescreen resolutions compatible with existing 4:3 resolutions. Creating a new 16:10 game resolution that doesn't correspond to any existing 4:3 resolutions just furthers the gap between 16:10 and 4:3 users and complicates things for the developer.
With any TFT monitor, widescreen or not, we are bound to see stretching in full screen mode AGS games. Yes, some 4:3 TFT monitors do use multiples of 320x240 (such as 1280x960) as their native resolutions, but many don't. This is something we must accept when working with bitmap graphics. And while the graphics appear less crisp than in the native resolution, I personally don't see it as a big problem. For instance my last laptop had a 1400x1050 display on which I played Blackwell Legacy (320x240 pixelart) and Nelly Cootalot (640x480 flash cartoon style), and both looked great despite the slight blurriness of stretching the pixels to 1400x1050.
My main concern throughout this discussion has been the possibility of creating a game that run in full-screen mode in both 4:3 and 16:10 resolution while retaining square pixels. The easiest solution would be to create a 320x200 aspect ratio game and accept the letterbox bars when playing on a 4:3 monitor. However, it wastes vertical screen space and can currently only be used up to 640x400 resolution.
For the game I'm currently working on, I decided to support both 4:3 and 16:10 format. By compiling the 640x480 game in 640x400 mode, I get a reduced viewport and can set ViewPort.Y to center the background as I want it to be cropped. The game_start code checks for the size of the viewport and repositions GUIs (or replaces them with widescreen versions) accordingly. It works, but the GUI coordinates sometimes behave strangely and it's a pain to have to compile twice when you want to test something - and of course the game will eventually have to be distributed in two separate .exe files.
As I've stated before, what I would love to see would be a setting in the game's setup menu that made a 4:3 game initialize in a viewport sized to its corresponding 16:10 resolution offset by a number of pixels specified by the developer. When I originally made the suggestion I didn't think of whether 800x500 or (for the new 1024x768 mode) 1024x640 were valid widescreen resolutions, but definitely I think we should look into widescreen resolutions that can be compatible with the existing mode. (The alternative, finding a widescreen resolution that can be cropped at the sides to create a 4:3 image doesn't seem as attractive as it's more common to occupy the bottom or top with GUIs and status bars - stuff that can be repositioned in a different aspect ratios - than putting them on the sides).
GG I disagree with a couple of your points here. I suppose it's mostly a matter of personal preference but I think that then easiest way of supporting a 16:10 background image on a 4:3 monitor is to use the full vertical height of the monitor and allow the room to scroll left/right, which is AGS's default behavior.
Likewise, IMHO, the easiest way of supporting a 4:3 background on a 16:10 monitor is to again make use of the full vertical height and leave black bars on either side of the background. This is what normally happens when a 4:3 video is played full screen.
If this kind of approach is used pixels will remain square and many other issues will evaporate.
It should also be noted that 4:3 monitors have permanently disappeared from retail shelves and now can only be found on craig's list for free or at yard sales. They are destined for the dust bin of obsolete technology and so I am wondering why anyone is still developing for that format? If someone started a 4:3 game today I doubt there would be any 4:3 monitors left to play it on by the time the game was finished.
Just my 2 cents anyways... Cheers.
Quote from: RickJ on Thu 28/08/2008 00:40:07I suppose it's mostly a matter of personal preference but I think that then easiest way of supporting a 16:10 background image on a 4:3 monitor is to use the full vertical height of the monitor and allow the room to scroll left/right, which is AGS's default behavior.
I don't know, as a player I would find it extremely annoying to have to walk across every room just to check if I missed a hotspot on the far side of the screen. And as a background artist I think it severely compromises any attempt of a balanced composition. A compromise would be to draw an additional 10% on each side of the background which would be cropped to a centered 4:3 non-scrolling room, just like widescreen is cropped with pan-and-scan. But that solution means you can't put any hotspots or exits outside the 4:3 area.
QuoteLikewise, IMHO, the easiest way of supporting a 4:3 background on a 16:10 monitor is to again make use of the full vertical height and leave black bars on either side of the background. This is what normally happens when a 4:3 video is played full screen.
I agree that this is the
easiest solution, but surely not optimal. For some reason, probably the habit of watching widescreen films on a regular TV, I find that bars on the side look much more crap than normal letterboxing on 4:3 screens. My suggestion was made based on the fact that many if not most games actually don't use the full height of 4:3 monitors for background but instead fill out the top and bottom with GUIs and text display/status bars. These can easily be modified or repositioned without compromising the actual background artwork (SCUMM backgrounds are basically letterboxed by default).
QuoteIt should also be noted that 4:3 monitors have permanently disappeared from retail shelves and now can only be found on craig's list for free or at yard sales. They are destined for the dust bin of obsolete technology and so I am wondering why anyone is still developing for that format?
You forget the millions of existing 4:3 monitors that will stay in people's homes until they burn out. The people I see getting rid of 4:3 monitors do so mainly to replace a bulky CRT screen with a flat one. Those who invested in TFT monitors before 16:10 became the standard are not likely to replace them anytime soon, as widescreen doesn't offer any real benefit for a computer user (and is downright terrible for word processing and web browsing unless you have one of those that can rotate 90 degrees). Personally I'm not letting my lovely 19" CRT monitor go before it dies, nothing flat (and affordable) can replace the true colors and black levels.
QuoteIf someone started a 4:3 game today I doubt there would be any 4:3 monitors left to play it on by the time the game was finished.
I still think there would be enough monitors around to warrant 4:3 support, but I agree it would be foolish to start a game today in a resolution like 800x600. Anybody in pre-development of a game should put a lot of thought into how their game will appear on 16:10 displays.
I agree wioth both of you on many points. The fact is, that display technology is undergoing a transition. We now have decided formats to target. Whether we choose to design our games for a dying format, or produce entertainment on a new one, one thing is for sure, Flatscreen LCD/TFT monitors ain't what they used to be. They've been outperforming CRTs in all catagories for a couple of years now at least. I own two 30" LCD monitors, one Apple, and one Dell and they both display color richer and deeper than any CRT I have ever used. The same goes for my 22" and 19" widescreen Panasonic displays. The quality cannot be surpassed with CRT technology.
Three things to look out for when buying a new LCD/TFT:
- Response time. (4ms is acceptable, 2ms is ideal. Refresh rate has nothing to do with LCD technology, ignore that option in display properties.)
- Make sure it is 16:10 and not 16:9. Many companies try and sell LCD TV's as computer monitors when they really are not designed for this. 16:10 was decided upon as an ideal aspect. There are a few reasons why but one of the well known reasons was that this aspect allows two full page documents to be conveniently viewed side-by-side.
- Contrast Ratio. (The brightest avaliable, besides HDR display technology is 8000:1. Ignore fancy market spins like super-black filtering, bright-white technology, or whatever. Just pay attention to the contrast ratio scale.
There are other more minor things to consider but I'm going to stop here before I start sounding like a bloody salesman. ;)
Cheers,
Sparks.
My laptop's resolution is 1280x800 and whenever I play AGS games I get the ugly blur on the graphics. UNLESS. I set the game resolution to 640x400 and turn on the 2x nearest-neighbour filter. However, it would be simpler if there was just simply 4x nearest-neighbour filter so that I wouldn't have to meddle with resolutions the game wasn't designed for. Would it be possible to add that option? Personally, I don't like to play 320x200 with 640x400 resolution because it looks ugly when two different resolutions are mixed when a character is scaled, for example.
Or has this been taken into consideration in the latest version? If so, whoops!
Or perhaps a simple, nearest neighbor method for scaling the graphics up. I can't imagine doubling pixels by a power of 2 being any great hurdle for the CPU. Why limit this option to 2x and 3x only?
Cheers,
Sparks.
Quote from: subspark on Thu 28/08/2008 04:36:25
I own two 30" LCD monitors, one Apple, and one Dell and they both display color richer and deeper than any CRT I have ever used. The same goes for my 22" and 19" widescreen Panasonic displays. The quality cannot be surpassed with CRT technology.
I have never seen ANY flat screen render better colours than my old 19" mitsubishi CRT.
And I have used a lot of good ones working as a designer (apple, asus, dell...).
The colours don't render equally from top to bottom, you never know were to place your head in order to see the REAL colour the screen is making... Worse for the brightness and contrast! (even on 16:10 screens, it's about the way they are lightened from the back)
It makes me sick every time I work on dark colours. This kind of things never happend with a CRT.
Let's get real, TFT is flatter, lighter, more reliable, makes much more crisp images and can be far bigger than CRT screens;
but for colours, contrast and resolution compatibility, a CRT is better.
For TFT's to have the precision of CRT in contrast and colour, you have to go for profesional TFT's absolutly out of price.
And, have one of you ever had a problem with diferent screen resolutions in a CRT?
Don't make a TFT run on a diferent resolution than the one builded for... worse! the closer the resolution to real screen resolution, the worst it will look.
This never happen on a CRT. And I'm telling you this owning 5 TFTs.