Title screen - losing the "black bars" at the top and bottom of the screen

[Intangible]

I created an empty "title screen" room and a 640x480 GUI for it (that's my game resolution). Next, I created a 640x480 background image and applied it to the GUI. Lastly, I made the "title screen" room display the "title screen" GUI on load... so far, so good.

The title screen itself seems to work, but there is a thin black bar at the top and bottom of the screen, clipping the lowest part of the GUI (the top bar seems to "push" the GUI down on the screen and the bottom one clips the GUI). I'm not sure where these black bars are coming from or how I can get rid of them: as soon as I get into the first playable screen, the bars are gone, so I'm not sure what they're doing on the title screen. I did notice that the "demo game" that comes with AGS does exactly the same thing on its title screen, however. Am I actually stuck with these black bars on my title screen, or is there some way I can get rid of them? It would be really nice to have the full 640x480 screen available for my title screen art.

PS: If this has already been answered somewhere, please pardon me. I tried searching for this in the forums, but I had trouble finding anything that directly related to what I was trying to do.

[Gilbert]

Did you set-up the resolution of your game to 640x480 in the General section of the editor? make sure that it's not left at 640x400.

[Intangible]

Yep, the resolution's definitely 640x480. I don't get the black bars during the normal "playable" rooms; it's only on this title screen room I've made. All I can guess is that there's something about the room that's making the black bars appear, but I can't recall doing anything strange or unusual with it. It's just an empty room that immediately makes a GUI appear.

[Gilbert]

Try re-importing the background in that particular room (and if it prompts you on whether you want to expand the resolution of the room, do so). Sometimes the room itself might have been set to a different resolution than what the game is set to.

[Intangible]

It looks like that's exactly what happened... I didn't bother creating a background for this room because everything was going to be on the GUI, and I assumed that the room would be 640x480 by default because that was the game resolution. When I created a completely black, 640x480 title screen image and imported it as the "title screen" room's background, everything worked fine.

Is there any particular reason it works this way? It's not a big deal, now that I know how to force the empty room to be 640x480; I'm just curious if there's a technical reason why the room didn't match the game's resolution by default.

[Snarky]

When I create new rooms in a 320x240 game, every time I import the background the first time, it warns me that it's a different size and the areas and regions will be erased. AGS evidently initializes the room to 320x200 even if the game is 320x240 (and to 640x400 if the game is 640x480).

I think it's just a quirk in AGS. No one has complained about it until now, so it's never been fixed.

[Gilbert]

Actually this is more likely a feature than a glitch.

When you add a new room to a game it actually copies the _blank.crm file in your game's folder to a new name (roomxxx.crm), so you can make a new default blank room by loading a (blank, but not necessary) background of the desired resolution and save it as _blank.crm, so that all subsequent rooms created will use this as a template.

[Ryan Timothy B]

By default it should definitely make the room background the same size as the game resolution.

[monkey0506]

IIRC doesn't it have a built-in blank room template that is overridden on a per-project basis by the project's _blank.crm? Either way, I'd say that creating a _blank.crm in the project folder when the project is created, that matches the resolution of the game, and is updated when the resolution is changed, is actually a useful and worthwhile editor suggestion.