Widescreen and ratio

[bayo]

Hello,

As you know UFO:AI support multiresolution and widescreen by providing a full streach of the game. And the internal game itself use a 4:3 virtual screen. When the screen resolution is not 4:3 the ratio is wrong.

Plus, the task to have a multiresolution support for a GUI is an incredibly big task, request an architecture we dont have. For example designed Web site often use fixed width. Or we must think about changing every thing.

I would like to know if you are interesting by more easy task to prevent ration:

1) we can use every time a 4:3 ratio (the internal ratio), and add black border for widescreen (anamorphic)

2) When it's work fine, we can think about removing black border for some simple GUI. I think about a wider battlescape, but we also can work on a wider geoscape.

Is any body interesting about that?

[Kildor]

There are some widescreen users, I`ve seen they screenshots and they look really ugly ;-)
If we can do something with it, it would be great

[Destructavator]

I agree, I use a widescreen display on one of my computers and would like to see some sort of fix so it looks better on the display.  I tried going to game options and choosing a widescreen resolution, it didn't help - everthing was still stretched out.

[DuKe2112]

What is with the proposed gui in the wiki? it's window based and thus easily stretchable, or would it be too much work to implement it at the moment?

[bayo]

Which one? I dont think i see something with little window and simple content. Every time you will see very complex layout, like aircraft equipment or soldier equipment.

[BTAxis]

The geoscape is like that, but pretty much none of the other screens.

[Mattn]

support for none 4:3 ratios would be really cool.

[DuKe2112]

Ok I thought mainly about these two screens:
http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/Image:Basescape2.jpg
http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/Image:Researchwindow4.jpg

All windows with scrollbars and especialy all text windows are easily adjusted without distortion.
The aircraft equipment is pretty simple and difficult yes, best solution would probably be just using max height and adding blank space on the side.
Soldier equipment is probably complex enough to adjust though.

The main point is that it is not based on ui grafics., but is placed on top of a general background.
If you want ui grafics you should probably use a framework rather than fullscreen images.

I know it might be much work, but it probably produces the best end result, plus it is easier to modifiy later.
For the quick fix I would stick to bajo's original suggestion though and just force 4:3 with black borders.

[bayo]

After some work, i see the bttlescape already support very well widescreen, so using black border should'nt be a good idea.

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[Destructavator]

Perhaps if the GUI (the parts that have the buttons, text, and stats for various things) was broken into several components that would be placed/anchored at the corners of the screen - Instead of one single GUI that has a fixed aspect ratio and looks ugly when stretched - and then the components were placed on top of the actual view of the battlescape, it would allow for a nice display on both widescreen and standard monitors, or almost any display type.

This idea might also be nice for the Geoscape and Air Combat.

Edit: Whoops!  I see this was already proposed - Sorry, this is what happens when one reads a thread late at night and waits until the next day to post a comment on the topic without re-reading the thread and checking the wiki.  Sorry, just shoot me...   

[bayo]

The menu architecture look now not too bad; maybe we can do it step by step for the battlescape soon. If we dont have big problems before

[bayo]

Hello.

The development version (at least r23227) can now prevent ratio. Main menus use anamorphic mode; and battlescape and geoscape can use the full size allowed by the screen, moving panels into the border. With it you should use better widescreen or portrait screens.

Not sure everything is fixed, test are welcome.

To active that, you must uncheck compatibility mode, on the option/video : "Strech the screen with a 4:3 ratio". Or change the cvar "vid_strech".

To use a custom screen size, you can run the game with the command line (for example if you have a Nintendo DS):

Code: [Select]

ufo +set vid_mode -1 +set vid_width 256 +set vid_height 384

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