Widescreen monitors

[Lilfurbal]

Hello, I recently downloaded Exult and am loving it. Since I've been unable to play it the original way in a long time now, due to NTFS and all, I really like this.

However it's unfortunate the original game wasn't made in widescreen as that really didn't exist at that time, and this software adds resolutions but when ran in full screen on a widescreen monitor it gets stretched to fill the screen. I've been playing in windowed mode as a result.

I don't really care about an actual widescreen resolution format to fill the screen, but the ability to select a widescreen monitor in Exult which will just add black bars on both sides of the screen would be great.

Just a little suggestion for future versions.

On another note, I find it odd how when you push I or Z or whatnot to bring up your party stats, it doesn't end with the last party member. It seems to let you keep reopening everyone's windows when you keep hitting the button. Not really an issue, I don't remember if the regular dos version did that or not, but it just strikes me as odd.

Anyway, VERY good job on doing this. :}

[Dominus]

you can select any resolution in the exult.cfg, even that of your widescreen one

[Lilfurbal]

Oh oh oh oh, so you caan. Sweetness.

Thank you much

[Lilfurbal]

On the other hand, the program seems to act up for me using resolutions such as:

512x320


640x400

in full screen mode with x2 scaling. Some resolutions refuse to even fill the entire full screen for some reason.

Odd

[Bob Rodden]

I agree with Mog; on my laptop with a widescreen monitor, no matter how I try to configure Exult, the native 320 by 200 ends up in a small box in the center of my screen. I've spent hour trying different resolutions to make up for this. I want to play in the orignal resolution, but I want it to fill my screen, and no setting works.

I love Exult, have used it very successfully on our desktop with a 4 by 3 monitor, but widescreen has somekind of video setting that absolutely will not allow you to view it up close in the original resolution. I've searched everywhere on the web to find a fix. Very frustrating.

[marzo]

Hm. 320x200 (original resolution), 512x320, 640x400, 960x600 and 1280x800 are all ratio 16x10; so in a way, the original games *were* made for widescreen format. Except for 512x320, all the others can be achieved in Exult with the original resolution plus a scaler; specifically, any 2x scaler gives 640x400, HQ3x gives 960x600 and Point 4x (the only 4x scaler available) yields 1280x800.

I remember a much earlier post where someone made a modified version of SDL with hardware scaling capability; this could be used to achieve 512x320 (1.6x) or for 1280x800 for something other than point scaler (say, hardware 2x, software HQ2x). I don't think it has been incorporated in SDL, but I could be wrong.

[MeddlingMonk]

I'd have to quibble with that 'widescreen' argument. Yes, the original format is 320x200 but there were no widescreen monitors then as you know. Just basic CRTs like the ones still made today.
One thing that might give someone the actual impression that U7 was made with a widescreen format is that, if you run U7 in DOSBox and fail to to activate aspect ratio correction, the game will look like a widescreen movie on a standard TV: with black bands top and bottom (that is, if nothing is done to the monitor to correct the aspect ratio or if nothing can be done as in the case of a PowerBook monitor).
Even though the original resolution is 320x200, when the game was ran back when it was new on contemporary hardware, the image on the screen was vertically stretched so that the 320x200 resolution was displayed at a 4:3 aspect ratio.
A little while ago I put in a feature request on the project page for aspect ratio correction like what's already built into DOSBox and ScummVM and added screenshots off Day of the Tentacle in ScummVM on a PowerBook with aspection ratio correction off and on. The off screenshot has black bands top and bottom but that's not the important thing. The bands appear only because the image isn't vertically stretched to fill the entire screen. Compare one image to the other and it's pretty obvious that Laverne is much shorter in the 'off' picture. DOTT's original resolution was also 320x200. On hardware contemporary with the game, the image would appear as in the 'on' screenshot. Because screen geometry can't be adjusted on a PowerBook, ScummVM's aspect ratio correction makes the old games look correct; ditto for DOSBox.
So with U7 with Exult, on the PowerBook, the image is vertically squashed. Now, of course, you could set the resolution to 320x240 and it will fill the entire screen but that doesn't correct the aspect ratio. It only shows a little more terrain top and bottom. The image is still squashed. I could post screenshots but I think a description is enough: with the correct aspect ratio, the character gumps for the avatar and party members are rectangular; but on the PowerBook monitor (and presumably any monitor that lacks geometry controls) the character gumps are very neary squares and changing the resolution doesn't change that.
So, the same factors that casued the DOSBox and ScummVM devs to implement aspect ratioi correction are also present with U7 only Exult doesn't have that feature. I think it should. Hence the feature request I made. It should help not only the issue with my PowerBook monitor, but also with the widescreen issue that began this thread because a 4:3 ratio if enforced would cause the game image to appear in the middle of the screen with black bands left and right.

(edit by Dominus: made the text a little more readable a bit)

[marzo]

Yes, the original format is 320x200 but there were no widescreen monitors then as you know.

*Sigh*. I just knew someone would miss my point and quibble about it. You missed this:

[...]so in a way,[...]

I was not saying that they *were* *made* for widescreen monitors (which didn't exist then), but that *in* *a* *way*, they were made for them (as in, they have the same exact aspect ratio). There is a difference, you know.

I will give you that the character/paperdoll gumps without aspect correction make the characters look a lot... sturdier.

(As an aside: the actual reason games of that era used a resolution of 320x200 is that it was the only mode in VGA adapters that allowed 256 colors to be displayed on screen.)

[MeddlingMonk]

I didn't exactly miss the point. Call it a clumsy lead into the subject of aspect ratio correction. It would make things look better on some monitors in the way that DOSBox, ScummVM (and even Pentagram, in a not-very-clearly-documented way) do for similar-vintage games. Would be be all that difficult to implement for Exult?

[Colourless]

1:1.2 vertical scaling in exult would be quite nice to have. Pentagram unlike exult can chain 2 scalers together and can scale differently in X and Y. Rather than specify the scaling factor, for pentagram you specify the display resolution and the rendering resolution and the scalers you want to use to do any required scaling. It also contains some optimized scalers for doing 1.2 and 2.4 vertical scaling to fix the aspect.

[drcode]

"Pentagram unlike exult can chain 2 scalers together and can scale differently in X and Y. "

Oh, good, more work to do!:-) Is this a new algorithm?

[MeddlingMonk]

Rather than specify the scaling factor, for pentagram you specify the display resolution and the rendering resolution and the scalers you want to use to do any required scaling.

When I noticed that in pentagram.ini, I figured it'd make the aspect ratio correct on my PowerBook if I made the rendering resolution 640x480 rather than 640x400. (It did of course, but the Pentagram documentation never comes right out and says that's what it'll do in so many words.) Am I right in imaging that that's essentially what ScummVM is doing when aspect ratio correction is toggled in it's GUI? That untoggled it's scaling 1x, 2x, 3x, while toggled it's doing 1:1.2?

[Bob Rodden]

All - I found the perfect solution at the below website. On the left side is the search, search for Ultima. There's a nice "detailed report" on U7 explans about how to configure your laptop or (widescreen monitor)resolution, the "game resolution" in Exult, and the scaler (i changed mine to 2 in the Exult cfg file) so that Ultima7 can be played VERY close to the original game setttings. Now it looks fantastic on my widescreen laptop.

Check it out, you won't be sorry. And again, thanks to the Exult Team. Bob

http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/index.php

[MeddlingMonk]

Except that does nothing for the aspect ratio.

[Bob Rodden]

Meddlingmonk, sorry about that. I wanted mine to achieve the original 4 by 3, and come as close as possible to the correct resolution as the original. My original post was in answer to Mog, who didn't want hers to fill the screen. When I set my monitor to "maintain aspect ratio", it comes in 4 by 3, which is what I had wanted to achieve.

I should've said, "perfect solution for my computer". You may be able to find more solutions. Good luck. Bob

[MeddlingMonk]

Well, the only thing that can be done about aspect ratio on the software side will be the devs. That will be the only solution for monitors that don't have geometry controls. Like some laptops. Or TVs.

[PimpUigi]

Yea, can't get it to be the right aspect on my wife's laptop : (

On the desktop thanks to point scaling I can run the 320x200 image stretched to 1600 x 1200 and the scaling is 100% perfect, sharp, clear, and 4:3

Maybe the Exult team could put out a hotfix to make the 320x240 mode just be a stretched 320x200?

Then we could scale that, and we would have most 4:3 modes corrected, with the correct aspect ratio and everything.

[Sententia]

So is your monitor doing the point scaling on your desktop? What kind of monitor do you have?

I'm running on a desktop, but I've got an LCD monitor and I don't think it's got geometry controls for vertical stretching (it does have horizontal stretching, since it's widescreen).

[Sententia]

I found a solution (for me, at least) to this aspect ratio problem. I downloaded a program called PowerStrip, and used it to create a custom 640x400 vertically stretched resolution exclusively when exult is running. Now I've got the game in 320x200 with a x2 scaler, and it runs perfectly at 4:3.

If anyone still cares about this issue and doesn't want to wait for the guys to fix it, they should check out this PowerStrip software.

[MeddlingMonk]

I'd ask where'd you get it, but unless it's cross-platform I wouldn't care.

[Sententia]

http://www.entechtaiwan.net/util/ps.shtm

I don't think it is, but I haven't read through all its documentation, so take a look if you're interested. It might run on macs.

[MeddlingMonk]

It's Windows only. The program's an interesting idea, since not everything that let's you play old games has it's aspect-ratio correction (DOSBox does, ScummVM does, Pentragram does; Exult does not, XU4 does not).