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[Mnemonic]

Hi folks, I've been working on widescreen support lately. The idea is, if you run 4:3 game on a widescreen monitor, the settings dialog will offer you a check-box titled "Maintain aspect ratio". If you enable this option and run the game in full-screen, it will not use the original resolution, but a nearest higher widescreen resolution and black bars will be added to the extra space. That way screen distortion is avoided.
This feature also works the other way around, i.e. 16:9 game running on 4:3 monitor (such as Chess Worlds).

However, since I don't have a widescreen monitor, and since this feature required quite large changes to WME renderer, I'm asking for your help with testing before I make this build "official". If you have a widescreen monitor and you'd like to test, please download the testing WME build. Unzip the files to your WME installation folder (you can either backup the original files or reinstall WME 1.8.6 update later to get back).

Once installed, please try WME Demo and WME Demo 3D (and possibly your own game) to see if it offers you the "maintain aspect ratio" check-box and if the games work correctly with the option enabled.

Please post your experience in this thread. Thanks!

[metamorphium]

tested and works great! Thanks 

[odnorf]

I tried a widescreen project (1280x800) on my not widescreen monitor and it also works. Alien feature! 

[Stucki]

Here i am brave tester !!
chess worlds is working fine (1280 *800)

just two things ...

it starts on my secondary monitor ...
and the mouse can get off screen .. that meens behind the top and bottom bar ... could this be avoided ?

but this is a very cool feature wich will make it so much easier for us !
thanks very much for the work !!

i have to think about adding a god like creature to our game and call it mneomnic ! by the way ... would you like it to become part of chess-worlds population ?

so no i dare to take a bath , brave tester that i am ...

[Mnemonic]

It should offer you two devices, one for each monitor. And in full-screen in multimon environment the mouse pointer is locked to one monitor. That's intentional and it has always been like that, actually.

by the way ... would you like it to become part of chess-worlds population ?

Oh that would be cool, so far I only appeared in Bloody Christmas (and Five lethal demons:))

[Daniel]

I ran both WME Demo and WME Demo 3D and choosing "Maintain aspect ratio" caused the games to be centered in the middle of my widescreen monitor (bars on the sides and also above and below the game screen) in what seemed to be their original resolution. I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "nearest higher widescreen resolution"...

Not selecting "Maintain aspect ratio" ran the games stretched to the entire area of my widescreen monitor.

On a side note, thanks for implementing this feature. I always believed it was a very important feature for those whose video cards do not support not scaling the image in full-screen mode.

[Mnemonic]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "nearest higher widescreen resolution"...

WME checks the aspect ratio of your desktop. Then it tries to find a resolution with the same aspect ratio, which is closest to the original game resolution. That's how it's supposed to work.

[Daniel]

So if my desktop's resolution is 1680x1050 and I'm running the 800x600 WME Demos, what is the expected behavior on the part of the engine? Is it ok that I see the original/unstretched game surrounded by black bars on all four sides or did you expect a different behavior? Don't get me wrong, the way I see it, running it like that (completely unstretched) is the best way to go.

[serializer]

This worked great on my widescreen laptop (1280x800) with my own project - haven't tested anything else.

The stretching was bugging me quite a bit, so well done for fixing this! 

Out of curiosity, is there any reason for even giving the option NOT to maintain aspect ratio? I can't imagine any situation where I wouldn't want to.

[DocBass]

I tried this out and it worked great. We might be changing our game over to native widescreen now as a result since the gameplay area has always been widescreen anyway. One thing...I ran it in the engine and I got the maintain aspect ratio option, but after I closed the window and tried it again the window went away. Would there be an option, by chance, to play at the native res and still utilize the full screen? So if you have a 1280x720 game and you're playing on a 1680x1050 monitor, the game would remain at 1280x720 and be surrounded by black space when in full screen mode? Or perhaps the option to scale the game to lower than native resolutions for people with older monitors (I know, you're probably sick of hearing this)? 

[Mnemonic]

So if my desktop's resolution is 1680x1050 and I'm running the 800x600 WME Demos, what is the expected behavior on the part of the engine? Is it ok that I see the original/unstretched game surrounded by black bars on all four sides or did you expect a different behavior?

I guess it depends on what resolutions your video card / monitor offer. If there's no other resolution with 16:10 aspect ratio in between, the engine will end up using the native resolution. Perhaps the algorithm should be more benevolent and use also 16:9 resolutions on 16:10 monitors?

Out of curiosity, is there any reason for even giving the option NOT to maintain aspect ratio? I can't imagine any situation where I wouldn't want to.

I can think of several reasons right now:

1) people prefer if the video driver does the dirty job instead
2) non-standard/misconfigured machines causing wrong detection
3) there may still be bugs in wme

Would there be an option, by chance, to play at the native res and still utilize the full screen?

It would be possible now. The question is, how to know what native resolution is, or rather recognizing CRT monitors and not offering this option for them.

Or perhaps the option to scale the game to lower than native resolutions for people with older monitors (I know, you're probably sick of hearing this)? 

Sorry, no scaling. That would require tremendous amounts of work and it's not worth it, IMO. There is a possibility to let DirectX scale the screen automatically, which is virtually for free, but the result looks very ugly.

[DocBass]

Or perhaps the option to scale the game to lower than native resolutions for people with older monitors (I know, you're probably sick of hearing this)? 

Sorry, no scaling. That would require tremendous amounts of work and it's not worth it, IMO. There is a possibility to let DirectX scale the screen automatically, which is virtually for free, but the result looks very ugly.

Understood. Well perhaps if people want to use small monitors they should be forced to suffer through those results. 

Also, I'm getting a lot of crashes in SceneEdit now. Just FYI I guess. 

[Mnemonic]

Also, I'm getting a lot of crashes in SceneEdit now. Just FYI I guess. 

Hmm, crashes when doing what? Any reproducible steps?

[Daniel]

I guess it depends on what resolutions your video card / monitor offer. If there's no other resolution with 16:10 aspect ratio in between, the engine will end up using the native resolution. Perhaps the algorithm should be more benevolent and use also 16:9 resolutions on 16:10 monitors?

I believe then that you should offer two check boxes instead of one: The first would be "Maintain original resolution" that would use the original game resolution surrounded by black bars on all sides, while the second would be "Maintain aspect ratio" that would use the nearest higher resolution with the game's aspect ratio.

If I understand correctly, using only the "Maintain aspect ratio" check box as it exists now in this test version, it may not be possible to run a game in its original resolution.

[DocBass]

Also, I'm getting a lot of crashes in SceneEdit now. Just FYI I guess. 

Hmm, crashes when doing what? Any reproducible steps?

Yeah its after I've saved a scene and hit close. It will crash after that. It's not every time but its a fairly high ratio. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help.