Will it be updated?

[Darek Death]

The mod is entirely useless as is, its defective, so I'm hoping its still being improved. Because the graphics are not autoresizable in IWD, the games programmed for specific resolution settings and graphics are designed specifically to look correctly in those settings. Since I am running at 1920x1080 (because its the best my monitor can do) the highest of their preset resolution options I can choose is 1280x960.

 

All of their resolution settings are square so I get black lines at the left and right sides. I tried setting Widesreen Mod to 1920x1080 but I got microscopic menu icons and massive thin repeating images. But the next highest default resolution is 1600x1200 and their highest is 2048x1536.

 

So the graphics and programming for the UI at higher resolutions than mine exist by default, but if I could force it to do the 1600x1200 for example, the side bar menus would go beyond what I can see on my screen. So I assumed it was using the graphics for 1280x960 when I ran it in 1920x1080. So I tried using the Widescreen Mod to just stretch the x axis so I could get rid of the black bars.

 

I used a proportion wheel and resolution calculator to determine the closest proportional nondecimal x value to the y value of the default setting and ended up with 1712x963. However when I ran the game I got the same issue as in 1920x1080 with tiny icons and long repeating graphics. And I realized this is because the mod uses the 800x600 graphics by default.

 

So it looks bad and if I wanted it to not look bad and not have the black bars I'd have to set it to 1072x603 which is worse than just playing it in 1280x960. And that doesnt work either because sometimes the mod for some reason uses my 1920x1080 resolution for full screen, but runs the game at the resolution I set it at, aligned to the top left corner which it does with 1072x603 so you get 3/4 of the screen black and the game as a tiny box in the top left anyway. Also it sometimes disables the ability to play in window mode for some reason.

 

These are the issues I am seeing at least. Is anyone else having these problems? Will there be updates or is it done for good? Are there ways to make it use the larger graphics? Are there ways around its other problems?

[Jarno Mikkola]

IWD 1, 16:9 full screen resolution sets: 1280x720, 1360x768, 1600x900, 1920x1080. Try each one ! These (should) all work on IWD1, there's no smaller because the mod doesn't, nor the game contain smaller than 800x600 resolution GUI elements. And yes, they all use the 800x600 GUI. Should it matter a bit, the unsupported resolutions can and are likely to crash the game, so there's no help there either.

EDIT: I had remembered that there's a GUI mod, but it's for IWD2.

[Darek Death]

I don't doubt that the graphics being used are 800x600 resolution quality however in higher resolutions set within Config it adjusts the graphics (stretches) and programming to look and work proportional at higher resolution settings which was what I was talking about. My point was that Widescreen Mod doesn't do that nor does it utilize the work already done by the developers in that regard, which is why all the graphics look too tiny to see and unproportional unless I run the Widescreen Mod at a resolution of 800x600 or close to that.

 

Meaning, running it at 1280x960 with Config (Widescreen Mod disabled) the graphics looks perfectly proportional and works correctly, but has black bars on the left and right side because of my screen shape. Logically if I stretched the screen area horizontally to fit my screen without increasing resolution (Widescreen Mod at 1712x963) then the UI stretching vertically and horizontally should look the same but have the repeating graphic on the horizontal just of the length equal to the length of the black bars. However, setting it to this does the same as 1920x1080 making tiny buttons that cannot be seen and massively long repeating graphics (though to a less extreme). (Retesting it again, it also does the align top left glitch, with black bars at the bottom and right which I forgot about.) Even if I cared more about removing those bars than about the resolution setting, stretching the horizontal of 800x600 to fit my screen, it does not work because when I tell Widescreen Mod to set to 1072x603 it sets the Fullscreen Resolution to 1920x1080 and makes a tiny 1072x603 to show the game in in the top left creating black bars for 3/4 of the screen.

 

I tried 1280x720, 1360x768, 1600x900, and 1920x1080. I tried 1920x1080 originally and the others just now when you suggested it.

 

The problem with 1920x1080 is that the UI is so small that its not playable.

 

1280x720 bugs up in a new way, starting in Fullscreen it centers and cuts off the UI on all 4 sides of the screen, Windowing then back to Fullscreen I get black bars on the left and right (but smaller ones than default resolutions) and the top and bottom of the game area is cut off still.

 

1360x768 does the same glitch as 1072x603, setting the Fullscreen Resolution to 1920x1080 and showing the game in a 1360x768 box aligned top left giving me a massive black bar across the right and bottom of the screen.

 

1600x900 works but causes the same issue I'm having with 1920x1080 which is an unproportional UI. If the developer can make it look proportional at 1280x960, 1600x1200, and 2048x1536 why can't Widescreen Mod? Which it doesn't, even if I set it to any of the default resolution options from Config, it will just make tiny icons and windows and long repeating bar graphics instead of making it proportional like Config does. Just the highest res in Config I can set is 1280x960 and it has black bars on the sides.

[Jarno Mikkola]

1280x720 bugs up in a new way, starting in Fullscreen it centers and cuts off the UI on all 4 sides of the screen, Windowing then back to Fullscreen I get black bars on the left and right (but smaller ones than default resolutions) and the top and bottom of the game area is cut off still.

Is this to say that the game looks like it's being played in the center of the screen with black bars in each side, in the main view of the game, the menu screens lack the GUI art, that's normal, but the main view should be filled to the prim, unlike in this screen ? aka, does the main areas view look like this:

Only in IwD instead of BG2...

Then you just need to remove the Graphic Card resizing(GPU scaling) that's going on by default on the cards driver application... similarly like in the solution for the ATI cards to negate it. Nvidia cards have their own application, so you'll have to find the fix for it on their end... and finally play the game with the resolution set by the Widescreen mod, and not the GPU.

[Darek Death]

Of the part you quoted no, in that instance the entire screen was filled with the game but the game area went past the ends of the screen. However this looks similar to one of the other issues I was getting a lot more often, but not at all settings. Do you know if the NVIDIA application works on Mac? I'm using the Windows version of the mod but I'm running it on Mavericks (10.9). I did a few searches on Google but I couldn't find anything.

[Jarno Mikkola]

So it's the other way around... ha. Anyways:

Do you know if the NVIDIA application works on Mac?

Well, if you use a computer that dual boots, you are technically using Windows, and the Nvidia Control Panel should work there,, and that's where you'll find the GPU scaling options to turn off(if you have a Nvidia card), so then you can use the Widescreen mod can set the games resolution to what ever you like(, so long as it's above the 800x600 resolution).

[subtledoctor]

I'm confused by this whole thread. Are you trying to use the Widescreen Mod on EE? I don't think EE is supported, my understanding is that Widescreen uses an .exe hack on the Windows TOB BGMain.exe. And anyway, why would you need this with EE? You say that

Meaning, running it at 1280x960 with Config (Widescreen Mod disabled) the graphics looks perfectly proportional and works correctly,

So why are you even using this mod? Just change the rez in the config if EE allows that. My (admittedly limited) understanding is that the Widescreen Mod is meant for the older versions of the game, which can't go higher than 1024x768 for love or money.

 

Also, in my experience, the first time I start up a game with Widescreen installed, it gives me a large screen that seems to be trying to fit into a small window. I quit out of the game, start it up again, and this time Widescreen works perfectly. So make sure you test twice every time with this mod. I'm happily and successfully using it to play BG2 and IWD at 1440x900.

[Jarno Mikkola]

I'm confused by this whole thread. Are you trying to use the Widescreen Mod on EE? I don't think EE is supported, my understanding is that Widescreen uses an .exe hack on the Windows TOB BGMain.exe. And anyway, why would you need this with EE?

It's not a EE game... but the Icewind Dale 1. (IWD)

 

Yes, the original BG2 game has the unsupported resolution modes: (1024x768*), 1280x960, 1600x1200 and 2048x1568 in the unlocked option modes in the BGConfig.exe, but they* are known to crash the game as the picture placement or something goes wrongly that causes the crash, when for example you are in the inventory screen and try to equip a normal two handed sword. The 1024x768 resolution works normally, so by they* we mean all the other options.