Resolition higher than 640*480 without shrinking menus?

[Guest Seeker]

Hello again,

 

this bg2-community seems to have created some wonderful enrichments to an already beautiful game!

 

Maybe this one issue that bugs me has already been fixed:

 

If I use 640*480, everything is in proportion ... When I increase the resolution, at first everything seems okay ... more to see on screen ... but as

I open any menu (inventory, char, spells ...) there is a border coming up and all the interface gets into 640*480 and jumps into the center. Closing the menu, back to normal.

I guess that is no bug, but wanted as all the menus are not available in higher resolution ...

 

But maybe there is a walkaround?

 

Thank you,

 

Seeker

[Smoketest]

These are older games that had to support even older computer systems, so the GUI (graphical user interface) elements were initially designed for 640x480 resolution. They are bitmaps, like a digital photograph, not scalable 3D models, so they'll gradually appear smaller and smaller as you increase the game's screen resolution. Computer systems improved somewhat by the time BG2 was in development, so Bioware added support for higher resolutions, but they didn't want to redraw all the GUI elements for each resolution, as that would fill another CD. So instead they made inexpensive 'padding' to fill the gaps between the outer border and the existing GUI screens. You'll see the same sort of thing in Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter, and Icewind Dale 2 (at 1024x768).

 

You'll spend most of your time looking at the game world view, so don't worry too much about the extra borders you only see in the menus and info screens; you'll get used to them after awhile. You can increase the resolution to 1024x768 with no problems, so long as your computer can run the game that way. If you go beyond that, the screen starts messing up. Also, if you're running in windowed mode, try switching to full screen to see if that helps.

[Miloch]

Also, if you're running in windowed mode, try switching to full screen to see if that helps.

Unfortunately, if you have a newer laptop or widescreen monitor, full screen mode distorts the picture rather horribly, making everyone look too fat.

[Guest CaraKaze]

Also, if you're running in windowed mode, try switching to full screen to see if that helps.

Unfortunately, if you have a newer laptop or widescreen monitor, full screen mode distorts the picture rather horribly, making everyone look too fat.

 

 

I have a widescreen. I have *no* idea if this works for everyone, but with mine there was an option under "display properties" >> "settings" tab >> "advanced" button >> "displays" tab >> "panel" (the active screen) button

 

It took me forever to find it.

[Smoketest]

Widescreen performance depends on your card and drivers. My nVidia 6800GT drivers allow me to preserve the aspect ratio for older games, basically creating black borders on the side of the image in order to keep the 4:3 ratio. So I can run the game at 1024x768 without flattened/stretched characters and graphics, even on my 21" widescreen.

[WizWom]

Technically, there are different .CHU files for each resolution only for the GUIW series. All the others have just 640x480 versions. GUIW just appends the hundreds and thousands digits to the file name for the higher resolutions.

I don't think the engine will do anything if you make something like GUIINV10.CHU - but the worst that would happen would be it ignores it, and it might work.

[the bigg]

The game draws GUIW* from the NW corner, and the various non-W CHU files (GUIINV for ex.) centered, and draws STON{08,10}{T,L,R,D} around that (starting from the most appropriate NW corner). Thus, you'd have to enlarge the various GUI{^W} files and re-size the various STON10 files. Even if you do, I doubt that the game is going to take additional spell slots (or similar) in consideration.

 

BTW, the (native) 1280x960 and higher resolutions draw CHU files like a x2 expansion of the smaller res (E.G. at 1280x960 the GUI looks like a x2 expansion of 640x480, whereas the game area is at the correct resolution).