9 replies to this topic

[Matthew]

Sorry if this seems like a strange question, but I need to know if i can change the resolution of the Zquest editor. For reference, I'm using the latest complete release, not any release candidate version.

 

For christmas, I got a new laptop that has 4k resolution. Its nice and all, but when I try to run ZC on it, the program looks very blurry and my cursor is tiny. I think this is a result of my laptop trying to scale a program up to a higher resolution its not meant to run in. How can I fix this? Do I have to change my laptop settings or is there something I can do within ZQuest to fix this?

 

Thanks for reading. Hopefully I can get this solved soon.

 

Here's what the engine looks like on my laptop:

Spoiler

(UI is blurry, and although you cannot see it in this image, my mouse cursor is tiny.)
 

[Timelord]

Sorry if this seems like a strange question, but I need to know if i can change the resolution of the Zquest editor. For reference, I'm using the latest complete release, not any release candidate version.

 

For christmas, I got a new laptop that has 4k resolution. Its nice and all, but when I try to run ZC on it, the program looks very blurry and my cursor is tiny. I think this is a result of my laptop trying to scale a program up to a higher resolution its not meant to run in. How can I fix this? Do I have to change my laptop settings or is there something I can do within ZQuest to fix this?

 

Thanks for reading. Hopefully I can get this solved soon.

 

Here's what the engine looks like on my laptop:

Spoiler

(UI is blurry, and although you cannot see it in this image, my mouse cursor is tiny.)
 

 

Menus->Etc->Options->Set Video mode

: Windowed 320x240

: Windowed 800x640

: Fullscreen

 

So, pretty much, no other options, You can drop your desktop resultion with a macro or something, and launch zquest from the macro, but as yet there are no high-res modes.

[Lüt]

Jeez, did that come with a 32" screen or what? What an insane resolution.

 

It does look like really bad upscaling, so I have to ask - did you use the 2x option in ZC Launcher? If you go to the ZQuest tab, top right of the Option Set 1 window, there's a Scale option that lets you select up to 4x. Apparently it closes the program if it can't fit onto your screen, so I don't know what 2x looks like since it's just a handful of pixels too tall for me to try (which is to say, I don't know if there would be forced upscale blurring, or if it would scale properly).

 

The reason I ask is, since I don't know if the upscale blurring is inherent to the program or your video drivers, it may be worth looking into any kind of control panel your display came with to see if you have control options for this kind of thing. For example, I have a Radeon card, and the drivers include an ATI Catalyst Control Center, where I can pick my display panel, go to its attributes tab, and select things like enable/disable GPU scaling, and what kind of scaling I would like it to do. For example, when I run ZC fullscreen with "maintain aspect ratio" selected, it will keep the proper ratio but upscale it (with blurring) to fit the height of the monitor, leaving black bars on each side; "scale image to full panel size" will stretch it to fit the widescreen length as well as the height (with even worse blurring); and "use centered timings" will display the program at its exact given ratio with no upscale blurring, leaving black bars on both the side and the top. Or I can just disable it to get rid of any upscale blurring - unless, of course, the upscale blurring is inherent in the program.

 

So, if it's still blurry even with ZC Launcher's Scale option, then see if you have a video card control panel that lets you set options like those.

[DarkDragon]

The next version of ZC/ZQ will have somewhat better handling of large resolutions.

 

There will still be horrible aliasing any time you try to force a resolution that is not an integer multiple of 320 x 240 (ZC and ZQ) or 800 x 600 (ZQ only). Unfortunately I do not believe anything can be done about this in the short-term.

 

In the next version, if you force ZQ to use 2400x1800, it should look OK (though blocky) and the mouse cursor should be a reasonable size.

Edited by DarkDragon, 17 January 2017 - 03:30 AM.

[ShadowTiger]

.... that is not an integer multiple of 320 x 240 (ZC and ZQ) or 800 x 600 (ZQ only).

So 1280 x 960 should work?

[Timelord]

So 1280 x 960 should work?

 

Work, aye, but it will not be pretty.

[DarkDragon]

So 1280 x 960 should work?

Yes! In fact this resolution is now built into the ZC menu, and is the resolution I personally use for playing quests and testing ZC.

[ShadowTiger]

That's beyond fantastic. Now if only alt-tabbing repeatedly won't make ZQuest think I'm constantly pressing an arrow key. :-P ZC has its own key-press related issues.

But that's wonderful. Thank you very much.

[Timelord]

That's beyond fantastic. Now if only alt-tabbing repeatedly won't make ZQuest think I'm constantly pressing an arrow key. :-P ZC has its own key-press related issues.

But that's wonderful. Thank you very much.

 

That's been fixed via allegro 4.4. It's not an arrow key: Allegro 4.2 gets stuck in a loop where it believe that the tab key is pressed despite the modifier being released.

 

FWIW, I typically wouldn't want to run at more than doubled size, because to me, 16-pixel sprites, and tiles, look awful when you enlarge them beyond a certain size.

Edited by ZoriaRPG, 17 January 2017 - 08:44 PM.

[ShadowTiger]

That's been fixed via allegro 4.4. It's not an arrow key: Allegro 4.2 gets stuck in a loop where it believe that the tab key is pressed despite the modifier being released.

Whoah. Is that a thing I can download right now, .. Allegro 4.4, .. and slide into any recent'ish ZC folder? Or is that only functional with the builds you've been doing in the past month? It's a problem I'd like to solve sooner rather than later, but only if it's convenient. I'm trying to keep one quest I'm working on within the scope of 2.50.1 RC3 (From September 2016) if that's the proper name for that build. I can't keep track of the numbers anymore. x X.

But that's really exciting regardless. Internet emoticons do not do it proper justice, sirs and ma'ams and others.
 

FWIW, I typically wouldn't want to run at more than doubled size, because to me, 16-pixel sprites, and tiles, look awful when you enlarge them beyond a certain size.

Aye, I can dig it. Some things would look awful. All I'm really trying to do with such a high resolution is keep my window sizes consistent. I keep most of my non-Firefox windows at 1280x960 resolution due to being able to see my Firefox tabs behind the window at the top of the screen. Very handy. That, and having larger text. It doesn't have to be beautiful and anti-aliased and all that. It just needs to not have me lean forward in my little sofa-chair with the kidney-bean shaped keyboard tray draped across the armrests on my lap. It's a really weird setup I have.