4 replies to this topic

[kurt91]

It's been a while since I messed with ZC, but I started playing some quests on here recently. I know it's a minor thing, but it still drives me nuts how the bottom row of the screen is cut in half and you can only see the top half.

 

I know it would break some scripted visual effects, but I was wondering if there's any way we can get a setting toggle that we can turn on and off to expand the window just enough to be able to view the entire bottom row of the screen, and just include a warning that it may cause glitches on scripted quests. (If there could be a check in ZScript to be able to see if that setting is turned on or off, for future compatibility, that would be even better!) The launcher does have a number of options already that it warns can potentially break some things, so there is precedent in this case, sort of.

 

I could swear this was something asked in the past, but I looked back a few pages and didn't see anything, so I apologize if this is beating a dead horse.

Edited by kurt91, 08 April 2024 - 12:39 AM.

[Emily]

It would require rewriting a bunch of stuff in the engine's drawing code, so it's a fairly difficult ask.

[Russ]

... I believe you cuz ZC is dumb like that, but I'm curious why it would. Can you not just add an extra eight pixels to the screen size? Is every draw hard coded to assume a rigid size of the total draw space?

[Emily]

... I believe you cuz ZC is dumb like that, but I'm curious why it would. Can you not just add an extra eight pixels to the screen size? Is every draw hard coded to assume a rigid size of the total draw space?

it would be extra 8 pixels to hardcoded screen size numbers in god knows how many hundreds thousands of locations (and its numbers not constants, so no just updating a name, and no find+replace since other things can use those same numbers), AND there are several places that have bitmaps of multiple screens stitched together, so those will also need 8 pixels not just on height, but on a y-offset as well. And then the fun of testing that all that rewriting didn't miss anything / break anything.

 

Plus then whatever logic we need on the viewport to actually show it on the hardware screen.

 

Definitely not an insanely COMPLEX task, just an obscene amount of extreme tedium.

[Russ]

Ah... gotcha. That sounds about par for the course for ZC. Does sound like replacing those numbers with variables to make future stuff easier could be a good idea, but I do not blame you for not wanting to deal with the mess of it at the moment.