How difficult is it to set up a new screen resolution interface?

[Pausanias]

Hello!

My problem: I have a laptop with a 1680x1050 screen. I dislike playing at anything other than native resolution. And I dislike playing with a black border (or god forbid, my windows desktop) around my game. Yes, I can put up with the tiny characters running around.

How difficult would it be to set up a 1680x1050 playing interface without modifying the EXEs? Impossible?

I would even be happy with getting the 1280x960 mode working correctly (i.e., without the ugly 680x480 border interface). Any idea how difficult this would be? Any pointers?

I would even be happy somehow getting my laptop to "double up" the 640x480 resolution mode, i.e., display four pixels in place of one in 640x480 mode.

I much appreciate your replies.

[jcompton]

The resolution is very much a "hard-coded" matter.

You might try attacking the problem from the opposite angle, actually--try to find out how you can customize your display so that the available resolutions display more to your liking.

[Avenger_teambg]

I understood your problem up until the last sentence.
If you don't mind doubling up the pixels, then why don't you use the 640x480 mode?

I found 800x600 the best, good resolution and the characters are still visible.
And it is always good to have them non-fullscreen, but it is more like for modding reasons.
What about cleaning your desktop before playing.

[Pausanias]

Well, I was merely expressing the order of preference. My main issue is that on my 1680x1050 laptop, 1024x768 looks too small when played in a window, and too blurry when played full screen (laptops look somewhat blurry at anything other than maximum resolution).

The goal here is to get as big an interface as will fit on my screen at maximum resolution. I.e. I want to set my screen to 1680x1050 and get BG2 to be as large as possible on that screen.

Ideally, I would like a 1680x1050 playing interface. Looks like this is too difficult to do.

The next best thing is to get the "unsupported" 1280x960 interface working (it is broken now). Looks like no one knows how to do this or where to even start looking. I was hoping one of you folks, experts that you are, could at least point to the file in which it's stored, for starters.

The next best thing after that is to set the game to 680x480 or 800x600, and figure out a way to tell my computer to double up the pixels in the BG2 application. Lots of Googling, and I found no way to do this. Remember, the screen resolution in Windows is set to 1680x1050... I'm trying to figure out how to get the BG2 application, which is running inside a window on the 1680x1050 screen, to run with the pixels doubled up. (In doubled 800x600 mode, I would be missing 150 lines of material at the top, but that is no biggie).

[Avenger_teambg]

How the 1280 resolution is broken?
It is a bit ugly with 800x600 in double frames, but the playing field is ok.
Just the characters/buttons are too small.

[Borsook]

I rember there once was an application designed to run old games with higher resolutions screens, it did things like pixel-doubling but it never got out of beta I think... But it wouldn't look perferct, the blurring effect you get with LCD screen "streching" lower res picture should not be worse... As for small buttons/text in higher res, theoretically one could design an interface which would look in e.g. 1024x768 like it does now in 640x480 (bigger button/font so you could run it at lower res). But considering there are xxxx mods for IE and only two custom made "skins" I don't find it very likely o happen.

[Pausanias]

It is broken in that it causes the game to crash. Try installing Tutu, going to the Friendly Arms Inn, and joining up with Jaheira and Khalid. Now try to view Khalid's inventory. Crashes in 1280x960 and 1600x1200, but works in 1024x768.

Also see this post by jcompton regarding the bugginess of the two higher resolution modes:

Please do not report bugs related to running Tutu with a screen resolution higher than 1024x768. If you are experiencing crashing, try reducing your resolution to 1024x768 or 800x600. We are aware that higher resolutions make the game less stable for some users. These problems also have been known to occur in stock BG2, but seem to appear more often with Tutu installed. We do not at present know if there is any way to fix the problem.

How the 1280 resolution is broken?
It is a bit ugly with 800x600 in double frames, but the playing field is ok.
Just the characters/buttons are too small.

[Borsook]

You're right, I use 800x600 and forgotten about it... one of the reasons I'm not going to switch to LCD.

[foot]

I have a LCD with a native res of 1280x1024 and I run the game at 800x600 fullscreen with no black borders (at 1024x768 the small buttons and text cause squinting). I did this using a function in the monitor which automatically stretches and adjusts the image so it looks its best at resolutions other than native (by default it would just display the 800x600 pixels and leave black borders around it). It loses a bit of the razor sharpness , but it still looks better than what most CRTs would put out.

[Borsook]

1st not all the LCD have this function, secondly if you're LCD is 1280x1024 it means it has that many physical "pixels" if you devide it by 800x600 you'll get 1.6x1.7. Your screen cannot light 1.6 nor 1.7 pixels so what it does is for some it uses 2 and for some 1, so when looking very closely that the picture is a bit disfugured.