[TEC] Rendering / Resolution Question (Engine vs GUI)

[RushTheBus]

Hi all,

I have a question regarding rendering and resolution. I'm currently running at 2560x1440 IPS panel w/ a GTX 980 and running "Ahnenerbe WideGui 1920 x 1080 Final." Just messing about i edited the d3d9.cfg to reflect 2560x1440. In that resolution the GUI was totally skewed the the image quality in the 3D scene was breathtaking.

I want to preserve the image quality in the 3d scene that the 2560x1440 resolution offers but don't want the GUI to be skewed (the entire right hand side of it was completely out of whack). Is there a way to have the GUI stretcher across a resolution edited by the d3d9.cfg (my monitor is set to scale via GPU in aspect ratio mode)?

That said, i also am curious to know how hard it is to adjust a GUI for high resolution displays. I'm a bit of a fidelity nut and i really am digging that QHD resolution.

Thanks for the input ahead of time.

Rush

[BigWalleye]

It isn't difficult, but it is a lot of work. Most of the major elements of the GUI will have to be relocated in Menu_1024_768.ini. The individual components should be OK, but of course, they will be reduced in apparent size by 50%, so they will be harder to read and the gauges will be harder to set accurately.

All of the 2D screen backgrounds will have to be resized from 1920x1080 to 2560x1440. This includes not only the static screens, like the load screen, menu screens, crew status, etc, but also the periscope and UZO backdrops. You could just stretch them in a bitmap graphics program like Photoshop or Paint.NET, which would not cause any distortion but would visibly degrade image quality. If that result in unsatisfactory, then you will need to create your own screens at the higher resolution.

If you want to tackle this project, I'd suggest you PM either Ahnenerbe or VanJast, who have done the two 1920x1080 mods. They can give you a better idea of what is involved and possibly have some thoughts on how to do this most efficiently.

Good luck.

[RushTheBus]

I appreciate the reply. I will give those guys a shout (hopefully they are still around). I was hoping that the 3d environment was somehow rendered in such a way where it could scale higher than the GUI had to.

The task doesn't seem difficult (just by looking through the files as they are mostly images) just exceedingly time consuming. If there is enough interest i may very well look into working on it.

[RushTheBus]

Does anyone know if SH4 and SH3 are built on-top of the same engine? The reason i ask is because i also have SH4 and that game scales perfectly to my monitor's higher resolution.

Does anyone that has knowldge on the issue know if we could somehow port over a file or files to enable to much higher resolutions?

The d3d9.dll and d3d9.cfg files never seem to work in my favor.

[RushTheBus]

I doubt anyone is actually watching this thread, but i'll post a bit of progress. After looking through a series of old threads here i decided to try to edit the 1024_768.ini file of Ahnenerbe's 1080p widescreen mod ( i shot him a PM but have yet to hear back).

I'm not a programmer, so i decided to try my luck for simply searching for every entry of "1920" and replacing that with "2560" and then doing the same procedure for "1080." After replacing 1920 w/ 2560 and 1080 w/ 1440 i activated it.

As i figured, the loading the screens were misaligned but the main screen was fine. I loaded up a naval academy mission and was kind of shocked. The UI looked stunning (far crisper and clean than it does on 1080p) and the UI elements were only misaligned slightly.

I really don't know where to go from there. Searching UI elements by their file-names in the 1024_768.ini file indicates position coordinates but i have no idea how to read them.

I would be happy to collaborate with someone on a project like this, as i really don't have much in terms of the technical programming ability involved.

Rush

[pedalboat]

Yes, I'm watching and reading it. But the thing is that I don't have a widescreen monitor, but you and all the people with the same problem have my sympathy.
I can't be of help here.

[BigWalleye]

There is a menu.ini guide on Plissken's FTP site, under that screen name "Scudder". It's a good place to start.

There are also 2 good tutorials on SubSim, here http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=111832 and here
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...8.ini&langid=5. The first one is on an SH4 thread, but the file layout is exactly the same, so it all applies. These should help you get started.

[sublynx]

Scudder's menu guide can also be found from the downloads section for SH3.

If you can read German I believe Bl!tzkr!egs mediafire downloads has Latemail's menu guide in the documents section. I might find that guide hanging around somewhere in my computer if you can't find it there.

I don't have a big screen so I'm not much use otherwise, but i'm sure someone can point you towards easier solutions to any problems if you post them here.

[RushTheBus]

Sadly, i cannot read German. Honestly, this seems like an almost impossible task for me. I understand the general concept of the pos= functions and figured out how some of them work ( and was able to adjust a few parameters to make more items work). That said, i feel like i would be shooting in the dark with some of the positions of items (and having to constantly check in game over and over again) - there has to be a better way.

Is there not a way, in the DLL files to specify to scale the GUI while rendering the 3D environment in 2560x1440?

[banryu79]

What it is in the need, I think, is a tool able to read/edit the Menu_1024_768.ini file and represents it in a GUI in a tree like component with selectable items and a properties panel to show/edit the values of interest (x_pos, y_pos, width, height and other stuff) of a selected item/component.

A tool like this will speed up very much any current and future modding efforts about the game GUI...

[BigWalleye]

Originally Posted by banryu79

What it is in the need, I think, is a tool able to read/edit the Menu_1024_768.ini file and represents it in a GUI in a tree like component with selectable items and a properties panel to show/edit the values of interest (x_pos, y_pos, width, height and other stuff) of a selected item/component.

A tool like this will speed up very much any current and future modding efforts about the game GUI...

I think that is a great idea! I believe that in the past someone tried to make such a beast for SH4. Dunno how it turned out. You might want to start there.

[sublynx]

A tool like that would revolutionize GUI development!

[RushTheBus]

Basically, that is what is needed because other than the resolution x & y factors in the 1024_768.ini all the positions seem arbitrary. I tried to scale them (the position coordinates of GUI elements) up 60% (given that 1440p offers roughly 60% more screen real-estate) but that didn't work as i had assumed it would have.

I read over a bunch of old threads last night and (mostly from Rubini & Seeadler) but they are almost 5 years old and don't really offer any new information or insight. I almost feel as though we would need someone to create a new dll to support additional resolution (i attempted to find a free program to decompile the d3d9.dll but couldn't).

Just seems bizarre to me that with the level of talent here this hasn't been addressed before.

[pedalboat]

I know of a program that reads assembler code for both executables and dll files, but I don't what it can really do.
Just google for:

OllyDbg v1.10

[BigWalleye]

Originally Posted by RushTheBus

Sadly, i cannot read German. Honestly, this seems like an almost impossible task for me. I understand the general concept of the pos= functions and figured out how some of them work ( and was able to adjust a few parameters to make more items work). That said, i feel like i would be shooting in the dark with some of the positions of items (and having to constantly check in game over and over again) - there has to be a better way.

In my post above, I gave you three sources of information, none of which is in German. All are written in English. I have read and used all three of these sources in the past, and they have helped me to learn how to edit the menu_1024_768.ini for my personal use. I am sure that you could find them helpful also.