Temporary fix for widescreen users

[b0le]

WARNING No. 1: The suggested solution doesn't really auto-magically add support for 16:10 resolutions, far from it. You'll have to wait for the Code Master™ himself (/me bows to the almighty Code Master™!!!) to consider whether it's worth going through the trouble of redoing probably quite a significant portion of the code. The proposed solution does fix an annoying graphical glitch some (if not all? ) widescreen LCD users have been reporting with resolutions above 1024x768. Read on if you can live with black bars running down the sides of the screen.

Can't sleep because you're having nightmares caused by graphical glitches like these?



Banging with your head against the wall ever since the release of this marvelous piece of software because you can't play on fullscreen resolutions higher than 1024x768? Have you been posting all over the forum about similar issues and desperately trying to find a solution? Already tried manually overriding the resolution in init.cfg but now your image is horizontally stretched? Or blurry because the resolution doesn't match your native LCD resolution and your display and/or graphic card is doing internal scaling? Well, the following might just work for you:

Check your display properties (Control Panel > Display in XP or Control Panel > Appearance and Personalization > Adjust screen resolution in Vista (or better yet: just click with the right mouse button on your desktop, choose Properties in XP, Personalize > Display Settings in Vista). Play around with the resolution slider and check for resolutions between 1024x768 and 1680x1050 (1920x1200 or whatever your maximum resoultion is). You'll probably notice all the classics ranging from SXGA (1280x1024), WXGA+ (1440×900), WSXGA+ (1680×1050), WUXGA (if a huge > 24" beast is standing on your desk ) etc. Notice there are actually no standard resolutions above 1152×864 with an aspect ratio of 4:3 (not including UXGA at 1600x1200 and QXGA at 2048×1536, both of them probably just out of reach of your shiny new 16:10 widescreen LCD ). Makes you wonder why 1280x960 and 1440x1050 were even included as an option in Aquaria if your system doesn't really support them (what's even worse - the game makes you think you're running 1280x960 or 1440x1050 when in fact you aren't - you fall somewhere in-between and all sorts of graphical anomalies start appearing).

Ahh, but there's always the options of adding custom resolutions to your system (WARNING No. 2: only perform the following steps if you're a highly trained professional ).

This should probably work for most of you nVidia users out there. Only tested with Vista32 and GeForce 8800 GTX though:

1. Grab RivaTuner (v2.06 as of writing) from here. Run the installation, disable the memory-mapped I/O protection by unticking the second installation option. Run the program.
2. Choose Customize... and run the Custom display modes / refresh rates wizard as seen below:



3. Type in 1280 for mode width and 960 for mode height. Type 60 into the Refresh rates list input field. Click the Add button and ignore the warning message.



4. Clicking Add will bring you to the previous window. Repeat steps 2 and 3, this time inputting the resolution 1400x1050.
5. Click Apply / OK, close RivaTuner, reboot.
6. Open nVidia's Control Panel, click on the View menu > Advanced. Choose Display > Change flat panel scaling > Do not scale.



7. Run Aquaria's configuration, choose 1280x960 or 1400x1050. The latter should be perfect for all 16:10 users with max. resolution of 1680x1050, you'll only get 140 pixels of black bars on both sides of the image. You can leave the scaling to nVidia (just skip step 6), but I prefer black bars to stretched (and blurry) image.
8. Should be safe to uninstall RivaTuner now.
9. Well, there's always the option of just forgetting everything and plugging one of those good old CRTs you have lying around. Not to mention the response time is at least 10-times better than with LCDs (did I mention my 32" Philips 32PFL9632/10LCD TV is lagging at least 100 ms behind my Apple 20" LCD? Check here ).

[Alphasoldier]

Very nicely done, thanks, but the intro is pathetic. :p

Also, the widescreen update is coming also when the Mac version is being released, so have some patience or something.

[Hiro]

Meh, hes allowed to find work-arounds for the month or so untill an official patch fixes it if he wants. I have an ATI card though, so it doesn't help me. XD

[b0le]

Very nicely done, thanks, but the intro is pathetic. :p

Ohh, I can fix it right away, which part was the most annoying? The red WARNING No.1?

[b0le]

Meh, hes allowed to find work-arounds for the month or so untill an official patch fixes it if he wants. I have an ATI card though, so it doesn't help me. XD

Well, RivaTuner does offer limited support for ATI cards, might as well try if it works. You can always resort to other not-so-user-friendly methods of adding custom resolutions.

[Alec]

Sounds like a cool "hack".

And of course, built-in widescreen support is on the way.

[Alphasoldier]

The sales talk is pathetic. =p

And yes the red text too, I just don't like those sale talk things like Tellsell, they also talk like that, but I guess that's the joke. =p

[Cliftor]

Only tested with Vista32 and GeForce 8800 GTX though

I have some input that may help anyone using Vista 64bit (like me).  Vista x64 enforces the loading of signed drivers only.  I haven't tried it yet, but I believe RivaTuner requires the ALSysIO64.sys driver, which is unfortunately not signed.

HOWEVER, there is a simple workaround which I use to force ALSysIO64.sys to load so I can run CoreTemp, another system monitor/utility goody.  There is an executable called Atsiv.exe, which is free, that can force unsigned drivers to load as long as you temporarily give it admin privileges to complete it's operation (ie: You have to answer a UAC prompt).

You have to run it from the command line, but you can write a simple batch file to handle that.

Here are the complete directions:

1) Go here and download the zip file at the bottom.  It contains CoreTemp (you won't need that), Atsiv and ALSysIO64.sys (which you will need).  It also has a sample batch file, but I'll walk you through it anyway for RivaTuner
2) Place Atsiv in the same folder as RivaTuner.exe for simplicity.
3) Open Notepad
4) Copy and paste the following italicized text EXACTLY as shown (for the BOLD part you should put whatever the folder path for RivaTuner.exe is for you):
Atsiv -u ALSysIO64.sys
Atsiv -f ALSysIO64.sys
Start "CoreTemp" "C:\Whatever\your\folder\is\here\RivaTuner.exe
5) Save this (call it whatever) to your RivaTuner folder too and close.  Rename this text file from whatever.txt to whatever.bat
6) If you've never done something like this before, you've just made a batch file.  Just double click it to run it and the command line should briefly appear, Atsiv will load the driver, and RivaTuner will start.  You'll have to answer the UAC prompt (probably three times).

Since Atsiv only loads the drivers temporarily (and that's a good thing), you'll have to do this each time you want to run the batch file.  Like bole said, though, you only need to use RivaTuner once.

I hope this helps, it certainly helped me.  You can use Atsiv all you want to force drivers you want to use to load.  I do NOT believe it is a security risk because it still needs your admin approval to run, and you can query Atsiv in the command line to tell you all the drivers it currently has loaded.

I do not recommend using it to load drivers you don't necessarily trust.  I only use it for  ALSysIO64.sys.