Aquaria FAQ

[Sfiera]

Well, if you verified that the extra width wouldn't ruin any secrets, I'd be happy to have it

If you were concerned about a later outcry, though, you could always start a poll here first. I'm sure anyone that would care enough to complain would be here now to voice an opinion.

[Hiro]

Personally I would like to see black bars at the sides. It seems like a perfectly alright solution to me. Just like running the game windowed, but without the task bar and stuff; and the game acts like its in fullscreen.

[Zaratus]

I did a bit of looking into it - depending on your video card, some support bars on the side, though it's not always the obvious setting.  And I had to update my video drivers to even get the option to appear.  But, I can at least say what I had to do with my nvidia card.

Right click desktop, pick NVIDIA control panel.  Under the Display settings, there was another category called 'Change flat panel scaling' for me, in there, I clicked the radio button that says Use NVIDIA scaling with fixed-aspect ratio.

Not sure if it works for everything, but I checked a few games out.  One that supports wide screen resolution worked like it did before I changed it - another that semi-supported it (i.e. it lets me pick 1440x900 in the game settings, but it still stretches the screen), it gave it black bars on either side, and the view was now no longer stretched.  Which is precisely what I wanted to occur.  Not to mention, updating my video drivers looks like it made some of those games look better than ever.  =D  And I'm sure it helps too that two of the ones I tested are no longer stretched.  (Cave Story being one of those two.)

So, check into your video card settings - there's something else that can be done for ATI cards, but I can't help much with that.  Here is a site that may be able to help find the right settings:  http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/

[luciferin]

ATI cards do work the same way, however there are numerous bugs with either vendor's drivers.  My widescreen monitor has it with the nVidia drivers where I can't select fixed-aspect ratio, and none of the possible fixes work (even editing the EDID).  That's why I was asking if it's possible for it to be implemented in game.  Otherwise I'm gonna end up trying to run it under Wine when it comes out .

[Alec]

I'm close to getting 1440x900 to work with black bars I think!

(well not really black bars, cause its just clipping, but w/e)

Right now the problem is that its on the left side of the screen instead of the center. I should be able to shift everything over somehow tho...

(wow i really hope i don't break anything adding this )

[Zaratus]

But if it's just clipping won't it still be stretched, but just cut-off?  Unless you mean something else. 

luciferin: Huh, that's a bit odd, it just won't let you select fixed-aspect at all?  Only thing I can say is try updating the drivers, even though you probably already have.  I didn't even have those settings until I did, all it was showing was rotate the screen and setup for multiple monitors.  Or maybe it's just not supported in your video card or something.  *shrug*  Otherwise, maybe someone at the site I linked might have an idea.  Aside from their forums, here's a small blurb on pillarboxing (note overly useful, but I'll link it nonetheless)-
http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/wiki/index.php?title=Gaming_with_Blackbars_%28Pillarboxing%29  Your monitor might have settings in it if your video card doesn't want to cooperate. 

[Alec]

Its like 4:3 but in a 1440x900 area.

i.e. 1200 x 900

That bit of it works, I just need to center it + add bars on the left + right sides. (for stuff that goes off the edge of the screen normally)

But I have a feeling framebuffer effects won't work for shit under this res. Getting the reflections synced up was hell.

Well, we'll see if I can get it centered first.

[Alec]

Some kinda progress.

Mouse cursor locking stuff is broken. (Cursor centers somewhere that isn't the center... goes beyond the wrong bounds)

Couple rendering things don't work right.

But it looks like if we ever did a full widescreen mode it'd be pretty sweet.

At this point I'm not sure that I have enough time to pull off either that or black bar mode tho.

[luciferin]

Zaratus: No, I have the option for it, and it's selectable, but the output it gives is garbled.  It has to do with an improper EDID on my monitor.  It's a bug that's fixable, but it requires writing new data to the EEPROM on my monitor, which is rather tricky and risky to do.  I would have done this anyway, but my EEPROM is write protected, so I can't.  There are ways around this, but they're really not easy to do.  So far I've spent probably about ~20 hours researching this and trying out various methods, and it's different for each monitor, so not so simple.

Alec: This is great news for a lot of widescreen gamers.  I can't believe you're still doing development work days before your release, but I sure am glad that you are.  Don't drive yourself crazy of course, I can live with what I have if need be, but it's amazing that you're trying.

[Alec]

If I can get the black bar thing working I think that would be more than adequate for now... just worried that it will break a bunch of other stuff, so I may leave it out of this release.

But yeah, the potential is definitely there. I'd need some time and a less hectic week probably.

Looks beautiful on my Mac Book Pro @ 1440x900 btw!

Update: added black bars, but there's a bunch of other broken stuff. I'm not able to deal with it right now because I've got more than enough on my plate.

[luciferin]

Yeah it seems like something that would be better to implement when there's some time for testing and bug squishing available.  It's nice to hear that it's most likely going to be possible some time though.  But in the mean time, I've been playing every other game with this problem and I'm not going to let it stop me from diving into Aquaria in just three more days!

[Rook]

I wonder if people would be upset about clipping the screen. There was a huge stink when gamers found Bioshock was clipped.

(although personally it wouldn't make much difference to me either way)

Personally, I always prefer any sort of widescreen option (even when it's buggy, or the hud doesn't match up), so a cropped widescreen mode is certainly a great start if that could be worked into a future patch or update.

[Zaratus]

Best bet if you do eventually end up including it would probably be to have a toggle option on it as well - some people might prefer the stretched look rather than side bars.  *shrug* 

Still, I wouldn't worry about it until after the release - I'd hate to see the release get marred by some bugs introduced by tinkering with it.  Besides, I'm sure you have more than enough to work on with the game coming out in two days.  I can't wait! 

[Zeno]

So, just to clarify because I'm totally lost, what currently happens when you play the game on a widescreen monitor, in the build that's going to be released?

[Alec]

The first build will only do 4:3 properly.
(you can manually set the resolution in a config file, but it will be kinda messed up when you run it if it isn't 4:3)

For some widescreen monitors/video cards, you can center the 4:3 screen at the right aspect ratio. (so it'll fill the space vertically, and on the left and right sides there will be black bars) That capability is dependent on your video card, video card drivers and your LCD monitor. If its not supported by your hardware, what it will do is stretch horizontally to fill the space.

Again, that's just what drivers + monitors do automatically and it depends which kind you have. Above I was working on a solution that could work on anything. (and looking ahead to possibly having a true widescreen mode at some point) But I really can't afford to spend the time on that now for obvious reasons.