Resolution settings on Desura build of the game

[Bartosz Dębski]

Current build of the game published on Desura has a locked resolution. It will be good for a player to adjust it as game screens are showing it being possible. UI and map elements are not scaled but resolution is, which creates a much better visual effect on monitors with large resolutions. Pixelation with current, locked resolution on bigger monitors and different aspect ratios is unpleasant. Game is playable but not really pleasant to look at.

Additional complain is where game is advertised by screenshots on Desura Service with higher resolution than is actually available in the game on that service.

My proposal is to either add a resolution selection dialog window before game starts or add a parameter so it can be set on command line (switch). If dialog window is a "weapon of choice" please make sure it works under Linux as well.

[Steffen Pankratz]

An easy solution would be to add an switch, so you could play the game with the native resolution of your display. This would mean even more up-scaling, which really doesn't look nice. Is that what you are asking for?

[Bartosz Dębski]

If switch is easy, then great. I'm not sure is that up-scaling. I describe this as higher resolution, where game art is not scaled, so in bigger resolution it becomes smaller.

Eg. Fullscreen in below link shows empty space on UI, which leads me to believe that assets has not been scaled and main map area is bigger (contains not scaled art assets and have them more on the screen)

http://www.desura.com/games/earth-2140-gold-edition/images/resource-management

Below is pic of my 1080p 22" monitor, where everything is stretched out. Unit models are heavily pixelated and i belive that resolution change will make it game more visually enjoyable.

[Steffen Pankratz]

You can try the attached binary. This one has no limit, it tries to run the game at nearly the same resolution as your desktop is running on. It's just up-scaling, so it will probably not look nice at big screen at a high resolution.

[Bartosz Dębski]

@kratz00 Thanks for this. I will check it out today and report back.

[Bartosz Dębski]

OK, I have ran new binary but i see no improvement, same output as I mentioned in previous post. I got an segmentation fault though :

#!

Compiler: GCC 4.4.5
Build time: Apr 15 2014 21:35:31
Build revision: ca61d2ec24c508b578995e7624e1bedb8679a721
Build type: RelWithDebInfo (Full Version)
CFLAGS:  -Wall -Wextra -Wno-unused -Wno-long-long -Wno-variadic-macros  -m32 -O3 -ggdb -DNDEBUG
CXXFLAGS:  -Wall -Wextra -Wno-unused -Wno-long-long -Wno-variadic-macros  -m32 -O3 -ggdb -DNDEBUG 


Backtrace:
linux-gate.so.1 : __kernel_rt_sigreturn+0 [0xffffe410]
./Earth2140 : VR_Menu(VR_Param*)+0x792 [0x8098592]
./Earth2140 : MainMenu()+0x5c7 [0x80c3297]
./Earth2140 : main+0x70d [0x80c431d]
/lib/libc.so.6 : __libc_start_main+0xf3 [0xf72617a3]
./Earth2140() [0x8073021]

Dist: Slackware 14.1 64bit with 32compat libs

Kernel : 3.10.17 Linux r2d2 3.10.17 #2 SMP Fri Feb 14 16:45:28 CST 2014 x86_64 AMD FX(tm)-6100 Six-Core Processor AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux

Nvidia drivers : 331.20

I have just executed binary. Game works apart from the message in the console.

[Steffen Pankratz]

As I wrote you will not see any improvement, more likely you will see the opposite. The game will still up-scale 800x600, with the old binary to a 1024x768 window and with the new one the window of the same size of your desktop. Of course you will not see much difference running the game in fullscreen mode :) You can start the game with the WIN parameter to run it in windowed mode.

Regarding the crash, it looks like #2 but I can not reproduce the problem. Do you have any steps how to reproduce the crash?

[Steffen Pankratz]

@braqoon I did not hear back from you, are you ok? In the mean while I fixed the crash, see issue #2 and implemented something which you might find alot better than the current one :)

Please try the new binary, named 'Earth2140_improved' and report back, thanks.

[Bartosz Dębski]

Hi @kratz00 I'm good thanks. I was away for few days. I have just tested and yes ! that's amazing. Looks beautiful now, see attached.

I would suggest updating Desura build and let peoples know. Thank you for this patch.

[Steffen Pankratz]

Hi Bartosz,

thanks for the feedback. Now that all tickets have been fixed, we are going the release an update, but this will take some time (internal QA and after that the Desura QA will also take some time).