I can't change the resolution at all

[pappy12345]

I've been playing on a 4k monitor for a few months, and I was able to get the game to display in a properly scaled 1080p resolution by disabling the advanced dpi settings on the .exe files (as described in the 4k thread). Today, when I launched the game, it freaked out switched my desktop to my second monitor and messed up my resolution. When I tried playing with the settings to fix it, it shoved the game in the corner of the screen so everything was cut off or just showed a mangled version of my desktop in the wrong resolution. It was so bad that I had to delete my options file to restore defaults. Now, it won't let me change resolution at all. It defaults to 4k, and when I change to anything else, it brings up the "do you want to accept changes" screen but doesn't actually change anything.

I just played the game on Saturday night (April 2 2022) with no issue, and I don't think the game updated since then, so I'm at a loss. The initial issue I had may have been Windows doing something stupid, but now it's obviously more than that. I can't play at 4k, because the UI is ridiculously tiny at that resolution, so my game is basically unplayable now.

[Beard]

Have you tried editing the options.ini file? And could you check whether the monitor you are trying to set the resolution to is set as the Main Monitor in the windows settings?

[pappy12345]

I deleted the options.ini file at one point to restore defaults when it got so messed up that I couldn't even get to the options menu, but that's the only thing that ever worked with that file. Any changes I tried to make there wouldn't register in game.

[Beard]

Try disconnecting the second monitor, delete everything in the Zomboid folder except the Saves folder, then try starting the game again?

[pappy12345]

It does the same thing it's done every time I've deleted options.ini. It launches in windowed mode at 1920x1080, which fills about a quarter of the screen. If I set it fullscreen or borderless windowed, it resets to 4k. If I then try to change the resolution, it switches to something I didn't pick and gets all blobby and blocky because it isn't scaling properly. It also then goes into that mode where, if I try to change resolution again, it brings up the confirm changes screen without changing anything.

[Beard]

I would recommend checking whether the scaling in the .exe is still applied in that case, and I would recommend switching between the system scaling or the app scaling, as I am not exactly sure which one of those has the best results.

[pappy12345]

I've tried all of that. When I first checked the dps settings in the .exe, it had re-enabled, but now I've tried disabling it and letting it use system and app scaling, all with basically the same result. Still, before I messed with that initially a few months back, I could freely select a resolution, it just looked messed up depending on the scaling. I wouldn't think that setting would cause the issues I'm having with the game refusing to change resolution or going nuts and not displaying when I pick certain resolutions. Aren't the dpi settings just related to blockiness/blurriness?

[pappy12345]

So I finally got windowed mode to work with ~2k resolution (not quite because of the window). I'm not sure what I did, and I still can't get fullscreen or borderless window to work, but at least a have a legible playable version now. And hopefully, since it's windowed, my second monitor won't mess anything up.

For some reason, it seems like my issue is revolving around the game wanting to go off the bottom right side of my monitor. When I launch it in windowed, most of the window is off that side of the screen, and when I try to switch to borderless window, the confirm changes box is cut off on that side of the screen. I'm not sure what would be causing that, or if it's actually the games fault, or something with my computer, but so far this is the only game with that issue.

I appreciate the help. I'd still like to get actual fullscreen or borderless window to work if possible.

[Beard]

Borderless windowed mode will always scale up to the current monitor resolution. Meaning if you want to use any custom settings you would need to use the fullscreen or windowed modes for testing. Have you tried changing the settings in the options.ini or was all this testing you mentioned done through the in game settings? You mentioned that the resolution set in the options.ini doesnt apply properly, though this could be due to the fact that borderless mode always scales up to the max.

[pappy12345]

I tried making changes in the options.ini file, but never saw them make any difference when I launched the game. I'm not sure if I did that in fullscreen or borderless window, though. At this point, I'm a bit afraid to mess with anything now that it's sort of working. I'll try copying my options.ini file to my desktop to preserve it, then play with it. Hopefully then I can at least get back to what I have if nothing else works.

[pappy12345]

When I change options.ini to fullscreen and 1920x1080, it switches itself to 1280x720 and won't let me change it in game.