4K Support?

[Troldmand]

I recently bought a gaming laptop with native 4K resolution. I quickly found out that this game does not have support for such resolutions since the units became like ants. Sure, it was nice to get a much bigger overview, but it's impossible to play like that.

Are there plans to optimize the game for the 4K resolution any time soon? I try to change resolution to 1080p but in game everything still gets squashed to microscopic size for some reason.
It would be great to play the game at the scale it was intended for so I don't strain my eyes as much.

[Hagar]

I don't think that will ever happen. I would love it if one day they made AoE4 and it was pretty much this exact game with modern graphics. Then you could have your 4K dream... maybe.

[Laptop]

1080p is the best res to play this on I'd say. Any larger and you're going to be playing with Ants.

[Wafflesaurus Supreme]

Native 4k resolution on a laptop is an extremely stupid engineering flaw.

[straufer]

hi, i have this problem too, can you change the resolution to 1600 * 900? i no can play this :( or how changue resolution game

[MS Ryz0n]

The game utilizes your system resolution, if you wish to play at lower res, just set windows to run at the desired resolution temporarily.
Yes it's quite small on screen at 4K.

[Hagar]

ahh... I see. So in fact AoE2 does support 4K. So the OPs problem is that the screen size of his monitor is to small to comfortably utilize 4K. If he want the units to be larger he needs to either get a bigger monitor OR reduce the resolution of his montior when he plays AoE2.

[Troldmand]

I've been troubleshooting issues with resolution on this laptop (Lenovo Y50) and the common denominator seems to be that games are not yet optimized for 4K resolution, and changing the resolution in windows somehow does not affect resolution in games for some reason. Since 4K is basically 4 1080p screens squashed together to fit in the screen and the graphics are not upscaled in any way, what happens is I get four times the overview of the battlefield, but the units, buildings and everything becomes four times as small. Strategically, of course there is an advantage, but it still feels weird and is somewhat straining on the eyes.

The optimal way to play is the size it was intended for. That is, we get the same dimensions and scale as in 1080p. To achieve this in 4K, naturally, all graphics have to be increased 4 times in resolution to take the same amount of space on the screen in 4K as they do in 1080p.

That's basically my question: if there are plans to do that, so that we get the same size and dimensions in 4K as we do in 1080p.

[Turbo Nozomix]

Originally posted by MS Ryz0n:

The game utilizes your system resolution, if you wish to play at lower res, just set windows to run at the desired resolution temporarily.
Yes it's quite small on screen at 4K.

That's a non-solution and lazy dev answer. Just add support for 4K resolution. AOE2 HD is a modern game release, so it should support modern resolutions. 4K is now a modern resolution, and more and more people are going to be using it.

All it takes is making a settings options that allows the user to manually choose a resolution.

[Hagar]

Originally posted by Driving-School Piccolo:

Originally posted by MS Ryz0n:

The game utilizes your system resolution, if you wish to play at lower res, just set windows to run at the desired resolution temporarily.
Yes it's quite small on screen at 4K.

That's a non-solution and lazy dev answer. Just add support for 4K resolution. AOE2 HD is a modern game release, so it should support modern resolutions. 4K is now a modern resolution, and more and more people are going to be using it.

All it takes is making a settings options that allows the user to manually choose a resolution.

But its not really a modern game release though, is it? It an old game that has been tweaked to run on modern sytems. Or at least that is my understanding. That is why it doesn't have super snazzy hyper-real graphics like Company of Heroes 2 (or other relatively recent RTS releases).

I think some people expectations are too high. This is Age of Empires 2 not Age of Empires 4.

[Wafflesaurus Supreme]

Originally posted by Driving-School Piccolo:

Originally posted by MS Ryz0n:

The game utilizes your system resolution, if you wish to play at lower res, just set windows to run at the desired resolution temporarily.
Yes it's quite small on screen at 4K.

That's a non-solution and lazy dev answer. Just add support for 4K resolution. AOE2 HD is a modern game release, so it should support modern resolutions. 4K is now a modern resolution, and more and more people are going to be using it.

That is just wrong. There is support for 4k resolution. It uses the system's resolution, like he said. It's up to the user to run at a resolution that is actually playable, or to purchase a 4k monitor so that the units aren't super tiny. They're not going to change the scaling of the units in relation to the terrain, nor SHOULD they.

Originally posted by Driving-School Piccolo:

All it takes is making a settings options that allows the user to manually choose a resolution.

This is not necessary, but it would be a nice feature.

[Troldmand]

Either way, before too long, 4K will become standard as 1080p has become by now since a long time ago. If this is meant to be a modernized version of AOE2 where the main purpose is to retain the classic gameplay while optimizing it to run as it originally was intended, but on modern systems, then it makes no sense to excuse the laziness of not making the game scale right in 4K resolution.

Sooner or later, more people will start to complain about it.

It's not a matter if the game runs in 4K or not, it's about the consistency of gameplay in different resolutions. Making the game scale right can either be achieved by making artwork four times the size, so it scales correspondingly, or to code the upscaling of the existent artwork in software so that it scales right.

I assume by the artwork that it was originally modelled as 3D models, then it was captured into 2D-frames for performance purposes as was the norm for strategy games when the game was released. If the developers have access to the code, then naturally, they should have access to the original models as well.

The whole thing smells a bit of a cash grab since there are some pretty bad performance issues in the game not yet ironed out even now such a long time since the release and that requests for tweaks are often replied to with implications of "do it yourself or stop complaining".

[Wafflesaurus Supreme]

Change your desktop resolution unless you want to play Ant Farm Simulator. And then stop complaining.

[aflashman]

Originally posted by Mighty Bear Seven:

Either way, before too long, 4K will become standard as 1080p has become by now since a long time ago. If this is meant to be a modernized version of AOE2 where the main purpose is to retain the classic gameplay while optimizing it to run as it originally was intended, but on modern systems, then it makes no sense to excuse the laziness of not making the game scale right in 4K resolution.

Sooner or later, more people will start to complain about it.

It's not a matter if the game runs in 4K or not, it's about the consistency of gameplay in different resolutions. Making the game scale right can either be achieved by making artwork four times the size, so it scales correspondingly, or to code the upscaling of the existent artwork in software so that it scales right.

I assume by the artwork that it was originally modelled as 3D models, then it was captured into 2D-frames for performance purposes as was the norm for strategy games when the game was released. If the developers have access to the code, then naturally, they should have access to the original models as well.

The whole thing smells a bit of a cash grab since there are some pretty bad performance issues in the game not yet ironed out even now such a long time since the release and that requests for tweaks are often replied to with implications of "do it yourself or stop complaining".

AoE2 HD never claimed to be an all new game. It is simply the old game with a few tweaks. The developers have been completely upfront about this from the beginning.

Out of all the old games that have been re-launched, AoE2 has actually worked the best. Most of the others such as Age of Mythology have had far worse problems than this version.

Personally I am grateful to the developers for re-launching the game at all. It is a classic and it is fantastic to be able to play it on steam on a modern computer/OS.

'What you are insisting the developers should have done would have meant completely redeveloping the game, in which case it would not have been Age of Empires 2 it would have been Age of Empires 4, and the price would not have been $20 at launch it would have been closer to $80 (or more).

You claim that it is a cash grab is equally silly. Producing games is a business. Developers don't work for free. Game companies are not charities. The choice is simple you buy it if you want to buy it, if not don't buy it.

If you want a game with super-high resolution graphics go and find a game launched for the first time in the last year or two, not a game that was first launched in the 1990s.

[Troldmand]

Yeah I guess I should just throw cash at the devs and not expect the game to be optimized for modern systems and be happy they re-sell the game that I already bought in the past.

If you're going to charge new price for an old game, at least make it run like a new game. New price = functionality like a new game. That's the least one can expect. Yes, there is new content in the game, and that's good. The workshop functionality is also a good bonus. I'm pretty sure most people are appreciative of this, and I am as well.

But these are side issues considering the functionality of the game, which should be priority number one. And it hasn't exactly been running stellar either, particularly for muliplayer, which is what most people play.

1080p was hot in 2005. Now it is considered a minimum. Sure, 4K is still quite new, but it's becoming the standard before too long anyway.
So why not raise the issue now rather than later, because more people will complain once 4K is the standard.

[gagman]

Originally posted by Mighty Bear Seven:

Yes, there is new content in the game, and that's good.

for really new content you have to throw again cash - called DLC,
i missed few improvements in the HD vanilla version, but they included it of course in the DLC,
you just can learn from this.