Darkplaces - stretching effect in widescreen

[Fat Angus]

I've recently installed the Darkplaces engine, and I'm trying to get widescreen to work properly without stretching things like the hud, text, etc. Other ports don't do this, but Darkplaces does. Does anybody know of any console commands that will prevent this stretching effect? Thanks.

[Gila]

I just tried a quick clean installation of DP from https://icculus.org/twilight/darkplaces/files/ (darkplacesenginewindows64onlyautobuild.zip) and it auto-detected 1920x1080 and displays stuff properly in widescreen just like other ports do.

How does this stretching look for you? Can you post a screenshot of it?

[Fat Angus]

Originally posted by gila:

I just tried a quick clean installation of DP from https://icculus.org/twilight/darkplaces/files/ (darkplacesenginewindows64onlyautobuild.zip) and it auto-detected 1920x1080 and displays stuff properly in widescreen just like other ports do.

How does this stretching look for you? Can you post a screenshot of it?

Here you can see how the various hud elements are horizontally stretched compared to other ports:

https://imgur.com/a/IXqgBvN

https://imgur.com/PW7L2G9

https://imgur.com/WnDunLt

[Gila]

I found it. Apparently Darkplaces does indeed has a few separate cvars to control this.

vid_conwidthauto - 0 or 1 - automatically update vid_conwidth to match aspect ratio

and

vid_conwidth - virtual width of 2D graphics system (note: changes may be overwritten, see vid_conwidthauto)
vid_conheight - virtual height of 2D graphics system

I changed these around and they do affect how HUD elements are drawn. This is pretty cool, since original "native" Quake resolution was 320x200 and that video mode did not have "square" pixels, and with these settings you can get the proper look of 2D elements (more modern sourceports like MarkV and QS don't bother with this, they just render HUD stuff 1:1 but technically that is wrong).

[Fat Angus]

Originally posted by gila:

I found it. Apparently Darkplaces does indeed has a few separate cvars to control this.

vid_conwidthauto - 0 or 1 - automatically update vid_conwidth to match aspect ratio

and

vid_conwidth - virtual width of 2D graphics system (note: changes may be overwritten, see vid_conwidthauto)
vid_conheight - virtual height of 2D graphics system

I changed these around and they do affect how HUD elements are drawn. This is pretty cool, since original "native" Quake resolution was 320x200 and that video mode did not have "square" pixels, and with these settings you can get the proper look of 2D elements (more modern sourceports like MarkV and QS don't bother with this, they just render HUD stuff 1:1 but technically that is wrong).

I couldn't find the vid_conwidthauto in the console cvars list, but setting the other parameters to match my resolution fixed the problem. Yay!

Given that Darkplaces hasn't been updated in seven years, I wouldn't mind seeing someone who knows a thing or two about coding and game engines to bring it up to scratch. This issue should be high on the list.

[Gila]

I think it was updated, I mean at least I checked this on this version:

https://icculus.org/twilight/darkplaces/files/darkplacesenginewindows64onlyautobuild.zip

Which is dated Dec 2018. It has "vid_conwidthauto" cvar, at least.

I know that the website[icculus.org] says last update was like 2014, but I suggest poking around the files section[icculus.org].

[nuclearballs1]

I learned a few things here, and it would be great if all inquiries were handled this smoothly. Rodney King gives a "thumbs up" to this thread.