Resolution Settings

[Axolotl]

Hi,
My PC's native screen resolution is 3840x2160, however for many games I use 2048x1152 instead. I wanted to do this for this game too, because the text font and icons in this game are tiny in the native resolution and really strain my eyes. However, there is no such option in the game. I tried plugging in -w 2048 -h 1152 in advanced launch options, but that crashes the game before it even starts. Changing my desktop resoltion didn't help either.
Can anyone offer my a way to (preferably) chage my game resolution, or to at least increase text and icon sizes?

[andrey12345 v2.0]

Originally posted by Khornefire:

However, there is no such option in the game.

Yes its right. Game uses desktop resolution.

Originally posted by Khornefire:

I tried plugging in -w 2048 -h 1152 in advanced launch options, but that crashes the game before it even starts.

Yes, its right too. If you set different "trash" settings in command line, it will not start.

Originally posted by Khornefire:

Changing my desktop resoltion didn't help either.

Are you sure what exactly it changed?

Originally posted by Khornefire:

Can anyone offer my a way to (preferably) chage my game resolution, or to at least increase text and icon sizes?

Icon sizes you can change little in the settings.

http://imgur.com/a/L85gk

But the text size does not changed.

[Shadrach]

For issues like this, where game developers don't care to accommodate the simple fact that people actually have different monitors and different needs, I use the simple little tool Resomatic:
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/System-Miscellaneous/Res-O-Matic.shtml

It creates a shortcut that just changes your desktop res before launching an application.

Also you might want to have a look at this tool:
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/multi_monitor_tool.html
You can use it to save profiles of monitor resolutions for launching games etc.

Generally, I have to say it's quite lazy for developers to not support anything than running in desktop resolution, and it is considered best practices to query the OS for the supported monitor resolutions before letting the user choose.

Sadly, it appears this practice is getting used less these days, and developers seem to just blindly assume people always run at native or desktop resolution.

I think this will be more and more of a problem as users move to 4K monitors, and devs don't care about stuff like DPI scaling of text and symbols. Sure, all this scaling stuff in Windows is really complicated -- SO why not just let the user actually *choose* the resolution and worry about blurriness in non-native displays him/herself.

Anyway rant over...

[Axolotl]

Thanks, Shadrach. Unfortunately, none of these methods work. Neither did changing the screen resolution through the display settings. In fact, even changing it to an archaic resolution like 1280x720 did not seem to change anything! The game insists on running at 3840x2160. The lack of such a basic setting is really disappointing.

[andrey12345 v2.0]

Originally posted by Shadrach:

Generally, I have to say it's quite lazy for developers to not support anything than running in desktop resolution, and it is considered best practices to query the OS for the supported monitor resolutions before letting the user choose.

It has ceased to have any sense when LCDs pushed CRTs, ie about 5-7 years ago.

Originally posted by Shadrach:

I think this will be more and more of a problem as users move to 4K monitors

4K monitors are not needed nowadays. Yet much too early for them.

If you buy a 4K monitor that you are obviously buying problems for yourself. It is not surprising that sooner or later problems come :)

[Shadrach]

No idea why our posts got doubled, probably some forum bug... anyways.

Andrey; I agree that times are not really ready for 4K monitors yet, one thing is small screens (I would say you need 30" or more for 4K), another is DPI scaling for applications is severely lacking (getting better...) -- but this does not stop manufacturers from pushing them out and people buying them, does it?

And while it might not make sense from a purely technical standpoint to change the resolution of an LCD screen, users can still do it, and there are several reasons why they would still want to.

For instance I have a 4K 55" LED TV connected to my PC over HDMI. But I run the TV in 1080p, for these reasons:
- My PC (which was top-of-the-line two years ago) is not spec'ed to run games at 4K.
- DPI scaling at 4K (Windows recommends 300%) is hit or miss for most applications, and you end up with miniscule icons and other weird issues.
- I sit 3-4 meters away, and 4K makes things too small to read in most games.
- My TV has some 'bugs' with 4K and sometimes it runs at only 30hz which sucks for gaming.

So as a user, I want to run my display at a non-native resolution. Now imagine if Microsoft said "You have a 4K monitor, then run at 4K and just Deal With It."

I am not even sure how the OP is able to play GTMF at 4K - it would require a really powerful machine.

[Shadrach]

@Khornefire: It's strange that even changing your monitor resolution the game changes back to 4K. Are you sure, it should run at desktop res, so if you manually change to for instance 1440p it should respect that. I will test tonight at home, might be the GTMF launcher does some strange things.

You might try something like this:
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd.html
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd2.html

Have a look at the 'setdisplay' command. You should be able to make a small bat file which does (for example):

nircmd.exe setdisplay 2048 1152 32 60
start launcher_x64.exe
pause
nircmd.exe setdisplay 3840 2160 32 60

[Axolotl]

Edit: I didn't know there were further suggestions coming. I'll try that now.

[Axolotl]

Well, I think I figured why I thought changing the resolution didn't change anything - it does, but it does so in way that doesn't help the text size much. I did a comparison - first I ran the game at 800x600, took a screenshot and then ran it at 3840x2160, took another screenshot, and looked at the differences. They look exactly the same except for minor differences, as far as I can tell. The icon and text size change only by a little bit when running on 800x600, and remain overall tiny. Here are screenshots:

https://s3.postimg.org/wl1knywhf/800x600.jpg
https://s3.postimg.org/49bjunm6b/3840x2160.gif

Both screenshots are true to the source, except for the expected black lines which appeared on 800x600 and which don't appear in the screenshot.

I also did an FPS comparison. I set the desktop resolution to 1280x1024 and then set the graphics options to very high and loaded up a battle. the FPS counter was around 25 in the deployment phase. At 3840x2160 the FPS counter was around 19 in the deployment phase for the same map and the same forces looking over the same area with the same zoom level. So - changing desktop resolution does change in-game resolution, but the text and icons aren't adjusted properly, it seems.

If there is any help any of you can still offer at this stage, I'll be glad to hear it. If not, Thank you.

[andrey12345 v2.0]

Originally posted by Shadrach:

No idea why our posts got doubled, probably some forum bug... anyways.

It seems :)

Originally posted by Shadrach:

Andrey; I agree that times are not really ready for 4K monitors yet, one thing is small screens (I would say you need 30" or more for 4K), another is DPI scaling for applications is severely lacking (getting better...) -- but this does not stop manufacturers from pushing them out and people buying them, does it?

Of course, exactly as 3D displays, virtual reality helmets and other rubbish. But no one forces it to buy?

Originally posted by Shadrach:

And while it might not make sense from a purely technical standpoint to change the resolution of an LCD screen, users can still do it, and there are several reasons why they would still want to.

Because this is a bug, LCD monitor have exactly 1 resolution. But for some reason you have to offer to add bug with it's selection to fight with marketing problems . We do not add bugs to fight other bugs and non-technical issues.

[Shadrach]

@Khornefire: Not sure what can be done about the text in the menus and scenario selection, it looks like it will always be pretty small.

I also had a test of using Resomatic with starter_x64 and it seems it doesn't work - the starter does some things with threading that makes Reso think the game has exited, and changes back to the start res.

However using nircmd worked fine, I created a GTMF.bat file with the following content:

-----
@echo off
"d:\bin\NirsoftLauncher\NirSoft\nircmd.exe" setdisplay 1280 720 32
f:\games\Steam\steam.exe -applaunch 312980
pause
"d:\bin\NirsoftLauncher\NirSoft\nircmd.exe" setdisplay 2560 1440 32
-----

This sets res to 720p (looks terrible) and launches the game. Then after exiting you have to press a key inside the cmd window to change back to desktop res (1440 in my case).

Edit as fitting for you. Note you need the pause otherwise the game will spawn a new process and send control back to the script, changing res back again.

Proofski:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=747521198

[Axolotl]

This works. Thanks!

[-I-]

ahahahahahahahah

[Stars-N-Stripes]

Hey I know this post is "old" but my problem is new :) I just tried Nircmd and had partial success so wanted to bring this post back up and ask a question.

I'm running 1440p Triple screens and the UI is either way to small to read or when scaled takes almost half the screen, has made the game unplayable. I can get the scale issue fixed using the first line of nircmd to set the resolution , however when it scales back to 1440p the game remains only on a single monitor, it's not changing to 1440p. II've tried pausing, anyone still around that can tell me further a possible fix? This is what I wish the devs would come up with just trick the scaling to use something like 1280 x 720 instead of the the "real" resolution, make it an option.

Sure hope someone can provide some insight on how to get the game back to 1440p, the resolution is changing per the script example above but the game stays on 1280 x 720. Thanks

[andrey12345 v2.0]

Originally posted by Stars-N-Stripes:

I'm running 1440p Triple screens and the UI is either way to small to read or when scaled takes almost half the screen, has made the game unplayable.

With 2-3x ultra wide resolutions, there is one obvious problem that has no good solution. Everything that is attached to the left or right side has problems with the scale - if the font is enlarged, then it will cease to fit vertically. If do not enlarge it, everything will be small.

Better to play on alone monitor with +- standard resolution, and use the rest for something else. The game automatically starts on the monitor where you start it (where the mouse cursor is located) and correctly processes the edges of the monitor area.