Resolution/UI issues on Retina Macbook Pro

[Kirbu]

First off, wanted to say that I got hooked on the game's concept watching the couple of videos Youtube user Aavak posted. I don't regret supporting KeeperRL in Early Access or anything.

Unfortunately, the game does not agree with my laptop. I play on a 2014 retina Macbook Pro. The UI (excluding the main menu) doesn't seem to scale very well for its resolution, causing it to be incredibly tiny. In addition, the Steam Overlay is completely broken. It appears in a corner of the screen, yet its interactive elements act as though they're in their correct locations (e.g. the friend list is draggable in the right side of the window, despite appearing in the bottom left corner).

Here are a couple of screenshots.[imgur.com]

I haven't attempted to run the game yet on my windows partition to see how the UI scaling would work there. Thanks.

[Michal Brzozowski]

I'm planning to add an option to change the resolution in full screen mode. That should probably solve the issue for you.

In windowed mode, I'm afraid the game is stuck to your current resolution, and no UI scaling is implemented.

[Kirbu]

Thanks. I definitely look forward to playing the game once I don't have to squint at the interface.

I should also point out that both issues currently reside in full screen as well, with the added problem of a black border around the game window.

http://imgur.com/a/s9DAQ#0

[Kirbu]

For the sake of completeness, I just wanted to share my experienced behavior on Windows.

Windowed mode recognizes the set resolution and works as intended:
http://puu.sh/h4X8X/4eafa5b713.jpg

Full screen defaults to the monitor's full 2880 x 1800, reducing the game back to aforementioned tiny state, but without the black border. I was unable to take a working screenshot, though I imagine its unnecessary.

The Steam Overlay doesn't appear to work at all in either case.

[Michal Brzozowski]

That's pretty much how it's expected to work right now. I noticed the Steam overlay not working on Windows, but haven't got around to fixing it (there are much more important issues right now).

Hopefully the black bar in fullscreen mode in OSX will go away once you are able to switch to smaller resolution.

[Kirbu]

I couldn't tell you why this is the case, but I have experienced several OS X full screen games that remain their native resolution in full screen and don't scale to the screen like yours does. Full screen is typically a nuisance in OS X games since they rarely allow me to tab out to other programs (including yours), so I stick to windowed whenever possible. This is just the first time I've encountered a UI that doesn't scale along with the window size for an OS X game.

I'm used to most every game not working ideally on OS X and having to boot into Windows in order to play them comfortably, but I figured you'd at least appreciate the feedback. Thanks for the response, and good luck with your development!

[x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)]

Hey there, fellow developer here (Chris Park from Arcen Games -- AI War, A Valley Without Wind, The Last Federation, etc). First of all, let me say that I think what you're doing here looks awesome. Secondly, I feel your pain on the resolution issue -- people have been after me since 2010 to get screen scaling into my games, and I just have figured that out last week. So... yeah. I know it's not so easy, to be sure.

What I am seeing in the latest version of OSX at the moment, and in Parallels 10 on OSX with both retina display enabled and disabled, and the virtual screen at various resolutions, is the following:

1. The GUI never changes size in relation to my screen, no matter what, in any case.
2. Some of the other game graphics, like the main menu, seem to automatically do so.

I hate it when players throw around terms like "unplayable," because... well, you know. But at the moment, on my mac laptop at least, that's kind of the case. I could technically play it, but the text is so tiny that my eyes were hurting just trying to focus on it. I have a windows desktop as well, so it's not a huge deal for me personally, but I wanted to let you know that the problem still persists here.

If there's anything I can do to help, please do let me know!

[Michal Brzozowski]

Hey!

Did you try changing the resolution in fullscreen mode? That should help it.

[x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)]

Yep, I tried all those combinations in both OSX Yosemite and in Win 8.1 through parallels. It may be a Yosemite thing; they seem to have messed up some stuff in here, which is why I finally upgraded from Snow Leopard. I had some players with Yosemite issues myself. I'm currently firing this up in Ubuntu inside parallels to see how that works.

[x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)]

Thus far in Ubuntu it tries to launch the game and then immediately exits, so I'm upgrading my packages and installed version there to see if that helps.

[Michal Brzozowski]

Do you mean fullscreen doesn't work at all for you, or only if you try to use a lower resolution?

[x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)]

It works fine, but being in fullscreen does not cause the GUI to scale no matter what resolution I select. It scales other parts of the graphics, but not the game.

[Michal Brzozowski]

If you select a small enough resolution, then the GUI will be nice and big. Unless I'm missing something.

[x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)]

Yep, that's the really strange thing.

Here is a description of the progression on OSX 10.10.4:

1. First I started out in fullscreen mode, 2880x1800, which is evidently the native resolution on my retina display. Everything is tiny as you would expect, GUI-wise.

2. Next I switch it to 800x600 mode. It looks like it goes to the proper resolution, but it isn't filling my screen. Instead it has black borders all around the screen, and it uses the central 800x600 pixels in the middle of the monitor. So nothing is any bigger, it's just cropped my screen.

3. Now I switch it to windowed mode. Looks the same as #2, but now actually seems to be a window like you'd expect.

4. Now I switch it back to fullscreen mode. Now it looks identical to what it did in #1 again, for some reason. It's definitely not listening to the screen resolution I had set before. Not to crop it or otherwise.

5. Restart game, with it still having 800x600 selected, fullscreen. Now we're back to having it tiny and in the center of the screen, aka #2 again.

6. Toggle on and off fullscreen, I'm back to case #4 again.

Side note: when the game is showing up like #2 and #5, showing the steam overlay also makes it show up super tiny in that resolution. So somehow the resolution of the monitor actually is kind of that resolution, but I don't have this problem with any other games. Maybe it's the specific fullscreen mode? Cases 4 and 6 and 1 all show the steam overlay at the expected size.

[Michal Brzozowski]

Ok, I understand now. I'll double check this on my Mac, but I think it was working fine.

Anyway, it shouldn't be hard to add scaling 2x as an option (regardless of window mode). Maybe I'll even add it to this in the next hotfix (if there is one).

Thanks for reporting the problem.

PS. Maybe 800x600 specifically doesn't work, did you try 1440x900 for example?

[x-4000 (Chris McElligott-Park)]

No problem at all, and thanks for looking into it. I tried pretty much every resolution combination, in windows 8.1 parallels 10 inside osx, and then in that version of osx, both. I haven't had a chance to try it on my desktop native windows machine since I'm traveling. Thanks again!