Dosbox fullscreen cut off edges

[Margo]

So like with most dosbox gog and steam games I had an issue with the picture being too wide and going off-screen. I think it has something to do with the 1680x1050 resolution but I'm not sure. I got it working by opening the dosbox config and setting the following-
fullscreen=true
fullresolution=1680x1050
windowresolution=1680x1050
output=ddraw
I hope this is helpful to someone.

[Scorrp10]

You really ought to try out OpenXCOM instead. Miles better than using dosbox.

[Moon Waffles]

Originally posted by Scorrp10:

You really ought to try out OpenXCOM instead. Miles better than using dosbox.

Absolutely!

[The Fifth Horseman]

Originally posted by 𝕸𝖆𝖚𝖑𝖜𝖚𝖗𝖋:

So like with most dosbox gog and steam games I had an issue with the picture being too wide and going off-screen. I think it has something to do with the 1680x1050 resolution but I'm not sure. I got it working by opening the dosbox config and setting the following-
fullscreen=true
fullresolution=1680x1050
windowresolution=1680x1050
output=ddraw
I hope this is helpful to someone.

You'll also want to enable aspect correction - I think that was aspect=true - otherwise the image will be distorted. Your windowed resolution should be a multiple of 320x240 or as close as possible - in this case, 1280x960.

[Hermitifier]

Originally posted by The Fifth Horseman:

You'll also want to enable aspect correction - I think that was aspect=true - otherwise the image will be distorted. Your windowed resolution should be a multiple of 320x240 or as close as possible - in this case, 1280x960.

This is wrong. The original game used 320x200 resolution, not 240. But it was written without compensation for non-square pixels. If you use anything else but 8:5 ratio, it will be distorted.

I use:
fullresolution=1366x768
windowresolution=960x600

and:
aspect=false

You'll get black bars in full screen, but at least Earth will have correct, round shape.

[The Fifth Horseman]

Originally posted by Quantifier666:

This is wrong. The original game used 320x200 resolution, not 240.

... which was then displayed on 3:4 aspect ratio screens and stretched vertically as a result.

Do your research![www.gamasutra.com]

[Hermitifier]

Originally posted by The Fifth Horseman:

Originally posted by Quantifier666:

This is wrong. The original game used 320x200 resolution, not 240.

... which was then displayed on 3:4 aspect ratio screens and stretched vertically as a result.

Do your research![www.gamasutra.com]

I did my research. You quoted my post, but removed the next sentence, which is very important.

Yes, original game used 320x200 resolution, and yes, 3:4 screens were used back then. This caused pixels to be non-square. Some games had correction for that, some games didn't, as UFO/X-Com didn't have, and expected pixels to be square.

If you force multiple of 320x240 resolution, you'll get image exactly as distorted as original was, with egg-shaped Earth and so on.

[Margo]

Originally posted by Scorrp10:

You really ought to try out OpenXCOM instead. Miles better than using dosbox.

Oh hey thanks I think I will check this out. Modding is the whole reason they invented computers in the first place right?

[The Fifth Horseman]

Originally posted by Quantifier666:

If you force multiple of 320x240 resolution, you'll get image exactly as distorted as original was

Which is the entire point...

[Bradley_B97]

Run the game under OpenXCOM instead.

[Hermitifier]

Originally posted by The Fifth Horseman:

Originally posted by Quantifier666:

If you force multiple of 320x240 resolution, you'll get image exactly as distorted as original was

Which is the entire point...

No, it is not.
The entire point is to run game so that it looks good - like it was intended.
If 20 years ago it looked bad for overlooked technical reason, but now you have possibility to make it look good, you'd be a fool to pass it up.

It's up to you. Select multiple of 320x200 resolution if you want to have better looking graphics.
Select 320x240 if you want inferior, but period correct.

[The Fifth Horseman]

Originally posted by Quantifier666:

No, it is not.
The entire point is to run game so that it looks good - like it was intended.

...which might be the case for Geoscape,sure. How about the battlescape?

[Hermitifier]

Originally posted by The Fifth Horseman:

Originally posted by Quantifier666:

No, it is not.
The entire point is to run game so that it looks good - like it was intended.

...which might be the case for Geoscape,sure. How about the battlescape?

The main portion of display, the battle itself, is drawn in isometric - arguing whether taller or shorter is correct would be hard to back up. Few elements like the red glowing balls on blue legs in Alien Bases, or a Mind Probe sprites, can be assumed as round - but that's speculative.

The real clues can be found on the various pages of interface, that are objectively expected to be square or round, for example 4x4 px map tiles, or circles on motion scanner sprite.

I'd vote that Battlescape should be played in 16:10, like the Geoscape.


In general, that is an interesting problem with older games from 320x200 era. There are games that take non-square pixels into account, like one in the link you posted. The "round shield" looks approximately 38x46 pixels, but comes as equally as high as wide on 4:3 screen. The real dilemma comes with games which had compensation implemented partially, only for selected parts of interface - I remember few discussions on VOGONS about it.
(Edit: check out this thread, especially screenshot on the second page: http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=17110 )

And one more thing I remembered: even if programmers forgot to take pixel shape into account, monitors 20 years ago still had mechanical potentiometers for image size control. You could use them to squish the height and create letterbox format anyway - and that was how I played UFO before 2003 :)