Wide screen BETA test - for CD owners only

[Imp]

Just to say its not the resolution itself thats causing the problem one of my sytems runs desktop at that res with no problems

[hawk66]

auto-hide option was the problem...thanks a lot!

[DefCon3]

I've had no success trying to run the new desktop resolution in windowed mode on my 24" PC (native resolution 1920x1200) and my 16" laptop (1366x768). Both computers are running Win 7 and autohide has been turned off.

On the PC, the window fills the screen horizontally but only fills up about half of the screen vertically. It's almost impossible to read the WinSPMBT opening screen and I can't select anything from the menu to make the game run. On my laptop, the desktop resolution in windowed mode fills the screen but the WinSPMBT screen is curved and distorted and again I can't make any menu picks to get the game to run.

On full screen, both of my computers fill the screen ok but with serious colour distortion. The win7fix.cmd file clears the video problem but movement in the game tends to be jerky and the screen freezes up quite frequently.

[Mobhack]

Originally Posted by DefCon3

I've had no success trying to run the new desktop resolution in windowed mode on my 24" PC (native resolution 1920x1200) and my 16" laptop (1366x768). Both computers are running Win 7 and autohide has been turned off.

On the PC, the window fills the screen horizontally but only fills up about half of the screen vertically. It's almost impossible to read the WinSPMBT opening screen and I can't select anything from the menu to make the game run. On my laptop, the desktop resolution in windowed mode fills the screen but the WinSPMBT screen is curved and distorted and again I can't make any menu picks to get the game to run.

On full screen, both of my computers fill the screen ok but with serious colour distortion. The win7fix.cmd file clears the video problem but movement in the game tends to be jerky and the screen freezes up quite frequently.

1) have you tried setting the monitors to different resolutions other than the native one?.

If that works, then something about those pixel ratios may be disliked by the graphics library.

2) Is your Windows task bar in the default location at the bottom of the screen, and set to the default size?.
(You may also want to try the windows 7 desktop theme that makes your taskbar look like a regular XP one and see if that affects things)
The taskbar may be the problem - since you apparently can run full screen mode ok. Or, perhaps - Windows 7 desktop widgets etc?.

3) As to full screen mode, that is inadvisable in Windows 7, as mentioned in posts above, due to how it mangles the 256 colour graphics mode.

I think the win7fix.cmd batch file simply removes explorer temporarily - and it does not seem to be a 100% solution to the problem.

However, a jerky display and lagginess may be sound related. Try setting all sound off and try it that way. If it does - you have some sort of sound problems (e.g. codec).
- Set mouse click to off in the misc tab of the game options menu.
- In the game main screen itself, goto the preferences screen and turn off both of BATTLE FX and SOUND FX.
- exit and restart (to be 100% sure) and see if that helps.

(however - if the game runs fine for you under one of the normal 4:3 aspect ratio screen sizes in full screen and/or windowed mode - then it is rather unlikely to be sound related, but rather a side affect of the .cmd batch file most likely)


Cheers
Andy

[DefCon3]

I have been able to get your program to run in Windows mode under different resolutions on both my laptop and my PC. However, I've never been particularly fond of playing in a window that only fills part of the screen. That's why I was excited to hear that you had released a beta widescreen resolution. Lately, I've been playing WinSPMBT on an older PC I have that runs under Win XP. Your program runs perfectly in full screen mode under that OS. That said, I would really love to be able to play this game in full screen on a 24" monitor.

Task bars on both of my Win 7 machines are in their default location and are set at the default size. I'll try your idea of experimenting with other desktop themes to see if that makes a difference. I'll also try your sound-related suggestions. Will let you know if anything helps.

Thanks for the feedback and the suggestions Andy.


Larry

[DefCon3]

I still haven't been able to get WinSPMBT to display my Samsung monitor's native 1920x1200 screen in desktop windowed mode. When I try that, I get a window that looks to be approximately 1920x600. This compresses the opening WinSPMBT screen as per my attachment. Once I get to this point, I can't run the game and I can't close WinSPMBT either unless I use Task Manager to end the process.

I've tried changing my desktop to Windows Classic with autohide turned off and it still didn't make any difference. The highest resolution I can get in windowed mode without distortion is 1280x1024. That's true for both my laptop and my PC. That resolution's ok on my laptop but it makes for a very small playable screen on my PC. For some reason, I also can't WinSPMBT's 1600x1280 mode to run in Windowed mode on my PC. It gives me the same compressed screen as desktop mode even if I change my screen resolution from 1920x1200 to 1600x1200 before running WinSPMBT. Hard to understand.

[DRG]

I can recreate that effect exactly when I set the taskbar to autohide

Don


....and yes, I know you said you have autohide off. However, that is what happens when it's on.

[Mobhack]

Originally Posted by DefCon3

I still haven't been able to get WinSPMBT to display my Samsung monitor's native 1920x1200 screen in desktop windowed mode. When I try that, I get a window that looks to be approximately 1920x600. This compresses the opening WinSPMBT screen as per my attachment. Once I get to this point, I can't run the game and I can't close WinSPMBT either unless I use Task Manager to end the process.

I've tried changing my desktop to Windows Classic with autohide turned off and it still didn't make any difference. The highest resolution I can get in windowed mode without distortion is 1280x1024. That's true for both my laptop and my PC. That resolution's ok on my laptop but it makes for a very small playable screen on my PC. For some reason, I also can't WinSPMBT's 1600x1280 mode to run in Windowed mode on my PC. It gives me the same compressed screen as desktop mode even if I change my screen resolution from 1920x1200 to 1600x1200 before running WinSPMBT. Hard to understand.

As you can see from reading the posts in the threads before this - others have run monitors at this resolution under windows 7.

Thoughts - do you have a real dedicated video card, or a 'graphics accelerator' using shared system memory?. If the latter - then perhaps you may need to allocate more system RAM to it?.

Other thought - are the graphics card's drivers up to date?.

Also - my wide screen monitor refused to allow play at the full monitor resolution. It would only display at 1366 by something. I eventually found a button in the card's control panel which 'forced' 1080i mode and it then played at the full resolution happily - but at only a 30hz screen refresh rate... yech!.

Cheers
Andy

[DefCon3]

My apologies Andy and Don. I was certain I had turned autohide off on my PC yesterday when I was testing WinSPMBT at various resolutions. Don's email prompted me to look again however and, sure enough, it was turned on. As soon as I turned it off the program filled the screen in windows mode. WinSPMBT looks fantastic on a 24" monitor and plays very smoothly as well - what a great enhancement to the game. My thanks and, again, sorry for the misinformation.

Given my obvious mistake, I decided I'd better double check my 1366x768 laptop. It definitely does not fill the screen, even with autohide turned off. The best I can get from it is 1280x1024 but that just about fills the screen so I'm happy. I will, however, look at your system RAM and graphics suggestions Andy.

Thanks again for your support. Looking forward to seeing WinSPWW2 on the big screen.


Larry

[PanzerBob]

It works fine with my new system, I'm pleased Thanks a million!!