Author Topic: Resolution Fixes  (Read 24529 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline theinevitable (OP)

  • Able Ordinary Rate
  • t
  • Posts: 1
Resolution Fixes
« on: December 15, 2010, 02:08:00 AM »
Just wanted to drop by and share two fixes that I have found while trying to get this game to work.  Like many others I was highly intrigued by the allure of the game so I spent all day trying other to get it to work on my wide screen laptop which unfortunately doesn't have more than 1000px vertical.  I found two methods that can alleviate this problem, unlike countless software fixes like Sdesk that i tried.

1) Non Windows 7
This is the easiest and by far the best work around.  What it entails is changing the driver in windows for the monitor.  It will not damage the screen by pumping a higher resolution image to it, instead it will create scroll bars at the bottom and the right for the part of the image that cannot be displayed.

1) Go to display settings
2) Go to advanced settings
3) Click on the monitor tab
4) Click on properties
5) Click on the driver tab
6) Click on update driver
7) Click on browse manually
8) Click on "Let me pick from a list"
9) Uncheck the "Show compatabile hardware only" box
10) Under manufacturer make sure that "Standard Monitor Types" is selected
11) Under model select "Digital Flat Panel" and a resolution that you want to run at
12) click next, and apply
13) Go back to display settings and now you can choose a higher resolution than before, If you still cannot make sure that a box that says "high uncompatabile resolutions" is unchecked

2) Windows 7
Because the master thinks they know better than us, the ability to run non-native resolutions is disabled in windows 7 and I haven't found a way around it.  The only way I have found is to run the computer in pseudo dual monitor mode, which fixes the problem with the bottom of the games interface being chopped off.

1) Hold the windows key and hit P to bring up the projector enable screen.  While still holding down the windows key hit the P key again twice more to cycle over to the "Extend" option.  Hit enter to select.
2) Go to display settings and make sure that under Multiple Displays that "Extend these displays" is selected
3) Now you have to choose where you want the other monitor to be located in relation to your main screen.
a) At the top of the screen it has two images of monitors, with a 1 and a 2 over each screen respectively
b) Click on the 2nd screen and drag it so that it is positioned over the top screen
4) click apply and you are done

The game should now show the entirety of the interface.  If you cannot see part of it you need to drag the title bar up off the screen.  This can cause you to lose windows if you arent paying attention because you have no way of viewing the second monitor.  In order to find the windows once again:
1) Go to the taskbar and right click on the window in question
2) Click on "Move"
3) Left click without moving the mouse
4) Now as you move the mouse the window should be dragged with it, position the window where you want and left click again to drop it


Not the cleanest of fixes but the only ways I knew to enjoy your game sans ridiculous restrictions
 

Offline ShadoCat

  • Commander
  • *********
  • Posts: 327
  • Thanked: 1 times
    • http://www.assistsolar.com
Re: Resolution Fixes
« Reply #1 on: February 06, 2011, 11:55:26 PM »
That's great.

One issue (Win 7). is that after moving the window up, I click again to drop it, it then snaps down to the top of the main viewing area. 

Do you know how to turn that off?

I think that this issue is what was keeping some of the other extension methods from working.

BTW, using this method, I can "lose the mouse" off the top of the screen.  That was disconcerting. :-}

I think that I'll turn multiple displays on and off when I'll be using Aurora.

Offline Xeno The Morph

  • Petty Officer
  • **
  • X
  • Posts: 15
Re: Resolution Fixes
« Reply #2 on: February 07, 2011, 05:20:53 PM »
Just thought I'd add my two pennies  ;)

Personally I fix this (on a Win 7 laptop with only 1000px vertical resolution) by using the Resize Enable option (see www. digitallis. co. uk), which I found somewhere in the depths of this forum. 
This little utility basically hacks into all of the windows that you open AFTER it is started and allows you to resize them  ;D

You do need to be careful as most static windows don't deal gracefully with this (controls get moved & resized badly, and labels can be 'dislocated' from their boxes), but after a short while you learn too get around this and keep the windows in a usable (& sensible) format.  Basically you just resize the window ONCE in ONE movement, multiple resizes really mixes things up if your unlucky! Then keep that window open until you close Aurora!*

If you do go this route remember it is a Hack so it might not work so gracefully on your machine & I give no guarantees! (been fine on my machine though)

*Some windows need to be refreshed from the F2 'Pop & production' screen, but this is fairly uncommon, also a few windows have to be 'Manually' refreshed i. e.  the 'Task Group' task group list drop down box will keep old/removed task groups in its list until you reselect your empire from the top drop down list which will refresh the TG listing ;)
Also a few listview controls overlay check box controls (e. g.  on the Design View tab of the 'Class Design' window) or don't seem to scroll all the way to the bottom (i. e.  hidden rows) if they are really long, such as the 'Task Group' window and 'Leaders' windows Potential assignment list.  (surprisingly this hasn't ever been a real issue, if you REALLY need to know what is there, as you can use the arrow keys to select it anyway, and if you don't already know you can close the window and reopen it while looking before you resize it again)
 

Offline stamasd

  • Petty Officer
  • **
  • s
  • Posts: 25
Re: Resolution Fixes
« Reply #3 on: April 27, 2011, 03:32:06 PM »
I have a win7 laptop with 1366x768 screen, and none of the resolution fixes here worked very well.  So I came up with my own.

I have VMware with a XP virtual machine.  Inside the VM I can change screen resolution to anything, not limited to physical screen.  You get scroll bars when you use a resolution higher than the physical one.  So I installed Aurora inside the VM, set the VM resolution to 1280x960 and it works great.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

  • Aurora Designer
  • Star Marshal
  • S
  • Posts: 11649
  • Thanked: 20349 times
Re: Resolution Fixes
« Reply #4 on: April 27, 2011, 06:34:08 PM »
I have a win7 laptop with 1366x768 screen, and none of the resolution fixes here worked very well.  So I came up with my own.

I have VMware with a XP virtual machine.  Inside the VM I can change screen resolution to anything, not limited to physical screen.  You get scroll bars when you use a resolution higher than the physical one.  So I installed Aurora inside the VM, set the VM resolution to 1280x960 and it works great.

In case you didn't know, in the latest version there is a new option in the Game Parameters menu called Reduced Height Windows. This changes the maximum window height to 800.

Steve
 

Offline Thiosk

  • Commodore
  • **********
  • Posts: 784
  • Thanked: 1 times
Re: Resolution Fixes
« Reply #5 on: April 27, 2011, 06:45:59 PM »
strangely, nothing happened when i clicked that, so i've been rolling in tinytext mode
 

Offline Brian Neumann

  • Vice Admiral
  • **********
  • Posts: 1214
  • Thanked: 3 times
Re: Resolution Fixes
« Reply #6 on: April 27, 2011, 07:34:09 PM »
In case you didn't know, in the latest version there is a new option in the Game Parameters menu called Reduced Height Windows. This changes the maximum window height to 800.

Steve
Any chance of changing the max window height to 796.  I know this is tiny, but I was looking at new laptops and that seems to be a very common hight maximum for them.  It may not be needed as I havn't tried to play on such a machine, and all it might do is cut off a bit of the bottom buttons, but leave enough to work with.

Brian
 

Offline stamasd

  • Petty Officer
  • **
  • s
  • Posts: 25
Re: Resolution Fixes
« Reply #7 on: April 28, 2011, 07:50:02 PM »
Quote from: Steve Walmsley link=topic=3117. msg34291#msg34291 date=1303947248
In case you didn't know, in the latest version there is a new option in the Game Parameters menu called Reduced Height Windows.  This changes the maximum window height to 800.

Steve

I do know, and it's not enough to be useful on a screen with 768H.   Even with the taskbar set to autohide, it's a matter of chance whether you're able to click the buttons at the bottom or not before the taskbar rises when you move the mouse pointer down.   I'm not trying to play a point-and-shoot game here.   :)

My VM solution takes care of that nicely. 
 

Offline ShadoCat

  • Commander
  • *********
  • Posts: 327
  • Thanked: 1 times
    • http://www.assistsolar.com
Re: Resolution Fixes
« Reply #8 on: May 01, 2011, 03:40:54 PM »
Any chance of changing the max window height to 796.  I know this is tiny, but I was looking at new laptops and that seems to be a very common hight maximum for them.  It may not be needed as I havn't tried to play on such a machine, and all it might do is cut off a bit of the bottom buttons, but leave enough to work with.

Brian,

The 4px difference isn't noticeable.

The main problem with the reduced height mode is that the Win7 task bar steps on the bottom of the window.  For playing Aurora, I just turn the the task bar to auto minimize.

Offline mikew

  • Chief Petty Officer
  • ***
  • Posts: 36
  • Thanked: 1 times
Re: Resolution Fixes
« Reply #9 on: May 01, 2011, 04:15:21 PM »
For Win7, another option that works better for me is to move the taskbar to the side of the screen (only for Aurora, as I can't actually stand to use it there).  I have a 768 vertical res laptop and no external monitor where I am now, but with this and the "phantom display" trick I believe I can actually use every screen with only minor issues with repositioning.

Mike
 

Offline stamasd

  • Petty Officer
  • **
  • s
  • Posts: 25
Re: Resolution Fixes
« Reply #10 on: May 10, 2011, 02:57:14 PM »
Again, I can't say that on a 768H screen the game is playable even with all the tricks in this thread.  Even after moving the taskbar to the side (which I don't like) some elements of the game with reduced window height are inaccessible, such as for instance the bottom row of buttons on the Task Groups window.  And if you apply the phantom display method to that, yes you can drag the window up to access the buttons, but then it's impossible to drag it down again (the method listed in the first post doesn't work because right-clicking on the taskbar does not bring up a "move" option).

Overall, I still find that playing the game on a screen with only 768 vertical pixels is impossible if I don't use my virtual machine method.
 

Offline LoSboccacc

  • Sub-Lieutenant
  • ******
  • L
  • Posts: 136
  • Thanked: 5 times
Re: Resolution Fixes
« Reply #11 on: May 30, 2011, 12:58:13 PM »
There is a program called alt move that allows arbitrary reposition of windows.  It doesn't do magic but can help if you're off by few pixels
 

Offline Snarf

  • Able Ordinary Rate
  • Posts: 1
Re: Resolution Fixes
« Reply #12 on: June 10, 2011, 01:53:08 AM »
Quote from: stamasd link=topic=3117.   msg34283#msg34283 date=1303936326
I have a win7 laptop with 1366x768 screen, and none of the resolution fixes here worked very well.     So I came up with my own.   

I have VMware with a XP virtual machine.     Inside the VM I can change screen resolution to anything, not limited to physical screen.     You get scroll bars when you use a resolution higher than the physical one.     So I installed Aurora inside the VM, set the VM resolution to 1280x960 and it works great.   

Hello!
stamasd, thank you for posting this solution.  My laptop as your operate max resolution of 1366x768 so I couldn't run Aurora properly.    Now everything is as it should be.    Making this work took me less than half hour (finding my XP CD, downloading WMware, installing, setting).    The other solutions weren't useful for me.   
« Last Edit: June 10, 2011, 03:14:03 AM by Snarf »
 

Offline shireknight

  • Petty Officer
  • **
  • Posts: 20
Re: Resolution Fixes
« Reply #13 on: July 19, 2011, 04:48:38 PM »
Found this game yesterday after someone mentioned it on the Total War forums, I started playing through the tutorial I found on your Wiki page, everything was fine until I got to the ship design tutorial and was mortified to find I could not see the buttons on the bottom of the page because my laptop only has a maximum height resolution of 768 :(

After a couple of hours hunting though I found a programme called "GiMe space desktop expander" which allows me to scroll my entire desktop up and down and combined with the reduced height windows option just about makes the game playable phew.
 

Offline Beersatron

  • Gold Supporter
  • Rear Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 996
  • Thanked: 7 times
  • Gold Supporter Gold Supporter : Support the forums with a Gold subscription
Re: Resolution Fixes
« Reply #14 on: July 19, 2011, 07:19:45 PM »
Found this game yesterday after someone mentioned it on the Total War forums, I started playing through the tutorial I found on your Wiki page, everything was fine until I got to the ship design tutorial and was mortified to find I could not see the buttons on the bottom of the page because my laptop only has a maximum height resolution of 768 :(

After a couple of hours hunting though I found a programme called "GiMe space desktop expander" which allows me to scroll my entire desktop up and down and combined with the reduced height windows option just about makes the game playable phew.

There is a stupendous learning curve and some nice 'features' that could stretch the patience of a saint but if you stick with it (and remember that it is free) then you will start to love it - a simple interface and an active imagination works wonders!