Resolutions Supported

[alwaysdime]

So I was about to get this until I loaded up the 3rd game and remembered its not that playable in 2017. The fonts are so small on a 2560 x 1440 monitor with no ingame options to change that. In 2017 I don't want to change my desktop resolution for one game. Has this been addressed at all in the new game?

This isn't about the map size, its the menu's and text that irks me with the 3rd game. With 4k monitors becoming norm in gaming I sure hope this has been updated. The screen shots look like they are much smaller resolution

P.S. I owned all the Talonsoft games and loved them. I would love to have that experience again.

[Meyer1]

In the TOAW IV features thread:

• Dialogs now scale relative to font size. This allows users with huge screens to tailor the game to screen size.

• Fonts settable within the game rather than the .ini file. • Fonts settable within the game rather than the .ini file.

Now this is a very old post and a recent one by Ralph makes me wonder if that is still true:

There is no scale UI setting as such,there are two alternatives, all the fonts are windows fonts, so you can change them. I expect that someone will come out with a large font file before too long. You can also set it to play in full screen mode at a specified resolution. Setting that isn't as friendly as it could be.

So.. I would like to know as well. I guess tomorrow we will have many potential sources for this kind of information [:D]

[alwaysdime]

I truly hope so. I wish they had done that in Campaign Series Middle East. I get they are old engines but they need to support modern hardware if they want to charge full price for a product in 2017. I got my fingers crossed and thanks for the info.

[cdcool]

The font and menus are all adjustable within the game and the Opart3/4Font.ini file
From my experience, it was best to do it within the Opart3/4Fonts.ini file. Once you make the adjustments you like save it.
I have a 4k monitor and I made everything big enough to see without a problem.

[Shadrach]

I went through the "Opart 4 Fonts.ini" file located in "Documents\My Games\The Operational Art of War IV" and changed all 10 and lower font sizes two sizes up.

The in-game menu works but requires a restart for every change anyway, and is kind of clunky and hard to figure out which font is which, better to just use an editor.

[cdcool]

Opart 4 now okay. You do have to play around with the settings, but they should permanent.
Make sure there is no Opart 3? anywhere.

[ralphtricky]

ORIGINAL: Meyer1

In the TOAW IV features thread:

• Dialogs now scale relative to font size. This allows users with huge screens to tailor the game to screen size.

• Fonts settable within the game rather than the .ini file. • Fonts settable within the game rather than the .ini file.

Now this is a very old post and a recent one by Ralph makes me wonder if that is still true:

There is no scale UI setting as such,there are two alternatives, all the fonts are windows fonts, so you can change them. I expect that someone will come out with a large font file before too long. You can also set it to play in full screen mode at a specified resolution. Setting that isn't as friendly as it could be.

So.. I would like to know as well. I guess tomorrow we will have many potential sources for this kind of information [:D]

They're saying the same thing. Dialogs scale relative to font size, if you make the font larger, the dialog should scale with it just fine, however unit counters and other graphics like that don't scale using that method. If you want the graphics to scale too, you need to set it up for full screen and set a resolution.

[Shadrach]

I've not been able to find a setting in-game to change resolution, or in the launcher. In part 19.10 of the manual there are appear to be settings to do it in the ini-file.

ChangeScreenResolution=N Y=Alternate Screen Resolution
ScreenY=768 Alternate Screen Resolution Parameter
ScreenX=1024 Alternate Screen Resolution Parameter

EDIT: Just tested this with 1920x1080, works pretty good, could be a reasonable alternative for those who think stuff is too small - however running non-natively always has a bit of blur, but not too bad on 1080p at least.

[alwaysdime]

I have to say it looks fantastic at 2560 x 1440. The only fonts that I need to change are for the Info Bar and the unit stats in the top right corner. I messed around editing some fonts but I didn't know what to change for these. Could someone point me in the right direction?

[Shadrach]

ORIGINAL: alwaysdime
The only fonts that I need to change are for the Info Bar and the unit stats in the top right corner. I messed around editing some fonts but I didn't know what to change for these. Could someone point me in the right direction?

The same here - I think I've changed those I need to - apart from the unit info box. I have a creeping suspicion this cannot be changed...

I posted about it here too:
tm.asp?m=4377840
feel free to bump it [:)]

[ralphtricky]

ORIGINAL: stian

ORIGINAL: alwaysdime
The only fonts that I need to change are for the Info Bar and the unit stats in the top right corner. I messed around editing some fonts but I didn't know what to change for these. Could someone point me in the right direction?

The same here - I think I've changed those I need to - apart from the unit info box. I have a creeping suspicion this cannot be changed...

I posted about it here too:
tm.asp?m=4377840
feel free to bump it [:)]

You can change the fonts, but not the individual graphics. The problem is that upscaling the graphics often makes things look more blurry. I'll think about it. I might be able to swap out the stack of counters with a larger version as an option. Would that help?

[alwaysdime]

I don't think any of us want to change the counters. I would like yo change the Info Bar at the bottom and the unit stats displayed in the top right corner. Not the counters themselves.

[Shadrach]

Yeah, the Unit Info box could be larger - but my main issue is the fonts. What fonts exactly are used there? I've tried to change the obvious ones called "Unit Info" but it didn't seem to have an effect so I was afraid they might be hard-coded in size.

Will the box auto-scale if the fonts are enlarged a bit?

[IvanJoukov]

On the opposite hand I like to play my turns on my little netbook with a really small resolution : 1366x768. At this resolution I don't have access to the whole interface, mainly the 4th line of buttons on the right panel. Is there a way to change the scale?

[elxaime]

This is all a big problem. As stated above, in 2017 large monitors with higher resolution are becoming the gaming norm. You shouldn't have to require the purchaser, for a game released in late 2017, to have to hunt the forums and go into the files and make manual adjustments so that the game isn't an unreadable mess. Yes, I realize it can be done, but why shift the hassle to the purchaser?

[alwaysdime]

The Info Bar is called Status Bar in the options and the unit info is Unit Info Value. You also have to restart the game before the changes take place.

[cdcool]

ORIGINAL: elxaime

This is all a big problem. As stated above, in 2017 large monitors with higher resolution are becoming the gaming norm. You shouldn't have to require the purchaser, for a game released in late 2017, to have to hunt the forums and go into the files and make manual adjustments so that the game isn't an unreadable mess. Yes, I realize it can be done, but why shift the hassle to the purchaser?

I agree

[alwaysdime]

ORIGINAL: ralphtrick

ORIGINAL: stian

ORIGINAL: alwaysdime
The only fonts that I need to change are for the Info Bar and the unit stats in the top right corner. I messed around editing some fonts but I didn't know what to change for these. Could someone point me in the right direction?

The same here - I think I've changed those I need to - apart from the unit info box. I have a creeping suspicion this cannot be changed...

I posted about it here too:
tm.asp?m=4377840
feel free to bump it [:)]

You can change the fonts, but not the individual graphics. The problem is that upscaling the graphics often makes things look more blurry. I'll think about it. I might be able to swap out the stack of counters with a larger version as an option. Would that help?

Since you brought up the graphics I now see that they should be larger in the unit info window. Previously I was so focused on the font size and learning the game (For the 5th time) I didn't realize that there was a stack there

[Shadrach]

For what it's worth, Windows 10 has really improved support for DPI scaling, especially in the latest Creators Update.

So if a developer takes a bit of care and uses standard Windows programming, most stuff will scale just fine. It can even override scaling options and "force" scaling on the application, at the cost of some blurriness.

If you have Win10, it's well worth trying the compatibility settings in the Compatibility tab for the shortcut/application. Make sure to create a shortcut to the actual executable and not the starter, so "Opart 4.exe", directly in the game folder.

What I found:
System -> TOAW4 scales pretty well, stuff gets nice and big, but a bit blurry, maybe too big for a game (I use 150% scaling)

System (Enhanced) -> This is meant to replace the scaling above, with much less blurriness (aka "permonitorv2"). However this mode causes heaps of graphical bugs in TOAW4 so it's probably not been tested properly. Too bad, because it would have been a very nice solution to the small fonts problem, without having to edit lots of font sizes.

For those interested, here's some reading on the more techy side:
https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/ ... rs-update/
https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/wind ... p/mt843498
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/librar ... s.85).aspx
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/235 ... -to-per-mo

I actually tried it with TOAW, using the tool ResourceHacker you can change stuff like application manifests, and added the following to the manifest:

Code: Select all

<asmv3:windowsSettings xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/SMI/2005/WindowsSettings">
 <dpiAware>true/PM</dpiAware>
 <dpiAwareness xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/SMI/2016/WindowsSettings">permonitorv2,permonitor</dpiAwareness>
 <gdiScaling xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/SMI/2017/WindowsSettings">true</gdiScaling>
 </asmv3:windowsSettings>

This worked pretty well for the System scaling, but System (Enhanced) still gets a lot of bugs so can't be used unfortunately.

And yes - I know old Grognards and wargamers don't really go for the latest and greatest so tend to run on older systems, probably WinXP still for a lot, fair enough. But MS is actually very good at making sure stuff still works on older OSes, and there's always fallback options for those that don't support scaling.

[ETF]

Wow, really all that just to read the font size Yikes!!