resolution fix suggestion

[Cursed Ghost]

Hi all

So as most will no doubt be aware the various games in the x series particularly the earlier games have issues when trying to run them in HD resolutions

For example if you try to run say X2 in 1080p aka 1920x1080 resolution the game ends up stretched because X2 was developed in a time before wide screen was common and unfortunately the UI doesn't rescale appropriately so that stuff isn’t stretched or cut off, nor is it possible to set a custom 1440x1080 resolution which would let you play the game at 1080p resolution while maintaining the 4:3 aspect ratio the game was built for.

Why ego haven't released a fix for this so that’s its possible to run the game in a custom resolution like 1440x1080 or maybe added some way to rescale the UI to eliminate the stretching/cutting off I don’t know.

Ego please fix this.

In any event until such a time as Ego sees fit to finally release a fix for this issue for all game in the x series I have a suggestion.

What is that suggestion I hear you ask? Well the other day I came across a patch for another game Kingpin Life of Crime which lets you play that game in widescreen which is otherwise not possible since like the earlier games in the X series Kingpin was built in 4:3 aspect ratio so I'm wondering since there is no official fix for this issue from Ego would it be possible to create a res patch for the various games in the X series using a similar method ?

This way you would be able to set a custom resolution like 1440x1080 which would allow you to play in HD without any stretching and without having anything cut off.

If someone wanted to have a go at this here is where you can find the kingpin respatch as well as its source code

https://www.kingpin.info/download/index ... prespatch/

as far as I can tell what this is doing is patching various locations in the kingpin.exe to make the game run at the resolution specified by the user in my case I set the game to use 1600x1200 I then opened the patch found the section that said 1600x1200 I then change that to 1920x1080 and ran the patch after which I loaded up the game went to settings and 1600x1200 had change to 1920x1080 and so far its worked beautifully.

So if it worked for Kingpin I see no reason it couldn't work for X although it would require someone to with the relevant programming skills / knowledge to make it.

[Zeron-mk7]

As far I known, X2 game engine was created with 4:3 aspect ratio and you probably can't fix that, because to fix it, you need to rework game engine, I think .
X2 was released 21 years ago , so nobody fix it .

[Cursed Ghost]

Maybe, maybe not, as far as I can tell what the patch I linked to above is doing is hex editing the executable so that when you set kingpin to run at say 1600x1200 it patches the relevant location in the executable to change 1600x1200 to what ever you specify, so in my case 1920x1080

So in theory the same methodology should work for the x games if you could figure out the proper location/locations within the executable you could for example set the game to run at 1920x1080 find the location in the executable where that setting is stored and then change it to 1440x1080, this would allow you to run the game at a resolution that is otherwise not possible to set via the UI so that you can play at higher resolutions without parts being cut off or stretched and distorted as 1440x1080 is 1080p in 4:3 aspect ratio

Now ideally what would be better is if Ego just fixed the UI so that when you set a wide screen resolution the UI rescales accordingly although I cant see that happening as that would be a fair amount of work so as a compromise they could just make it possible to set a custom resolution via window mode as they did for the later games in the series.

Although they really need to make sure it works for both the steam and disk versions because what they implemented for TC to address this very point in 3.4 doesn't work if you are running the cd version of the game because I tried it, I copied the res.dat folder from the steam version of AP as this file isn't present in the TC folder if you are running the cd version of the game I then added 1440x1080 to the list saved started up the game switched to window mode and tried to set the game to run at 1440x1080 but it didn't appear in the list so I can only assume that it just doesn't work for the disk version of the game.

The problem I have in all of this is that its not just the older games in the series that have this issue even the newer game like TC and AP games that where made when wide screen was common have the problem of the UI not rescaling when you set a higher resolution which results in for example text becoming to small and you having to squint to see it, it also means that the sector map ends up much smaller than it should be.

I mean regardless of the resolution you set the sector map is only like 500 pixels square that's fine you you are running the game at 1024x760 resolution but if you have the game set to run at say 1920x1080 that is ridiculously small becaue when running at 1920x1080 there is easily enough screen space for the sector map to be like 1000 pixels square and its not just the sector map and text that's to small its everything.

I mean ultimately why bother letting users set wide screen resolutions at all if the UI isn't going to rescale to accommodate them ?