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Beta Testing 2.09


stgatilov

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3 hours ago, stgatilov said:

I think changing resolution in fullscreen mode simply has no effect. It is reverted back on restart.

I think this is a bad idea, whatever the reason. If the option is available it should work! Also what about computers that are not strong enough to run the game at desktop resolution?

Edited by wesp5
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50 minutes ago, stgatilov said:

On the second thought, it wouldn't help with this problem.

Users are free to have his files in installation directory, and they can be named in any way they want. Installer should skip them properly.

So what am I supposed to do to eliminate this installation problem?

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6 minutes ago, wesp5 said:

what about computers that are not strong enough to run the game at desktop resolution?

Slide the Render Scale lower than 1. I run at 1920x1080 with Render Scale 0.7 or 0.8 depending on mission.

The image sharpening makes it almost look native but it runs as well as a lower resolution.

Please visit TDM's IndieDB site and help promote the mod:

 

http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

(Yeah, shameless promotion... but traffic is traffic folks...)

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18 minutes ago, wesp5 said:

I think this is a bad idea, whatever the reason. If the option is available it should work!

Well, I think in some nearest future we will remove the resolution selection, so the problem will be eliminated.
You can change resolution of TDM window by dragging its corner (but only on Windows).

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4 hours ago, stgatilov said:

The bug should be fixed now. Please try again.

The bug is fixed. Thanks.

During the installation, I spotted the "restore previous cfg file" button, so I clicked on that.

It's been several minutes now, and I'm still seeing the screen below. It presents conflicting information: a "please wait" notice, and an "Installation finished successfully!" notice.

There's no indication that anything is happening.

Why would it take so long to restore the previous cfg? Or is the screen presenting the wrong information? The cancel button is grayed-out, so I hit the "Close" button and it appears that TDM is using my previous cfg.please_wait.thumb.jpg.c40b1c37f03fdc78b7559735ff04b7f8.jpg

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7 hours ago, stgatilov said:

Well, I think in some nearest future we will remove the resolution selection, so the problem will be eliminated.
You can change resolution of TDM window by dragging its corner (but only on Windows).

This is still very unusual. TDM is the first ever game that I played that can't change the resolution properly! If you really want to replace that with renderscale you should give according info and make sure it works on weak computers.

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26 minutes ago, grayman said:

It's been several minutes now, and I'm still seeing the screen below. It presents conflicting information: a "please wait" notice, and an "Installation finished successfully!" notice.

There's no indication that anything is happening.

Hmm... I guess it is confusing text.
Perhaps I should hide the top text when installation is over.

The config restoration happens immediately.
You cannot hit Cancel because you cannot cancel the installation: it has already finished.

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8 hours ago, stgatilov said:

Well, I think in some nearest future we will remove the resolution selection, so the problem will be eliminated.
You can change resolution of TDM window by dragging its corner (but only on Windows).

What? Is this a joke? If not how will you be able to change resolution when in fullscreen? 

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7 minutes ago, HMart said:

What? Is this a joke? If not how will you be able to change resolution when in fullscreen? 

You are not able to do it for quite some time already (on Windows).

It is not necessary with FBO-based rendering. Because everything can be rendered at 25% or 50% of your native resolution (you choose), and then stretched over the whole screen.

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Can't that be disabled if you use the compatibility option "disable fullscreen optimizations" or something like it? My windows is not in English.

Also sorry for not getting it but please explain how "You can change resolution of TDM window by dragging its corner" while playing the game in fullscreen?  Don't that need the mouse cursor to be free? And in fullscreen (even window fullscreen) there's no window corner per se, so how do you grab it? Will you get the mouse to the corner and just drag down? And the resolution changes in real time? I never saw that in any game. 

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I think ultimately the point is that if you render below native resolution on a modern display, you are performing

some sort of up-scaling. Most monitors have very poor upscaling implementations so using "Render Scale" along

with the sharpening shader will give you a better upscale than 99% of upscale options available in flat panel displays.

That said, from a UX perspective... perhaps users should have an easy-button to choose lower Render Scale.

The slider works well enough but for traditional players ( old school ) this will not be the first place they go for render performance.

Please visit TDM's IndieDB site and help promote the mod:

 

http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

(Yeah, shameless promotion... but traffic is traffic folks...)

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14 minutes ago, nbohr1more said:

The slider works well enough but for traditional players ( old school ) this will not be the first place they go for render performance.

Popup texts in the settings menu is the most wanted feature since something like 2.06 ...

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My biggest gripe with the way fullscreen resolution works now is that it is not intuitive to users, because it doesn't really have a precedent in other games. Any recent game release I can think of absolutely changes the resolution if you set it ingame, and TDM not doing that is therefore just unexpected behaviour. Resolution scaling is a different concept and imho should not have been mixed together like this.

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12 hours ago, stgatilov said:

One day I'll rename this stupid model, I promise!

Just... not today 😥

Yes, the new installer is picky about symbols (" " too).

Task is not so much to see what no one has yet seen but to think what nobody has yet thought about that which everybody see. - E.S.

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We are sorta at a middle point between cutting edge games that use dynamic resolution scaling and traditional resolution management.

 

(Someday) What I would want is a holy grail option of being able to use "integer scaling" so that you can have crisp square pixels for lower FBO resolutions but with AA pixels also scaled to exact integer ratio pixels. It should make lower FBO resolutions look native resolution on a low resolution large LCD screen.

Of course you could also do what some modern emulators do and have off-kilter (non ratio) block-pixels use sub-pixel filtering at the block-pixel boundaries to ensure a mostly crisp look and smooth motion too. (Ultra holy grail )

That would be the ultimate solution and it is gaining popularity in the gaming community who have been pushing to make it available on the driver side but there is obviously a conflict of interest there. GPU sellers differentiate their tiers of hardware by what resolution they render to. If players can easily choose a lower resolution and get still get a crisp image it lowers the incentive to upgrade to the next hardware tier. It will take one vendor giving in and offering it to break the stalemate.

Details about the current state of things:

https://tanalin.com/en/articles/integer-scaling/

Please visit TDM's IndieDB site and help promote the mod:

 

http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

(Yeah, shameless promotion... but traffic is traffic folks...)

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Render scale means that the game is rendering to a lower resolution internally and then upscaling the image in the end. That upscaling is irrelevant for performance, even on the crappiest GPU.

Well, unless you get really fancy about it. Then it might be measurable. But right now, it's just a simple bilinear filter that is as close to free as you can get :)

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11 minutes ago, wesp5 said:

Isn't the whole render scale thing impacting performance because it is done on the GPU? Which would be critical for everybody wanting to lower the resolution because they have a crappy GPU in the first place.

Try it out.

Install a relatively heavy mission like Penny Dreadful 2 and set 4x AA and 16xAF and as many graphical enhancements as you can. ( Medium Soft Shadows, SSAO, Bloom, 64-bit color) then check your FPS. Then slide your Render Scale to 0.65 and check your FPS again. It is practically a guarantee that the lower Render Scale will offer higher FPS (at the cost of some fidelity on distant objects, etc).

If you set your monitor "desktop resolution" lower then set your Render Scale back to 1 you will almost certainly find that whatever lower desktop resolution gives you the same performance as Render Scale 0.65 (etc) looks like blurry garbage unless you play on a CRT monitor or you have a magical LCD with "amazing" up-scaling (and hopefully no input lag with that amazing up-scaling).

Please visit TDM's IndieDB site and help promote the mod:

 

http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

(Yeah, shameless promotion... but traffic is traffic folks...)

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I believe you guys, but then we should get some info about that on the video options screen to avoid confusion. I made a quick improvisation, please check it out by replacing the following two lines in english.lang:

"#str_02298"    "Screen size, aspect ratio or fullscreen changes require a restart."
"#str_02299"    "Fullscreen size is locked to desktop, use render scale to adjust."

 

Edited by wesp5
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16 hours ago, nbohr1more said:

We are sorta at a middle point between cutting edge games that use dynamic resolution scaling and traditional resolution management.

 

(Someday) What I would want is a holy grail option of being able to use "integer scaling" so that you can have crisp square pixels for lower FBO resolutions but with AA pixels also scaled to exact integer ratio pixels. It should make lower FBO resolutions look native resolution on a low resolution large LCD screen.

Of course you could also do what some modern emulators do and have off-kilter (non ratio) block-pixels use sub-pixel filtering at the block-pixel boundaries to ensure a mostly crisp look and smooth motion too. (Ultra holy grail )

That would be the ultimate solution and it is gaining popularity in the gaming community who have been pushing to make it available on the driver side but there is obviously a conflict of interest there. GPU sellers differentiate their tiers of hardware by what resolution they render to. If players can easily choose a lower resolution and get still get a crisp image it lowers the incentive to upgrade to the next hardware tier. It will take one vendor giving in and offering it to break the stalemate.

Details about the current state of things:

https://tanalin.com/en/articles/integer-scaling/

Yeah, integer scaling is a great way to play old games on full screen without blurry images, but you can only scale up a window whose resolution (width and height) is at least half the resolution of your screen. For instance, my native resolution is 1680x1050. I can scale games that work on 640x480 but not games that work at 800x600 or higher.

I miss the days when we all had a CRT's. Since they support natively multiple resolutions, we had no issues with this back then. It's ironic. We are in 2021 and still have to find software workarounds to do this.  

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41 minutes ago, Hugo Lobo said:

I miss the days when we all had a CRT's.

Man, I so do not miss CRTs!  The flicker (even 100Hz monitors are not great at times) and small screens and bulk ... and sheer weight if it's a reasonably large screen.  No, don't mourn the old CRT.

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36 minutes ago, Araneidae said:

Man, I so do not miss CRTs!  The flicker (even 100Hz monitors are not great at times) and small screens and bulk ... and sheer weight if it's a reasonably large screen.  No, don't mourn the old CRT.

Yes, have mercy on your eyes. They don't grow back.

"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

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