UI at high resolution (2560x1440)

Nikita

So I figured out a way to run the game at native resolution of my monitor by adding this to baldur.ini:

'Program Options', 'Graphics', 'Width', '2560',
'Program Options', 'Graphics', 'Height', '1440',
'Program Options', 'Graphics', 'Scale UI', '0',

And even though the game certainly looks much better in fullscreen than it did before (blurry blown out 720p, I believe), the menus are all weird.

Here's how that looks like: http://imgur.com/a/swIPm

I understand there must be a reason for the absence of resolution option (although I can't think of a good one), but it would sure be really nice to be able to play this game in 1:1 pixel ratio in full screen. The menus are all functional (apart from some scroll bars here and there) so if you could fix the messy backgrounds that would be much appreciated by players with larger monitors.

PS. Sorry if that's already been brought up. I tried searching, I swear.

Yovaneth

The problem with high resolutions is: where do you stop? There is always going to come a point at which the GUI explodes - I can't remember what it was with BG1 but with BG2 it was 1280 x 1024 (without Widescreen installed, before someone tries to pick me up on that!).

The reason for an absence of resolution selection is that the game will resize itself in Windowed mode, up to 1920 x 1080. That really is about as good as you'll get - rebuilding the GUI is not a trivial undertaking. Trust me - we argued enough about it during the beta testing phase!!

bigdogchris

Keep in mind that BGEE 'big picture' mode is in beta. I think they added it just as a temporary fix for some users complains over the upscaled UI.

The background textures are of limited size, so once you go beyond the native resolution, you are starting to see the UI go bonkers as it cannot stretch the UI since you have disabled the scaling. They could probably fix it by increasing the UI windows native size, but there's only so much they can do with the UI and high resolutions.

I personally don't like the icons spaced way out, so I'd rather have the upscaled UI that is more proportional.

Nikita

bigdogchris said:

The background textures are of limited size

That's the problem right there. As far as I can tell other applications and websites solve this by using some kind of a pattern for a background. That way if you need the UI to be taller or wider you just repeat the tile a few more times.
And I might be wrong but it looks like that marble texture is already tiled.

bigdogchris said:

I personally don't like the icons spaced way out, so I'd rather have the upscaled UI that is more proportional.

That is a really good point. The problem is unless you disable the UI scaling the whole game runs upscaled, not just the UI.
If 'Scale UI' did scale only the UI allowing the game to run in whatever resolution the system supports, players would be able to zoom out for a pixel perfect picture or zoom in to the level they're comfortable with at the moment.

Kind of like that:



Here's what the picture looks like now, for comparison:



I always feel I'd like to zoom out a bit but I can only zoom in.

Excalibur_2102

The UI doesnt use the same upscaling filter as the rest of the game, which does make it look a bit blurry at higher resolutions. Mine looks a bit blurry at 1920x1080 so it probably looks worse still on your resolution.

I like the zoom level used in the default BGEE settings though, as it is closer to what the game looked like when first released. Disabling the UI scaling zooms it out so it looks a bit more like it did in tutu. Still, you can still zoom in a fair amount even then but not as much as with the scaling enabled.

I guess all you can do is wait and see what overhaul do with "Big screen mode" so to speak. No idea if theyve made any progress on it. Devs have been a bit quiet since last patch and mac release.