Is programming for resolutions that challenging?

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Flybye

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 29, 2006
Messages
374
Past couple of months I’ve purchased 2 games: Death Stranding and Control

Both didn’t have my windows resolution as an option.

I had to edit Death’s Stranding’s exe to support my aspect ratio. I still can’t choose my resolution in the game, but at least it uses my windows resolution. Control was a little easier. I typed my resolution in the config file, and it comes up in the game.

I mean wouldn’t you think being able to choose the correct resolution is one of the most important basic things of a game? Is it that hard to implement or did I just get unlucky with 2 sloppily developed games? I feel these 2 games being ports probably had something to do with it.
 
You bought console ports. The unfortunate reality is that for every good port like Ghost Recon Breakpoint (options wise, it's awesome) you have tons of crap like your describing where only the minimal effort was put in to make the game run on the PC platform.
 
Ideally the game should pull the accurate res from either the drivers or windows OS and in the case it's an aspect ratio it doesn't support, fill any extra space with black bars.

The game/gameplay itself isn't what's challenging, it's everything else (such as the UI, HUDs, menus, radar, closed captioning, button prompts etc) that's time consuming to cater for multiple aspect ratios. 2235 x 1397 is quite unique, being a ratio of approx 14:9 - I don't think it's fair to expect every single aspect ratio to be tested by the devs. 16:9 and 21:9 are probably the two highest priorities, with 4:3, 5:4, 16:10 and 32:9 being second (though low) priority.
 
It’s about 3% less of my 16:10 aspect ratio of 2304 x 1440. People with 2560×1600 monitors being 16:10 I would think 16:10 wouldn’t be that far off of a ratio to design for. I could see something like 32:9 being problematic with UI placement because of the width, but a 16:10?
 
Flybye said:
Past couple of months I’ve purchased 2 games: Death Stranding and Control

Both didn’t have my windows resolution as an option.

I had to edit Death’s Stranding’s exe to support my aspect ratio. I still can’t choose my resolution in the game, but at least it uses my windows resolution. Control was a little easier. I typed my resolution in the config file, and it comes up in the game.

I mean wouldn’t you think being able to choose the correct resolution is one of the most important basic things of a game? Is it that hard to implement or did I just get unlucky with 2 sloppily developed games? I feel these 2 games being ports probably had something to do with it.
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No, it's pretty easy to poll all the supported resolutions.

For raw 3D parts of the game, it's easy to support widescreen, etc. It kind of just happens for free, there's basically nothing special to do assuming you built a sane projection matrix - which is completely trivial.

UI / 2D is another story and is a bit more complicated.

Designing the game itself for the aspect ratio is yet another story, need to be careful you're not going to break some cutscene because you're seeing shit clearly intended to be out of frame.
 
pendragon1 said:
youre really surprised that games dont support your wacked out custom res?! use something standard and you wont have this "problem".
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I think he KNOWS it's whacked out. I understand his concern though. Why can't the game ask windows or Linux what the current resolution is? I've been able to run custom resolutions in games for decades manually.

Think about it this way. You have your desktop set to 1920x1080.. pretty standard, right? If you start a new game it will USUALLY also select that resolution, which means the game actually matched your resolution. So if it's already polling windows for it, why can't it be custom?
 
auntjemima said:
I think he KNOWS it's whacked out. I understand his concern though. Why can't the game ask windows or Linux what the current resolution is? I've been able to run custom resolutions in games for decades manually.

Think about it this way. You have your desktop set to 1920x1080.. pretty standard, right? If you start a new game it will USUALLY also select that resolution, which means the game actually matched your resolution. So if it's already polling windows for it, why can't it be custom?
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Because then (in theory anyways) they need to test and support all of those which is impossible but I'm no software programmer, maybe it's dead simple and causes no issues whatsover.
 
It is easy if you design it that way from the beginning, but you bought some shitty console ports where the original UI was most likely hard coded for one resolution by a junior developer. And the people doing the port didn't give a shit and sure as hell weren't going to rewrite all that code so it would work with some obscure resolution. 99% of console ports are minimum effort just to make it playable on a keyboard and mouse and don't give a single fuck about how well it runs or looks, especially at non-standard resolutions.
 
I mean literally you might be the only person on earth using this resolution. I wouldn’t expect support for it anytime soon.
 
Flybye said:
2235 x 1397
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LOL I don't expect a perfect adoption of this resolution I never have and never will. But when you have some games that recognize your windows resolution perfectly fine and require zero editing of any ini or exe files, and then you come across a few games that can't even do that, you DO begin to ask yourself "well what did these developers do right that these other developers can't figure out?" That is my point. What on earth are these developers not doing that others developers ARE doing?
 
Now I'm curious - how are you achieving that resolution? Is that a combo of multiple monitors or some sort of custom resolution you liked or what?
 
Flybye said:
LOL I don't expect a perfect adoption of this resolution I never have and never will. But when you have some games that recognize your windows resolution perfectly fine and require zero editing of any ini or exe files, and then you come across a few games that can't even do that, you DO begin to ask yourself "well what did these developers do right that these other developers can't figure out?" That is my point. What on earth are these developers not doing that others developers ARE doing?
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game engine limits, the type of game theres all sorts of reasons that im sure an actual game programmer could answer. you just assuming that because one can do it all should.
 
pendragon1 said:
game engine limits, the type of game theres all sorts of reasons that im sure an actual game programmer could answer. you just assuming that because one can do it all should.
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I'm not assuming. I'm just wondering what one dev is doing that the others are not. Which pretty much answers my original question of it being too difficult/time consuming for some devs to worry about. Even if it is a question of engine limits, then the question of well why didn't the engine devs worry about it like other engine devs that do and make choosing your windows resolution in-game easy. I am very curious about their thought processes. Like why wouldn't they consider adopting the user's windows resolution? I would think the devs making a windows game would have had sat down, looked at each other and said "Ok they are playing on windows. Let's make sure they can select their windows resolution," but that doesn't happen lol. And it is not just me. People with ultrawide aspects like 21.9 sometimes have trouble even choosing their resolution. Some of these games I see all the 21:9, 32:9, & 16:10 and so forth people coming together for a solution.
 
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Flybye said:
I'm not assuming. I'm just wondering what one dev is doing that the others are not. Which pretty much answers my original question of it being too difficult/time consuming for some devs to worry about. Even if it is a question of engine limits, then the question of well why didn't the engine devs worry about it like other engine devs that do and make choosing your windows resolution in-game easy. I am very curious about their thought processes. Like why wouldn't they consider adopting the user's windows resolution? I would think the devs making a windows game would have had sat down, looked at each other and said "Ok they are playing on windows. Let's make sure they can select their windows resolution," but that doesn't happen lol. And it is not just me. People with ultrawide aspects like 21.9 sometimes have trouble even choosing their resolution. Some of these games I see all the 21:9, 32:9, & 16:10 and so forth people coming together for a solution.
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Games are made for the biggest common denominator, pc games need to run on a huge amount of different hardware and configurations and also what's available/most common at the time of making the game, there are tons of games that start at 1080p on my 1440p monitor.

The further you stray from mainstream the more work you will have to put in to make things work as you want them to.
 
Domingo said:
Now I'm curious - how are you achieving that resolution? Is that a combo of multiple monitors or some sort of custom resolution you liked or what?
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I have a Sony GDM-FW900 CRT. For a while I was running 2304 x 1440 @ 80hz. I started playing around with a few different analog adapters at different resolutions using different refresh rates. Then I was like well dang. I have a CRT - I can run whatever resolution I want. So I eventually settled at 3% of 2304 x 1440 which is 2235 x 1397 and ran it at 83Hz. Lots of people argue "oh only a 3Hz difference is not noticeable." Well it IS noticeable to ME :D. This entire thing of people can't tell the difference between 40fps and 60fps and 60hz and 120Hz...it is all subjective. Some people CAN and some people CAN'T notice the difference.

This is why I typically don't advertise my resolution when asking generic questions like about why some games adopt your windows resolution and some don't. I type my resolution and half the replies turn into well f u and your whacky res. :p
 
Flybye said:
I have a Sony GDM-FW900 CRT. For a while I was running 2304 x 1440 @ 80hz. I started playing around with a few different analog adapters at different resolutions using different refresh rates. Then I was like well dang. I have a CRT - I can run whatever resolution I want. So I eventually settled at 3% of 2304 x 1440 which is 2235 x 1397 and ran it at 83Hz. Lots of people argue "oh only a 3Hz difference is not noticeable." Well it IS noticeable to ME :D. This entire thing of people can't tell the difference between 40fps and 60fps and 60hz and 120Hz...it is all subjective. Some people CAN and some people CAN'T notice the difference.

This is why I typically don't advertise my resolution when asking generic questions like about why some games adopt your windows resolution and some don't. I type my resolution and half the replies turn into well f u and your whacky res. :p
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wait, so you could just have your crt run any resolution basically flawlessly with a bit of hz adjustment?

Idk, seems more like a nitpick than a real issue given your setup, but iirc running windowed borderless should fix most of the issues
 
Aireoth said:
wait, so you could just have your crt run any resolution basically flawlessly with a bit of hz adjustment?

Idk, seems more like a nitpick than a real issue given your setup, but iirc running windowed borderless should fix most of the issues
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It's totally a non issue. I was just curious why some devs bother to adopt your windows resolution while others don't. :)

CRTs are not native resolution fixed like LCDs. They have limits like LCDs, though. Mine happens to be a 16:10 widescreen CRT. I could run 2560 x 1600 but at only 70Hz with the adapters that I have. Or I could run 1920 x 1200 at 96Hz, but I wanted a higher resolution and still have a refresh rate I am comfortable with. And that is how I ended up with 2235 x 1397 at 83Hz. So yes, if I feel I am not getting enough fps out of a new game, I could always just lower my resolution without it affecting image quality unlike LCDs which look odd when running a non native resolution.
 
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I'm on 3840x1080 and have wondered this same thing for awhile now.

It is rare that a game cannot work properly at this resolution though
 
It sounds like it's easy not to hardcode for aspect ratios, but the reality is that aspect ratio creates tons of issues when it comes to FOV & GUI layout. Yes, you can scale stuff, but it's very hard to make a game work properly with random different aspect ratios outside of the norms.

You want a major developer to basically waste a bunch of time/effort to support your whacked out resolution on an ancient CRT because you want 83hz over 70hz. It's honestly pretty laughable.
 
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Mchart said:
It sounds like it's easy not to hardcode for aspect ratios, but the reality is that aspect ratio creates tons of issues when it comes to FOV & GUI layout. Yes, you can scale stuff, but it's very hard to make a game work properly with random different aspect ratios outside of the norms.

You want a major developer to basically waste a bunch of time/effort to support your whacked out resolution on an ancient CRT because you want 83hz over 80hz. It's honestly pretty laughable.
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My apologies you failed to read the whole thread. Do allow me to get you up to speed:

1) I expect nothing.

2) I am curious why some major games adopt your windows resolution and some games don’t. Why would a small time developer know how to adopt your windows reaolution while a major studio does not even bother to?

3) I’m not the only one dealing with games that won’t pickup my windows resolution and/or aspect ratio. Plenty of the 16:10, 21:9, 32:9, and god knows what else crowd also have trouble with some games not even displaying their resolution. And if a game doesn’t specifically support a super duper ultra wide screen and causes stretching on the sides, at least adopt the windows resolution and let people decide if they want it stretched on the sides or not.

Now do you realize why I didn’t bother to mention my resolution for a generic resolution question in the beginning? I type my resolution and half the replies turn into well f u and your whacky res. :p

I’ll make it even easier for you: Pretend aspect ratios and resolutions were never mentioned and concentrate on my #2 above.
 
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Flybye said:
My apologies you failed to read the whole thread. Do allow me to get you up to speed:

1) I expect nothing.

2) I am curious why some major games adopt your windows resolution and some games don’t. Why would a small time developer know how to adopt your windows reaolution while a major studio does not even bother to?

3) I’m not the only one dealing with games that won’t pickup my windows resolution and/or aspect ratio. Plenty of the 16:10, 21:9, 32:9, and god knows what else crowd also have trouble with some games not even displaying their resolution. And if a game doesn’t specifically support a super duper ultra wide screen and causes stretching on the sides, at least adopt the windows resolution and let people decide if they want it stretched on the sides or not.

Now do you realize why I didn’t bother to mention my resolution for a generic resolution question in the beginning? I type my resolution and half the replies turn into well f u and your whacky res. :p

I’ll make it even easier for you: Pretend aspect ratios and resolutions were never mentioned and concentrate on my #2 above.
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I'm a former game dev. Console games often have all their UI elements hardcoded to a specific resolution unless they plan on doing a PC version from the beginning.
When they do console ports they spend the least amount of money on them as possible and will often lock you to a specific aspect ratio, sometimes even a specific resolution if it's an especially crappy port.
They won't even bother checking windows specific resolution settings like games developed for PC do because if it ran at that resolution the UI would be all messed up and broken. To fix it they would have to redo the entire UI to get it to work nice with PC and that isn't going to happen on the budget they give 99% of console to PC ports.
If they use something like Unreal Engine which is specifically made for multiplatform and follow the best practices they lay out for creating UIs it is extremely easy to make it support any resolution. But even if the original developers did this sometimes the people doing the port still won't do the minimal amount of effort to get it working because they're either extremely bad or have extreme budget constraints.
 
Flybye said:
My apologies you failed to read the whole thread. Do allow me to get you up to speed:

1) I expect nothing.

2) I am curious why some major games adopt your windows resolution and some games don’t. Why would a small time developer know how to adopt your windows reaolution while a major studio does not even bother to?

3) I’m not the only one dealing with games that won’t pickup my windows resolution and/or aspect ratio. Plenty of the 16:10, 21:9, 32:9, and god knows what else crowd also have trouble with some games not even displaying their resolution. And if a game doesn’t specifically support a super duper ultra wide screen and causes stretching on the sides, at least adopt the windows resolution and let people decide if they want it stretched on the sides or not.

Now do you realize why I didn’t bother to mention my resolution for a generic resolution question in the beginning? I type my resolution and half the replies turn into well f u and your whacky res. :p

I’ll make it even easier for you: Pretend aspect ratios and resolutions were never mentioned and concentrate on my #2 above.
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IMO it has nothing to do with the size or type of studio (AAA, indie, mid, etc.) It will very much depend on the specific studio, their skill level, their “passion” so to speak for designing something top notch, or just a habit of shoveling out “usable” games with no real care for greatness.

There are indie studios, even one man “studios” that put the kind of thought You’re talking about into games. Maybe even to the point of over-thinking some things.

Then you have some giant studios (some of EA’s come to mind) that can barely get their games to run on common hardware full stop.

Game developers are human. There is a full behavioral spectrum that plays a part, time limits for development can really strain things, budgetary constraints, lack of broad QC, “real” dev or porting house, publisher breathing down your neck or independent. And a million other things. Also PCs are often an afterthought as mentioned by others.

There’s not really an “experts group” at least not widely recognized with broad membership (that I know of anyway) for game development. Anyone can do it, and they all do it their own way, even using an existing engine.

As others have mentioned custom resolutions can actually add significant dev and QC work though. Supporting the more mainstream modes is often all they have resources for. I’ve seen seemingly basic feature requests and bug fixes for huge games get “punted” as they say in the industry as far as indefinitely (usually never materializing at all).
 
Flybye said:
My apologies you failed to read the whole thread. Do allow me to get you up to speed:

1) I expect nothing.

2) I am curious why some major games adopt your windows resolution and some games don’t. Why would a small time developer know how to adopt your windows reaolution while a major studio does not even bother to?

3) I’m not the only one dealing with games that won’t pickup my windows resolution and/or aspect ratio. Plenty of the 16:10, 21:9, 32:9, and god knows what else crowd also have trouble with some games not even displaying their resolution. And if a game doesn’t specifically support a super duper ultra wide screen and causes stretching on the sides, at least adopt the windows resolution and let people decide if they want it stretched on the sides or not.

Now do you realize why I didn’t bother to mention my resolution for a generic resolution question in the beginning? I type my resolution and half the replies turn into well f u and your whacky res. :p

I’ll make it even easier for you: Pretend aspect ratios and resolutions were never mentioned and concentrate on my #2 above.
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I already addressed #2 but you're ignoring it because you don't like what I said.
 
Flybye said:
LOL I don't expect a perfect adoption of this resolution I never have and never will. But when you have some games that recognize your windows resolution perfectly fine and require zero editing of any ini or exe files, and then you come across a few games that can't even do that, you DO begin to ask yourself "well what did these developers do right that these other developers can't figure out?" That is my point. What on earth are these developers not doing that others developers ARE doing?
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I would definitely start writing some strongly-worded letters to developers, one at a time, on your finest stationary.
Tell them how they're making it slightly more cumbersome for you to waste your time playing video games in your made-up resolution.

Off ya go.
 
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I can feel some of your frustration as the user of an azerty keyboard which can cause all sorts of annoyances if developpers don't take that into account for example in Borderlands 3 the map is a royal pain to use since it keeps wasd as the main navigation keys iso zqsd even though I have zqsd as my main movement keys in game, tons on games require me to press "," iso "m" since the , is where the m would be on a qwerty keyboard and so on.
 
sharknice said:
I'm a former game dev. Console games often have all their UI elements hardcoded to a specific resolution unless they plan on doing a PC version from the beginning.
When they do console ports they spend the least amount of money on them as possible and will often lock you to a specific aspect ratio, sometimes even a specific resolution if it's an especially crappy port.
They won't even bother checking windows specific resolution settings like games developed for PC do because if it ran at that resolution the UI would be all messed up and broken. To fix it they would have to redo the entire UI to get it to work nice with PC and that isn't going to happen on the budget they give 99% of console to PC ports.
If they use something like Unreal Engine which is specifically made for multiplatform and follow the best practices they lay out for creating UIs it is extremely easy to make it support any resolution. But even if the original developers did this sometimes the people doing the port still won't do the minimal amount of effort to get it working because they're either extremely bad or have extreme budget constraints.
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He can run an EDID mask like the projection guys we handed content for presentations.
Think of any of the Cod E3 announcements they do on 6+ panels, anything Sports related from EA that's multi panel with lots of wubs subs + flashing lights.

The pub I worked for had studios that would do mocks of mobile ports this way, those guys were the worst but they made tons of $ for the company remaking every other studios work even shoddier.

Those 2-3 "industry standard" projection suites I noticed were masking in software for test, and often required hdmi dongles when projecting content using theater projectors. HBO likes to use that a lot.
 
odditory said:
I would definitely start writing some strongly-worded letters to developers, one at a time, on your finest stationary.
Tell them how they're making it slightly more cumbersome for you to waste your time playing video games in your made-up resolution.

Off ya go.
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Let me know when you are available to do my dictation.

And thank you everyone for the replies.

And this is why I say to keep my whacky resolution out of the conversation. Someone even made this tool for Death Stranding to help with FOV and aspect ratios. I'm not the only one whining about a lack of proper aspect ratios or windows resolutions being displayed in-game.

https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/1940-death-stranding-ultrawide-fix-fov-changer/

A game is released with broken aspect ratios that they still didn't fix with THREE patches while some random took the liberty of making a small tool to help overcome the limitations. See why I rant? It was too much trouble for the devs of the game to fix it even after three patches.
 
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yea, responsive UI (meaning it'll work on any resolution) isn't difficult to achieve, using simple things like anchoring components much like how web apps are made, but when project managers get involved they place value-time-ratio for each feature of a game and this is one of those things that gets ignored, along with flexible resolutions. they would spend this extra time just for the edge case scenarios like this wacky resolution, and a programmer will most likely be grumpy about it but at least they allow some ini editing so they can sorta hide from the mangers the fact that it's still possible... or something like that.

point is, don't blame the programmers, they are most likely cringing as hard as the gamers
 
Youn said:
yea, responsive UI (meaning it'll work on any resolution) isn't difficult to achieve, using simple things like anchoring components much like how web apps are made, but when project managers get involved they place value-time-ratio for each feature of a game and this is one of those things that gets ignored, along with flexible resolutions. they would spend this extra time just for the edge case scenarios like this wacky resolution, and a programmer will most likely be grumpy about it but at least they allow some ini editing so they can sorta hide from the mangers the fact that it's still possible... or something like that.

point is, don't blame the programmers, they are most likely cringing as hard as the gamers
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Project managers... :yuck:

There's a reason they exist, but still...
 
Youn said:
yea, responsive UI (meaning it'll work on any resolution) isn't difficult to achieve, using simple things like anchoring components much like how web apps are made, but when project managers get involved they place value-time-ratio for each feature of a game and this is one of those things that gets ignored, along with flexible resolutions. they would spend this extra time just for the edge case scenarios like this wacky resolution, and a programmer will most likely be grumpy about it but at least they allow some ini editing so they can sorta hide from the mangers the fact that it's still possible... or something like that.

point is, don't blame the programmers, they are most likely cringing as hard as the gamers
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I saw the polar opposite, where 3 different studios completed 3 games, and ultimately the worst game launched.

So include Product Directors in the pile o shame.

Mobile has its own problems, I worked in mobile gaming briefly after leaving the AAA publisher.
 
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