As there seems to be interest for the 800x480 resolution (see here and here), I’m opening a separate thread, especially because the development of a resolution smaller than the original H3 faces particular challenges.
Adventure map is not really a problem - I have created a first draft (see attached package - EDIT: see also an alternative, better version 3 posts below), and it works pretty decent. There are still small adjustments to be done:
Next Hero / End Turn buttons to be reduced to same size as the others
Hero/Town list & InfoBox are overlapping a bit (ideal solution would be if the InfoBox could be shrinked, otherwise I’d have to reduce the MiniMap even more)
The main issue is the fact that all in-game windows are in 800x600 resolution, and shrinking them will not be an easy task. You can handle most of them as they are (I managed the town screen, castle recruitment, even heroes meeting to exchange items). But the biggest problem is the battlefield, where the game is crashing every time.
So this is just experimental, for the coders interested in working on all necessary changes to make this function properly. 800x480-experimental.7z (66.9 KB)
I think that getting rid of minimap completely, displaying it with one single button would work better. At least you should remove the big frame and use one from adv. map. To make it square, extend towns list to the top.
Interesting idea, very challenging. I agree with Warmonger that we should get rid of minimap - it could be displayed in InfoBox when a special button is pressed. It’d give us some space. The real problem are windows (town, battle, etc.) which are bigger than 800x480. The easiest (but still not easy) solution is to write a part of real window manager that would allow us to move windows - eg. only a part of battlefield would be displayed and to move it (not scroll) we’d press alt+arrow (or something else).
If there would be a way to solve the crash when we enter battles, the game would be pretty much playable in this resolution. The graphics in some windows may look funny, especially the lower edge, and the check button may not be always accessible, but we have Enter key for that. The only problem would remain the battle, because even without the crash, it would be very annoying to play without visible battle log. Probably the solution for that (other than resizing battlefield) would be to show the battle log in the console.
On a separate note, is it just me, or the way VCMI interprets the width/length of the MiniMap is upside down? I mean, if I change to length to let’s say 50, the map gets contracted on the horizontal, not the vertical as I would expect.
My opinion, better way is to put all of buttons like letter T (6 buttons long ang 3 buttons high) and leave only 1 hero and town visible, other will be scrollable, and this will leave the whole minimap as usual
Well, first draft is definitely not that good, also because it’s unfinished. Second may look weird because the way the buttons are displayed. I’m not sure though about leaving only 1 hero and 1 town visible. Sounds like we’d go crazy scrolling every single day through the hero/town lists.
But I’d like the opinion of the users who are planning to play it on this small resolution. What solution would you prefer:
Something in the lines of the original draft, by staying as close as possible to the classic H3 interface, only shrinking the mini-map on the vertical? And lose the mini-map frame or not?
Or something in the lines of the alternative version, with a squary smaller version of the mini-map, allowing 3 of the game buttons to “crawl up”, as well as 3 extra slots for either hero or town portraits? And if yes, which should it be: do we usually end up having more heroes than towns, or more towns than heroes (in which case the mini-map can be moved in the right corner, and have 7 hero slots)?
Or would you rather keep the full size of the mini-map, frame included, but sacrifice the hero/town lists to just 1 slot?
Actually all of ideas have a chance. Just it will be hard to implement some of them due to reasons:
Zamolxis suggestions are a way to produce shinking-fitting-positioning code, which is not good for devs.
My idea is a bit harder for users. But I see a point here - to force user use H key or nexthero button (which is a bit faster rather than searching a hero in a hero-list with lots of clicks, when we have 5+ heroes)
There was also an idea to make minimap-button to show hide minimap. I think it’s not so good idea too, because of both user and devs difficulties.
But i guess i found a compromiss. Lets use in low-res combining of minimap and infowindow, no buttons. Then usual “single” click will change infowindow as usual (only + minimap-window is added), and click-and-drag will immediatelly show minimap and scroll minimap. And maybe when choosing a Hero (from anywhere, herolist, map, H key) after a while info window changes to minimap.
In such case we have very standart and usual interface (and maybe we wil have one more slot for hero and town in lists). And of course for devs it will be (i guess) only a matter of realigning minimap and click-handling in infowindow.
There is another possibility that hasn’t been described: we can shrink adventure map’s width and put some buttons / hero list / town list vertically in another column between adventure map and minimap / infobox. Then we wouldn’t have to cut out anything.
Now that’s what I call thinking out of the box. If I have some time at the end of the week, I’ll draft a version for that as well.
@pHOMM: Perhaps I am missing something, but why do you mention “shinking-fitting-positioning code” and “not good for devs”. Everything’s ready - see the attachments in my posts above (just make sure you put the contents of the archive in the right folders). The first draft needs some improvements (including 2 new .def files for the small versions of the Next Hero and End Turn buttons), but the second version is pretty much ready.
Any news on this resolution or in fixes for it?
I’m interested in this because i want to play vcmi on my nokia n900 (maemo 5) and it has a screen of 800x480.
I didn’t know about it… anyway, none of them seems to be interested in writing code or preparing graphics / sketches.
Actually it’s avoidable if the rest of windows are scrollable (only a part of them is visible and they’re scrolled when we move the pointer near top/bottom side of screen). But adventure map screen, being the displayed for most of the time, should be 800x480.
Hum,so Tow Dragon,are you saying that the scrollable option is viable/easy to make? i really dont mind to scroll in castle,menu and battle screens. I have time to do that since it isnt a game where we have to be quick lol. O course that if it could be done to resize all the windows it would be awsome,but the scroll could be a great “temporary fix” .
Thanks for replying and sorry for any grammar error
Oh and if i knowed anything of code or graphic manipulation you would see that i would be one of the first persons to offer help in this project,since homm3 its my favourite game of all time. But iḿ just an useless requesting soul
I think scrolling is the easiest solution. No new graphics have to be made.
Straightforward resizing is not a good solution because some texts could become unreadable and we have problems with screen width/height ratio (which is obviously different in 800x600 and 800x480). All windows bigger than 800x480 must be redesigned for this resoultion or scrolled.
I wonder why homm 3 fan artists are not interested in making graphics for VCMI… a lot of new creatures are created, there is even “New Interface” project on heroescommunity… and we haven’t even received a promise of doing something (with a few exceptions, but not from people who have done anything else)… simultaneously 14 developers contributed to our codebase. I don’t know how to explain it.
If I have some time at the end of the week, I’ll draft a version for that as well. 
