800x480 resolution

International board Development
#5

You know, i think both are not so well…

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

#6

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:

  1. 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?
  2. 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)?
  3. Or would you rather keep the full size of the mini-map, frame included, but sacrifice the hero/town lists to just 1 slot?
#7

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.

#8

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.

#9

Now that’s what I call thinking out of the box. :wink: If I have some time at the end of the week, I’ll draft a version for that as well. :slight_smile:

@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.

#10

I was guessing about mini-map, the phrase was about minimap-shrinking code…
If it is ready than no problems.

AND actually any admap-size change makes dimdoor spell to work wrong (I mean when it will be implemented)

well “choose your destiny!!!” )) how it will be implemented is the choice of devs

Dimension Door in custom resolutions
#11

I’d prefer one hero and one town with popup list on right mouse button.
What about battles?

#12

The window would have the same size as in 800x600 so you’d have to scroll this window. All windows bigger than 800x480 would have to be scrolled too.

#13

Hi there.

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.

Thanks in advance

#14

AFAIK there is no progress in developing this resolution. It’s not that simple and there are too few people interested in it.

#15

We should ask all people from Maemo.org to jump in here and convince Tow dragon that there are plenty of people interested in it. :wink:

#16

You should rather prepare a project for all game windows fitting in 800x480 :stuck_out_tongue:

#17

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.

#18

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

#19

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 :confused:

Thanks again

#20

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.

#21

I had a talk with OnionKnight earlier. We figured it should be of some use that there already is a widescreen resolution available (1680x1050). So we could eventually adopt some of it’s behavior?

Please also note that the Nokia N900 his quite a bunch of pixels available so that text could be really small and still readable. It’s quite comfortable to read such an image designed for a 17" @ 800x600 screen on the N900’s display. So it’s probably unnecessary to think about the missing space (in size). IMHO the problem are the missing pixels at the top/bottom, where information would be lost.

I don’t know how it’s solved for the 1680x1050 resolution, but you’d either have to add black bars on the left and right side (e.g. in a battle), or stretch the picture. You could also add some nice graphics to the left and right end to keep the aspect ratio of the image.

If someone is willing to point me to the relevant graphics, I’d not hesitate to give it a try to make them fit a widescreen. I guess we would need the main entry images (new game, new scenario etc.) and the battlefields. Are towns affected, too? Is there a list of resolution specific graphics available?

I hope OnionKnight could also tell us his thoughts keeping scaling in mind.

#22

I’m not sure if what we discussed is directly related to this issue as it was mainly about how arbitrary resolutions could be supported. I think it would be difficult to apply the layout of something high-res as 1650x1080 because as I understand the main issue here is the lack of absolute vertical space, whereas in the aforementioned resolution this is not an issue.

This is partly what I meant earlier on IRC about dividing resolutions into classes. You could have the UI elements for high resolutions like 1650x1080 and 1280x1024 laid closely to the original H3 since there’s more space available, but when it comes down to low resolutions that are smaller than 800x600 you would need to use a different algorithm (and preferably different sets of sprites) to lay it out properly.

#23

I understand, but I would say there are pixels missing in the high-res 1650x1080, too. The available space is a lot bigger indeed, but in the end, the aspect ratio has still missing pixels on the Y axis, right?

You could say, on pictures with a 4:3 ratio there are pixels missing on the X axis (compared to a 16:9 ratio), but on the other hand a picture with a 16:9 ratio would have missing pixels on the Y axis (compared to a 4:3 screen). So either way you’d have to remove pixels on the Y axis or add pixels on the X axis.

I also understand what you mean with the classes. I think it’s a good idea, and also accept your doubts regarding the smaller resolution. But again, we should at least consider that we could use the same class as for 1280x1080 and for 800x480 (given you didn’t add tons of additional data on the screen).

The sprites from 800x600 should be fine though?

EDIT: Note that the game 800x480 layout created from Zamolxis work quite well, it just fails for battles and the entry screen…

#24

@slash

I think you don’t understand how VCMI supports bigger resolutions and where is the problem.

The only interface that is resized is adventure map interface. Game setup menus are always 800x600 and battle window / town window are not fullscreen (you see adventure map below them). It was the easiest solution.

So you can take a screenshot of fullscreen VCMI / Heroes III in 800x600, resize it to 800x480 and display on your device and tell us if everything is readable… some fonts in Heroes are so small that we couldn’t found TrueType font that is equally readable when it has the same height in pixels. IIRC the smallest font is used in spell selection window.