Daggerfall Workshop Forums

So, Daggerfall has a default resolution of 320x200, which is a 16:10 ratio. The test build currently upscales the interface elements while preserving this ratio.

However, the game was not originally intended to be played on 16:10 monitors, but 4:3 CRT monitors, using non-square pixels. The 16:10 ratio is actually stretched compared to how the game is "supposed" to be. DosBox includes an option to compensate for this, which I generally use.

Would it be possible to add an option to Daggerfall Unity to scale the interface to 4:3 instead of 16:10?

jemapa wrote:So, Daggerfall has a default resolution of 320x200, which is a 16:10 ratio. The test build currently upscales the interface elements while preserving this ratio.

However, the game was not originally intended to be played on 16:10 monitors, but 4:3 CRT monitors, using non-square pixels. The 16:10 ratio is actually stretched compared to how the game is "supposed" to be. DosBox includes an option to compensate for this, which I generally use.

Would it be possible to add an option to Daggerfall Unity to scale the interface to 4:3 instead of 16:10?

I can scale the width and height independently, so this should be possible. This will be a little subjective however based on people's memories of their particular CRT monitor and how non-square their timing mechanisms made the pixels. It's a bit like trying to find a perfect C64 palette. It's a problem that quickly crosses over from software engineering to electrical engineering (see Bob Yannes' notes at the very bottom), and doing it really well is quite involved.

Can you tell me more about how DOSBox handles this?

It's an option in the config file - documented here: http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Dosbox.conf# ... _.7C_false

Here's a good explanation I Googled up as well: http://www.sierrahelp.com/forums/viewto ... =86&t=4208

Thanks for the info. This should be doable. I'll play with this once I get some bandwidth.

Awesome, thank you!

The aspect ratio issue is of concern to me as well. A while ago I found an excellent article about this issue:
Gamasutra: Felipe Pepe's Blog - No, MS-DOS games weren't widescreen: Tips on correcting aspect ratio

Many Daggerfall graphics were almost certainly designed for 4:3/ For example, both the player character sprites in the menus and the NPCs look hunched and bulky when not corrected:



It's pretty noticeable that both NPCs, especially the woman, in the upper, uncorrected picture looks disproportional or as if viewed from a wrong perspective, while in the corrected image they appear proportional. The knob on the compass also appears oval in the upper image and more round in the corrected screenshot. Similarly, the character face in the HUD is "chubbier" in the uncorrected image (cf. Doomguy's face in this article).