Should we raise resolution limits in TWDD/TWJD?

[Burnt]

However, we'll ultimately go with what the players want, so please answer truthfully.

...........

[Stabwound]

If we're seriously going to talk about a 49 to 45 poll, it was actually in favour of raising the limit last night before I announced it.

[Burnt]

If we're seriously going to talk about a 49 to 45 poll, it was actually in favour of raising the limit last night before I announced it.

1. It's 49 to 43 unless you're counting all 3 of Lofty's names.
2. Whether you count all of Lofty's names or not it was still not in favor of raising it last night.

[Teh Super]

Am I the only one that thinks people should read reviews/comparisons/try out before buying a new (widescreen) LCD to make sure it doesn't have a shitty scaler or an inability to show lower resolutions centered (with black boxes in the sides)? Or at least figure out how to enable scaling using your graphics card. I don't even own an LCD but here's some stuff I spent a few hours figuring out for you guys.

Judging by the amount of posts in this thread Google found (http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtop...?f=6&t=1113767) talking about GPU scaling I think it's safe to assume it's possible with almost any graphics card. Nvidia was mentioned and some Ati cards support it too ("X1xx0, X2x00 and 3xx0", http://forums.amd.com/game/messagevi...threadid=92929) and I guess that's pretty much the whole market. If you can afford a widescreen LCD, you probably can afford a modern graphics chipset aswell.

According to a guy in the thread the algorithm for GPUs is "similar to bicubic interpolation". I can't test it myself but here's an approximate comparison of what it'd look like on your screen on 1920x1200 (exact) and 1440x900 scaled to the whole screen (pic A resampled to 4/3*original using "B-Spline" in Irfanview):

A


B


Is that supposed to be bad?

This game isn't really a sight to the eyes, no matter what the resolution. Higher resolutions don't really add anything to gameplay either (more on the contrary in dd - see arguments about "radaring" as its own skill). This game is old and had been maxed out at 1280x1024 for ages. And if the problem with switching between high/low res for other arenas/twdd is simply the variance in the size of the screen, deal with it: play windowed instead of scaling.

Now to the other solution, playing windowed. Some seem to be annoyed about window borders and whatnot and would rather have the game screen its exact size with black borders around. Again, the graphics driver should be able to do this. If not, here's one way. 1) To remove the title bar and window borders, download and install Actual Window Manager (http://www.actualtools.com/files/aimsetup.exe). Make a new setting for Continuum game window w/ the settings startup: remove standard window parts: border, position: align to middle-center, size: at startup to 1440x900. Naturally you can use 1280x1024 or w/e aswell if it fits your monitor. You don't need to mind the 60-day evaluation period, it works past that. 2) If that isn't enough and you want to cover any stuff around the window, you can use Irfanview (http://www.irfanview.com/). From the menus choose Image - Create new image, set the size to 1920x1200 or whatever your native resolution is and the color to what you want for the background (maybe not 100% black so you can see the border). Now you have the image ready and can save it for later use. Then simply press enter (full screen) and alt-tab to your borderless Continuum window so it shows up over it.

Someone might want to do a more in-depth guide to implement these tweaks for ease of use but for now knowing the possibility exists is enough. Then it just reduces to educating the public which shouldn't be a big problem in this case cause they're already past the pub/twd gap and more willing to put the effort to setting things up. Now if there are some available coders that know DirectX or whatever, this all could be nicely packed to a single program with a simple UI that uses the graphics card's capabilities to scale the screen in real time, or maybe even the CPU - they might be fast enough for that nowadays. (Even better, add that stuff to a brand new Continuum client. But yeah, scratch that, no ASSS.)

A few other notes:

- Why would new players quit because of a res cap in TWD, nevermind one division, without sticking to other arenas/zones/divisions, after having played for a guesstimate of +~3 months already (seeing they'd consider playing TWDD in the first place)? "Oh I see, my plans to advance myself in warbird 4v4/5v5 leagues with exactly the visual settings I want in this 10 year old game have been restricted and that was all I ever wanted to do, well bye forever"

- A problem with "measuring" the significance of the advantage using the same players w/ different res is that getting used to a resolution (with this big a difference in the screen size) for at least weeks is, I believe, necessary for optimal gameplay where the advantages would actually show up. Using different players the individual skill differences would matter too much and you'd need a huge dataset to try and dig up some sort of a statistically significant correlation with... W:L? K? What? Seeing that the team around you affects those stats so much and the fact there are so few skilled, competitive squads/players around currently renders that pretty much impossible IMO.

[kthx]

Way to fuckup bigtime Stab, generally if you go by polls and shit doesn't get done thats because polls are fucking retarded and staff generally have the sense to listen to the games veteran players who have years of experience on the subject. Nice job "fixing the game" for the little whining minority you fucking moron.

[Burnt]

After talking about this with other staff, it finally dawned on me that if you poll players on possible changes nothing will ever happen.

How convenient that you blocked the 3v3 poll which has voted in favor of a possible change out of your mind while this dawned on you.

Every single staff member I talked to wanted to and agreed to raise the limits here. I was even on the fence until a few convinced me to just try it.

Gee that makes me feel so much more confident that this is the right decision. I guess you forgot to talk to PH and I.D. both members of staff who voted no.

IF IT SUCKS IT'LL BE CHANGED BACK. If there is like 5% of people using a higher res, then whatever, I'll admit it was a fuckup and we'll put it back.

Well if it's 10% will we keep it? or 20%? or 50%? I mean what are you going to be using to determine whether the test is successful or not. First you go against the results of the poll because it didn't agree with your position (after saying you would go with what people want.) Now you say we're testing it without saying how the test will be evaluated. So my feeling is that your just going to arbitrarily say it was a success and keep it regardless of how many people are using higher resolutions or anyone other factor, so what is the point of the test?

[kthx]

Thats you Stabwound, you Jackass.

[Stabwound]

The 3vs3 thing was dropped because dev staff started talking about making a separate 3vs3 division/league, which in fact IS going to happen. And no, no one on staff has come to me voicing a negative opinion about the resolution change. In fact, the only people that at all bothered to contact me personally about it were in favour of it.

Also, no one said the results of the forum poll are going to be the ultimate say in what happens. They're maybe good for getting a general idea of what people like, but how can you seriously look at a poll that is basically 49%-51% with maybe 10% of the population voting (and no real way to regulate who votes/how many times they vote) and say that it should absolutely be followed without question? Would it have made you feel better if I closed the poll when it was in favour of changing? The discussion is the more important part here.

I have no idea why you two are acting like it's the end of the world. I know you'd all rather the game be a stagnant cesspool and that nothing ever be touched or changed, but just give it a chance, please.

And posting stupid pictures really hurts my feelings.

[kthx]

The last time I heard anything as retarded as this it was Qan trying to explain why changing the zone for distension and having the entire bot system and zone crash 20 times a day was for the good of the stagnant cesspool of a zone. And then I heard more staffers arguing for how I wasn't being open minded, and how we needed to host distension before TWLD in the interest of fairness for the zone.

Staff should look at changing the Distension schedule on weekends...

...once supporters of this movement begin posting actual reasons and proof that this is an issue, rather than hearsay, wild claims, and "proof" which actually proves absolutely nothing.

I'd be against running it during TWL games, or if it actually causes trouble even after qan's recent fixes (which seem to have been a success), but I have no idea what type of issue could possibly arise due to the bot being run and shut off a full hour before the first TWL time slot (which, I believe, is one not often used). It should be noted that, in general, there is very little overlap between the TWL and Distension playerbases, so I don't believe it would affect squad activity much, especially considering the hour gap.

Also, I play both TWL and Distension, unlike almost everyone else that is on either side of this issue, and I really don't think this whole thing is even worth bringing up. If the bot does happen to be the cause of a recycle or lag problems (which I do not think it will) then yeah, I'd agree to change it. Until then, though, I'm against it.

edit: someone should check the server load and bandwidth usage of the zone while Distension is in full swing, and compare it to regular hours, but then again, I don't even know if anyone other than PriitK could do that.

----

heres another one of your ideas that worked out really well, remember when you didn't listen to the obviously more wise, intelligent, and veteran playerbase and decided that hosting distension before twld was a good idea, the same kind of great idea you are making now by changing resolutions perhaps? You would think that whatever wise being put you into power here would have looked back at your history of poor judgment in handing important matters to this zone and skipped over your name after how poorly you have dealt with matters in the past. Well, I guess much like last time, it is time to go over your head, for your own good, and the good of the zone, to make sure that more asinine changes that are detrimental to the zone don't destroy this game.

[kthx]

Oh and that isn't any stupid picture, its horse boy captures from a google street view van, and its all the rage.

[wicket666]

My avatar is better

[Stabwound]

lol??? What exactly is your point here in bringing up Distension? Are you forgetting that it was me that stopped running it and told all other staff to stop? You don't remember people going crazy on me because of it? Actually, thanks for quoting that above:

Also, I play both TWL and Distension, unlike almost everyone else that is on either side of this issue, and I really don't think this whole thing is even worth bringing up. If the bot does happen to be the cause of a recycle or lag problems (which I do not think it will) then yeah, I'd agree to change it. Until then, though, I'm against it.

That's exactly what happened. I shut it down. Thanks for proving me right, though...?

I don't appreciated the little threat there, either. I can assure you that you aren't doing shit, especially since both sysops agree with raising the res limit.

[kthx]

Oh and its 48-56 now, thats two more no's ever since you changed the shit, congrats on yet another failure for TW, please quit trying to help, trust me you have helped MORE than enough between this crap and distension.

[kthx]

It was just another shithole idea you supported until you realized how god awful it was instead of just listening in the first place, that is why I brought it up.

[Stabwound]

I still think Distension was a good game, and it's unfortunate that qan gave up on it and TW. And I didn't stop supporting it until he disappeared last summer after promising a bunch of updates and whatnot.