96 DPI required for correct operation?

[MarkShot]

I just installed the game on my desktop system (XP). I am using a custom DPI setting of 130. The Windows default is 96 DPI.

The game appears to run fine, but the text doesn't fit in the dialogue boxes and overruns all throughout the game. This is not very desirable. It works fine on my laptop at 96 DPI, but the performance is too poor to seriously consider playing it.

Is there anything that can be done to resolve this problem other than altering my desktop settings?

Thanks.

[Pocus]

That would ask for a tremendous work, as the strings length are calibrated to fit in the various game windows, and they cant be expanded (its a graphical 2D interface, so all graphics are made by hand by our artists)

[[FS] Feltan]

That would ask for a tremendous work, as the strings length are calibrated to fit in the various game windows, and they cant be expanded (its a graphical 2D interface, so all graphics are made by hand by our artists)

And the interface is elegant indeed!

One note....for your "future" games.

Decide what languages you are going to translate early in design. French, English, German....all the Western Eurpopean languages translate, oddly enough, to about the same "length" in most cases.

Several years ago, we had a business application translated into Polish. All of our text boxes were too short. The same problem crops up in many double-byte character sets from Asia. Do your self a favor, and never translate your games into Thai!

Markshot, the programming solution for this issue is not tricky, but you run into the law of unintended consequenses. The application can reset screen resolution during initilization; however, that (may) cause problems for many users who don't run custom settings (who are most of the users).

Regards,
Feltan

[MarkShot]

Well, I just uninstalled BoA.

At 130 DPI, large parts of the game are just unuseable.

I tried switching to 96 DPI and setting EXTRA LARGE FONTS and other options via APPEARANCES. However, that does not fully mitigate my problems with using my PC. Quite a few dialogue boxes and displays end up being quite small. Of course, then BoA runs perfect.

Perhaps, when I switch to an LCD in the future, the small text imposed by 96 DPI will be less objectionable while running at 1600x1200.

For the moment, I have just put BoA on the side. At least, I ordered the less expensive download version as opposed to the CD. Oh, well ...

[Elmo]

That's a shame. If 96 dpi is required then IMO it should be listed as a requirement in the documentation.

[Pocus]

we can change BoA so that it switch to a lower resolution where 96 DPI is not too small, its a possibility (1280x1024 for example).

In the vast majority of cases, DirextX applications are not as flexible as standard windows ones.

[MarkShot]

Well, I decided to run it on my laptop which is configured for 96 DPI at 1024x768.

After some playing around with it, I found that the game runs much smoother with caching turned off. The laptop does have 512Mb RAM. But the caching generates lots of background disk activity which causes quite a bit of jerkiness in the game. (In fact, I think I was that way on my 1024Mb RAM desktop too.)

I think if you want to support high memory machines, you should just pre-load everything when the scenario loads. The background disk activity seems to result in mouse and screen update jerkiness. This may also be impacted by whether the mouse is USB or PS/2 style. I believe a USB mouse is more sensitive to CPU utilization and interrupts.

[Pocus]

strange, I replied and nothing comes? Hope the server will add my answer

I was saying that I will modify a bit these features, in the direction you are saying, I noticed the same things.

[MarkShot]

Okay, there are two ways to make the game function properly without resorting to resetting the Windows to run at 96DPI.

While browsing around the game directories, I found two things:

(1) A directory containing fonts: .\BOA\Fonts

(2) An INI file for fonts: .\BOA\GameData\Fonts.ini

Fixes:

(1) Find two freeware TTF fonts on the Internet that are close to Arial and Verdana. Place them in the Fonts directory. Edit Fonts.ini replacing references to Arial and Verdana with the downloaded fonts (need to include the filename also). This will remove the dependency on the OS DPI setting. (Note: simply copying the Window's Arial.ttf and Verdana.ttf font files to the font directory will not work. The game requests its fonts from Windows first, then looks in the font directory.)

or

(2) Font.ini specifies the point size for each the various game elements; 8 entries. Try reducing each entry by a value of -1 and then run the game. If the in game text overruns the art work, then repeat.

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For those who are interested, this is what I have worked out regarding the entries:

#1: Rollover and ledger
#2: Gazette news, country names in scenario selection, and ledger
#3: ?
#4: Filter labels and button labels
#5: ?
#6: Unit text in the bottom panel
#7: ?
#8: Titles used in scenario list and the ledger

[MarkShot]

Well, this means I can now play on my desktop instead of laptop. That means a 128Mb VRAM and 1024Mb RAM. That should really improve the experience.

[Pocus]

Clever indeed. This is also my fault as Sandra, our artist gave me some weeks ago nice fonts for BoA, and I had no time to replace the standard ones. Perhaps I should look at this, so to have this issue disapears completely.

Thanks for your finding.

[MarkShot]

Pocus,

The two things you could do to make BoA more Windows friendly to the rest of the desktop are:

(1) Supplying your own fonts and eliminating the 96 DPI dependency.

(2) Providing an option setting for in-game resolution and automatically setting/resetting the resolution as the game receives and loses focus.

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#1 I have already resolved for myself.

Regarding #2: I am running my desktop at 1600x1200 and the game at 1024x768 (I do this with a launcher program which sets/resets the resolution upon launch/termination). However, the problem is that if I leave my email, browser, text editor, ... open while playing; then they all have their window sizes/positions reset based on 1024x768 - an inconvenience. It also means that it is not possible to flip in and out of the game do other things when you run your desktop at one resolution and the game at another.

(The above issues #1 and #2 are somewhat related, since they are both related to making your Windows desktop settings and the game settings independent of one another.)

Thanks!