DRD Team

How do you set the resolution to 320x240 in gzDoom?

If it doesn't appear in the menu you can't. Most modern graphics cards don't support such low resolutions for hardware rendering so any attempt to hack around it is doomed to fail.

That's not true. Lots of Quake sourceports (like Darkplaces) run at 320x240 in hardware mode. I'm pretty sure gzDoom is capable of running at lower resolutions than 640x480; they just aren't listed in the menu since the port is geared towards hi-res.

No, they are not listed because current graphics drivers do not support these resolutions anymore. The resolutions menu lists everything it gets reported from the driver.

I don't know what the Quake ports do but if they report these resolutions they are cheating in some way - and to be blunt - I would consider implementing such workarounds a waste of time.

From: Jive
To: cloroxcowboy
Posted: Wed Jan 07, 2009 19:25
Subject: you are crazy? LOL

Writing openly on the forum: "That's not right", and writing it to Graf, is really VERY... hmmm.... dangerous.
Graf is NEVER wrong, undertood it?

Take care, and be more wise the next time.

Ha ha, oh wow. It looks like Graf has some worshippers.

But yeah, I think the Quake ports just use a 2x scaler to render 320x240 at 640x480 resolution. Anyway, it's not really a big deal, I was just curious.

cloroxcowboy wrote:Ha ha, oh wow. It looks like Graf has some worshippers.

More like Jive has some problems to begin with, to be perfectly frank... =P

Thank you for bringing the PM to everyone's attention, though. Jive is on somewhat thin ice at the moment with us, and if he starts abusing the PM system, then...well, we had best cross that bridge when we come to it and no sooner, eh?

After this little episode I'd day I'd be very happy not to hear from Jive again, ever!

So please do what you deem appropriate. Just yesterday I closed one of this threads due to offensive posting style.

We appreciate open discussion here, but if you bring your opinions to the table, prepare to be disagreed with. Being rude about it only gets an even more hostile reaction out of everybody involved.

No, we do not worship Graf here. However, he does know what he's doing. Do I always agree with him? Sometimes, no. Most of the time though, I can see the sense in what he's saying, and that's why I tend to agree with him. Part of it is called "common knowledge", the other part of it is called "he made it."

Jive, you seem to like doing "hacky" tricks in order to accomplish what you want. Do they work? Yes. Will they always work? Flat out no. Something is bound to change in the code later on, and it's high time you learn the proper and accepted way of doing things, instead of telling everyone to do things this or that way when it's clearly not supported. Considering the number of people who use GZDoom, I would hate to be around when your "rename PK3 to WAD" trick stops working.

cloroxcowboy, I dunno what to tell you. I've never really had much experience with video hardware, but I do know some video cards block the really low resolutions. I don't understand why, though, but it happens. I know sometimes you can add it in as a custom resolution with the driver; that might be the only thing you can try at this point. Windows might flat out reject it though because the resolution is simply way too low, and none of the interface elements would display correctly on it (even though you would never use it!).

As a last note, if anyone disagrees with me, I would expect you to voice it. However, in doing so, I also expect you to be civil and respectful in doing so. I'm sure wildweasel, and any other DRD admin, has the same expectations. As long as you don't throw a fit, or start acting out, or being rude, you will find that you can disagree with anyone here all you want.

SoulPriestess wrote:cloroxcowboy, I dunno what to tell you. I've never really had much experience with video hardware, but I do know some video cards block the really low resolutions. I don't understand why, though, but it happens. I know sometimes you can add it in as a custom resolution with the driver; that might be the only thing you can try at this point. Windows might flat out reject it though because the resolution is simply way too low, and none of the interface elements would display correctly on it (even though you would never use it!).

It's not that video cards actually block low resolutions, they just don't support them; and most monitors don't support them either. My old one did, but I recently replaced it after it went bad. These old resolutions are all from the EGA/VGA era, and were used in the original DOS versions of Doom and Quake to keep the games running smooth on those old machines. What the original ZDoom does is render the screen at 320x240 and scale it up to 640x480; I tested it by setting the resolution to 320 and then checking my monitor's menu to see what resolution it was currently displaying. It would be completely possible to go into the GZDoom source and modify it so it can run the game in low-rez, but I'm way too lazy to do all that.

The reason I wanted the low-rez is simply because I think Doom looks better in its original DOS resolution (which was 320x200) and using the nearest 4:3 equivalent gives it that nice old-school look while retaining the correct aspect ratio for my monitor. In higher resolutions, the patches and flats that are far away look a lot more crisp than they should, while everything else, like sprites and weapon models, retain their blocky appearance, so it ends up looking a bit weird.

And about Jive doing "hacky" tricks, there's nothing really wrong with that. He can just keep using the same version indefinitely if he likes. There's really no proper and accepted way of doing things.

Yes, I am well aware of the old resolutions coming from even before EGA's. I had a CGA monitor on my first computer that was 320x200 and only did 4 colors. It's "high" res mode was 640x200, and only did 2 colors. Of course, if you were clever, you could "trick" it into doing 160x100x16.

I also had a computer later on that used a Hercules adapter, and that one allowed for 720x348, but with only one color. EGA's made a slight improvement on this, at the cost of some resolution, but allowed for 64 colors in a 16 color palette at 640x350. And then came the VGA's which went to 640x480 at 16 colors, but could sport nearly an unlimited range of colors in those 16, and did the same thing for 320x200x256 (which is what Doom originally used).

Because of my experience in DOS programming, I was able to manipulate all of these modes, for all the different adapter types.

VGA supported 256 colors. EGA is the one that only supported 16 colors.

cloroxcowboy wrote:VGA supported 256 colors. EGA is the one that only supported 16 colors.

Read SoulPriestess' post more carefully. She said that VGA supported 16 colours at 640x480, and 256 at 320x200. This is 100% true.

It's SVGA that first allowed 256 colours at 640x480 .

I remember playing "Syndicate" at the wonderful hi-res of 640x480 in glorious 16 colours.