games and resolution

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devil_warrior

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ok if i have a 1024 by 1080 tft screen and the game im playing eg half life 2 has a maximum resolution of 600 by 1200 and i put it to that. will it look like its at 1600 by 1200? or it cant because my screen wont allow it?
 
Actually you can go higher if you use your vid card to set the resolution using extended display data. But when you do that all it's doing is making stuff smaller and blurrier and you will probably get bad monitor shake in addition.
 
devil_warrior said:
:( so i need a 160 by 1200 to see half life 2 in all its glory?
What? I would think half life 2 would look really ugly and the image would be extremely scewed at such a bogus resolution as that. The image would be way stretched out because it's 1200 pixels tall but only 160 pixels wide. You might even mess up your monitor trying a weird resolution like that. I wouldn't recommend it.
 
Resolution of the screen has NOTHING to do with the rendering quality of ANY game, dude.

It's simply the size of the image you'll see.

You get the same visual experience from the game when at 600x800 as you do at 1600x1280. The only thing you'll notice is that your vid-card has to work harder to render all that screen, and your GUI will appear smaller (because it's pixel-calculation based).
 
However if you do want to get a new monitor I would get a CRT. They are better for gaming. The one in my sig is a pretty nice one, there is also a 22" version of it.
 
dale5605 said:
However if you do want to get a new monitor I would get a CRT. They are better for gaming. The one in my sig is a pretty nice one, there is also a 22" version of it.
That USED to be the case. Now you can get flatscreens that handle just as well as a CRT, with all the added benifits of a flatscreen (takes up less space, lighter, cleaner picturer, less strain on the eyes, etc).
 
the 1024x1080 is the desktop native resolution. when launching the game it will change to its own set res. there are switches you can use in the HL2 console. let me just search and copy and paste so I dont have to fire it up, remember how to do this and type all this crap again.

Here we go:

There are some commands which can only be used in the Target box of your HL2 icon, or in the 'Launch Options' box of Steam. They cannot be used in the game's console or in your autoexec.cfg file. These are referred to as 'Command Line' commands, and the most useful of these commands are:

-heapsize [Kilobytes]: This command tells Half Life 2 to allocate more RAM to the game system heap, where it can be accessed by the game to improve performance by storing more game information in RAM and hence reducing loading pauses. The default heapsize is 64MB, however you can safely allocate around 128MB (i.e. -heapsize 128000) for most systems. You can use higher values if you have more RAM, but I don't recommend exceeding half your physical RAM (e.g. for 1GB RAM, set heapsize of 512000).

-console: Speeds up the loading of Half Life 2 at startup by not loading up the background 3D graphics on the main menu and instead loading up a blurry background picture and the Half Life 2 console open. Note you can close this console using the '~' key.

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-width [pixels] -height [pixels]: Using these two commands you can set a custom resolution in Pixel Width x Pixel Height (e.g. -width 640 –height 480 starts HL2 with 640x480 resolution). Make sure you choose a resolution supported by your monitor and with the correct ratio of width to height (usually 4:3).

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-dxlevel [version]: Using this command allows you to force Half Life into only using the specified DirectX version for shaders. For example, use -dxlevel 70 to force Hardware DirectX7.0 level support for shaders. This means a reduction in image quality but an increase in performance. Other values include -dxlevel 80 -dxlevel 81 and -dxlevel90. Note that this only works if you choose a DirectX version which is lower than the current one supported by your graphics card. See the Hardware DirectX Version option under the In-Game settings for more details.

-refresh [Hz]: Specifies the refresh rate the game will use upon loading. This is normally not required as your system should already use the optimal refresh rate at your chosen resolution. However if this is not the case you can force it to a specific refresh rate (e.g. -refresh 85). Make absolutely certain that the rate you are trying to apply does not exceed your monitor's capabilities otherwise you may damage your monitor - especially if you change resolutions and forget to change this option.

-novid: Prevents the Valve startup animation from playing when loading up the game, speeding up startup time.

Notice that all of the command line commands above have a '-' in front of them. This only applies to these specific few command line commands. In general if you want to run any of the command variables listed on the next few pages in your icon's Target box, or in Launch Options, you must add a '+' sign in front of them (instead of a '-') before inserting them. For example, if you want to use the "exec" command to execute a config file at startup, you will actually have to put the command into the Target/Launch Options box in the following way:

-dxlevel 70 +exec mytweaks.cfg

In the example above, when you start Half Life 2 the DirectX Hardware support is reduced to DirectX7.0, and the contents of the file 'mytweaks.cfg' will be executed.

The simple rule for using commands in the command line is that aside from the few command line-specific commands listed further above, all other command variables, such as those listed on the following pages, require a '+' sign in front of them if used in the Target box or Steam's Launch Options. Note that you must also place a single space between each separate command, and no " " (quote) marks are required around the commands.
 
Resolution of the screen has NOTHING to do with the rendering quality of ANY game, dude.
The more pixels, the clearer the image, and crisper the lines...in Doom3 for older systems it was recommended to boost up the resolution if you can't put on any AA and that'd make it a lot more crisp.
 
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