Resolution and Black Borders

[Torqus]

Hi, maybe this has been discussed somewhere but this is the most important issue for me and I haven't read about it anywhere.

Will there be black borders in 16:9 resolutions? Because it seems there will be. In that case, because of the new structure of the program, will there be a plugin or script to remove black borders WITHOUT stretching the screen? Because this deformed all of my icons before, and the text was blurry and very unappealing if you didn't spend 10 hours to fix one font.

Also, if I make a project and release it for PC, everything works fine, then I release it for android, there's different resolutions. Will it adapt to the common 16:9 so nothing is stretched?

I understand maybe this may be protected info and maybe that's why no one's talking about this.

Thanks

 

[Andar]

This has been discussed elsewhere, but most probably you didn't see it as the same because it would have looked different at first glance.

Black borders have always one of two reasons:

1) the game runs at a non-standard-resolution and the grafic driver has to fill up for a standart display

2) the aspect ratio of the screen is wrong and the grafic driver has to fill up for the display.

2D screens CANNOT be externally zoomed, they need to be prepared for any resolution by the game developer. So if the game developer decided to add a resolution that displays to your monitor without the need to fill up, then you'll get a clear picture.

If the game developer uses a zoom script, this might result in a distortion depending on your screen.

If the game developer doesn't support any other resolution, you get black botders.

Degica or RMMV has absolutely nothing to do with that, and they can't change the technical difference between 3D (which can be externally scaled) and 2D (which cannot do that as easily)

However, the distortion might also have come from your graphics driver - some drivers have a setting that allows the user to decide if missing data should be filled up with black, or if the screen should be stretched (and distorted) to fill the entire screen anyway.

 

[Torqus]

Either I didn't understand or you didn't understood what I mean. Or perhaps I'm the only one who had this problem before because of my graphics card as you mentioned?

The problem I'm addressing is this.

I don't think it's related to my graphics card because what caused the screen to be stretched was the yanfly engine in VX Ace which allowed to have 640x480, but it also stretched the screen to fill the black borders. 640x480 is 4:3 so the game should've been a square with black borders. What I'm asking is if the MV will allow, or can with scripts, have a 16:9 resolution. I mean, not a 4:3 stretched but a REAL 16:9 so the game will be the size of the screen without stretching anything, I can't understand how we are in 2015 and MV developers didn't care about this, it's probably more complicated than it looks, but it's just making more area of the map visible and adapting the UI.

 

[EternalShadow]

Press F6

Edit: mv has multiple resolutions

 

[Torqus]

Press F6

Edit: mv has multiple resolutions

I think you're talking about Fullscreen++ for VX ace. That's not the solution to the problem.

I know MV has multiple resolutions, but aren't they all 4:3?

 

[EternalShadow]

I think you're talking about Fullscreen++ for VX ace. That's not the solution to the problem.

I know MV has multiple resolutions, but aren't they all 4:3?

No, no, F5 does fullscreen++. F6 changes the actual size of the game window.

I am not 100% sure on the 4:3 thing, but I just know the resolution is editable.

 

[Andar]

the origin of the misunderstanding is that there are several different effects at work that combine to what you see on the screen.

In the case of Ace, one of the causes is that the engine has only one resolution by default and the game developer needed to handle all resolution changes with personalized scripts.

It would be very nice if MV can handle different resolutions by default, because that means that one of the bigger problems for that sort is solved - Ace was forced to use the same resolution for both UI and map, and if MV can handle that differently it helps a lot.

Second, Windows has only a limited number of resolutions that are supported, and grafic cards can usually only work at those supported resolutions. That is not a requirement, but most grafic companies never bother to program their drivers for non-standart resolutions.

Ace default of 544x416 (and MV's base of 816x624) are NOT supported resolutions, 640x480 and 1024x768 are. Most graphic cards CANNOT display non-supported resolutions, they switch to the next larger one and fill up the borders with black.

That is why using Yanfly's core to change the resolution to 640x480 removes the borders.

However, the distortion of that resolution on a screen with a different aspect ratio is not caused by RM or Yanfly's script, that is caused by your grafic driver. That driver should have a setting to preserve the aspect ratio and have two black columns left and right of the picture instead of distorting the image.

Now on to MV. If a game is made at the base resolution of 816x624, you cannot prevent black borders on windows - simply because that is not a supported resolution. But changing the resolution is simple and they already told us that there will be a plugin for that. And if that plugin is supported by an engine function to change between multiple resolutions, that is much better.

But you as the developer still have to keep those resolutions in mind when writing your game, because 2D-grafics don't scale as easily as 3D grafics, and changing the screensize will also change how much is visible on the screen - it will not keep the screen content the same as it would do with 3D. so if you want to keep something off-screen as a 2D-game developer, you still have to plan for the maximum size allowed in your game. Or the engine would destroy your surprises by allowing the player to see them from a larger distance.

 

[whoami]

You could do 16:9 in Ace. Just use Yanfly's core script to increase the horizontal resolution and decrease the vertical. 640X360 resolution nicely scales to 720p and 1080p when you go fullscreen.

You'll have to tweak some scenes, because some of them have content cut-off when you decrease the height of the window.

There's no reason you couldn't do the same with MV. Although it remains to be seen how they handle resolution on mobile devices.

 

[Torqus]

Thanks Andar. I think I understand a bit more now. And I hope there's a way to use 16:9 without rewriting everything.

And Whoami, you're right. I forgot about that, I discarded that option for many reasons, mostly because it was so little characters and other graphics looked weird.

 

[MikeMakes]

I'm currently using the following plugins:

Screen Resolution at: 640x480 

Change Tile Size: at 32x32

Is there a way to eliminate the black borders that appear on the left and right side on full screen or is this problem part of my monitor/graphics card? I tried setting the resolution to 640 x 360 and that only appeared to make the black borders margins thinner - not disappear  completely.

 

[Shaz]

It is your graphics settings. You need to tell it to scale to fit. This will alter the aspect ratio.

 

[MikeMakes]

Is this done through my graphics card driver settings, the properties through the MV icon, or through RPG Maker MV program editor itself?

 

[Andar]

all - you need to tell your graphic driver to scale, and if you don't want distorted display you need to set the screen size of the game to something that equaly scales to the display size.


For example if your display has a regular 4:3 ratio (which it does not or you wouldn't have borders), then 640x480 can be scaled correctly to 1024x768 - by multiplying both 640 and 480 with 1.6


Check your monitor screen size, devide the first by 640 to get the multiplier and then divide the second by that multiplier to get the correct number (instead of the 360 you tried) to scale the screen without distortion.

 

[lPaladinl]

I'm a bit confused on this as well.

Why am I getting black borders for using the resolution plugin to change the resolution to 1920x1080, when that is my native resolution for my PC?

 

[Andar]

I'm a bit confused on this as well.


Why am I getting black borders for using the resolution plugin to change the resolution to 1920x1080, when that is my native resolution for my PC?

That should not happen - either you made a mistake when using the plugin, use two differen tplugins for screensize and get the wrong size, or something in your graphics card driver is set wrong.

 

[Missile]

edit: removed

 

[lPaladinl]

That should not happen - either you made a mistake when using the plugin, use two differen tplugins for screensize and get the wrong size, or something in your graphics card driver is set wrong.

Edit: Neeeeever mind. I realised what the problem was. I wasn't putting it into proper fullscreen by using F4. 

But I still have another issue that I noticed when using the plugin at that setting, that's not been mentioned in this thread: Whenever I open the inventory menus, the background gameplay breaks up into that weird graphical grid pattern for whatever reason (This still happens even when using F4 to go fullscreen):

Spoiler

 

[zon3y]

I've the same issue like Paladin on PC in a fullsize Window AND on mobile Devices with resolution 1920x1080

 

[lPaladinl]

I've the same issue like Paladin on PC in a fullsize Window AND on mobile Devices with resolution 1920x1080

Try hitting F4 in testing mode to change it to proper fullscreen and see if the borders go away.

 

[MikeMakes]

I have 1920 x 1080 as well. I set the following resolution and got rid of the edges as Andar suggested:

EDIT:

Game Width: 1024

Game Height: 576 = [1080/(1920/1024)]

EDIT: If monitor resolution changed to 1600 x 900, bit of black edges comes back. But it's not that noticeable (more like what Missile posted above, except sideways)

There may be only so much we can do with the game resolution settings unless I'm not realizing something. The rest is up to the other players' monitor resolutions.