Dungeon Master Forum

Greetings,

Is there any way to increase the size of the viewing window in Dungeon Master Java? One of the news items on the originating web site says: "Nice zoom feature", although I can't find any mention of this in the readme file.

In trying to make the viewing window larger, I tried different screen resolutions. At 800x600, all of the contents disappear, while at any higher resolution the view is small.

The minimum resolution that I can scale the window down to before items start disappearing is 880x690, which seems odd. It would help a great deal if the gigantic borders on the top and left sides could be removed.

For Comparison:



Thanks!

I don't have the files with me now, but if an option existed it would be in a .properties file. I don't recall that there is an option to be able to do this, unfortunately, and this old thread repeats that.

Crash, is the shot of RTC above an actual sized screenshot, or resized in a graphics package?

Since GG changed the behaviour of large resolutions, it's not possible to get that effect anymore, so I assume you did it in Photoshop. RTC will also behave like DM Java in this regard -- at resolutions higher than the game area, it just sits in the middle of the screen with big borders around it.

All these 2D clones are resolution dependent and as far as I know none of them have scaling as an option.

The shot of RTC was originally 640x480, but my monitor is 1920x1200, and since RTC runs full screen, the viewing window is quite large.

I resized it (using Paint.net) to the same rough dimensions as Dungeon Master Java for the purpose of comparison. If I snapped photos of my monitor while playing each game, this is what it would they look like.

I'm not trying to change the resolution of these games, since I'm aware that scaling is not currently possible with this type of game engine. I just want to play without squinting at a 4 inch diagonal viewing window.

Since DMJ runs in a desktop window, I've been struggling to get it to a size that isn't painfully tiny, and the closest I can get is the above pictured at 1024x768. If the margins in DMJ could be eliminated, I might be able to get it to run in 800x600, which would be a welcome improvement.

Regarding scaling, the important difference is that CSBWin can be run on a desktop at 800x600 or 640x480, while RTC and DSB will switch to and run at full screen. My monitor does the scaling.

Here's an unstretched shot that you've probably already seen.



Cheers!

Ah yes, that's the key thing -- RTC is still running at 640x480 internally (well, actually 640x400, but hey) -- LCD monitors will scale fullscreen but doing a screengrab will only result in a 640x480 file.

Anyway, unless DMJ is recoded with a scaling routine by some clever person, I think you're out of luck.

ian_scho wrote:I don't have the files with me now, but if an option existed it would be in a .properties file. I don't recall that there is an option to be able to do this, unfortunately, and this old thread repeats that.

Jeepers, did I really still have a Pentium 1 in 2001!

Unfortunately I don't know the first thing about Java, but it would seem that the position of items in the window would be a fairly easy thing to adjust. If everything could just be moved to the upper left corner...

2001? I was probably using an Atari

Yes, I too would like to know if there's been any progress with increasing the window size in DMJ? At this size, it really loses the immersion that the original game had. Being able to scale it would be an awesome feature

Alandale re-released the game recently. Not sure myself, download the new version and play aroudn with it, it might have been added (I usually play in the default window)

Yeah, I checked out the new version. Still didn't see any kind of scaling feature as an option however. Oh well, perhaps there's some sort of hidden way to do it.

Unfortunately no, there is no scale option. There used to be a fullscreen mode, but I removed it because it was buggy with modern Java runtimes. Simply scaling the dungeon view as the window size changes should be possible though. If I get inspired to do anything more on DMJ I'll look into it.

alandale wrote: Simply scaling the dungeon view as the window size changes should be possible though. If I get inspired to do anything more on DMJ I'll look into it.

That would be very awesome alandale. Please consider it, as it will make me go back to playing DMJ in a New York minute!

I experimented with scaling over the weekend, and I've actually gotten something that works fairly well. It doesn't adjust automatically with the window size, but there is an easy enough slider in the options dialog. It defaults to 1x, but the slider goes up to 4x and allows fractional scale values (1.7x is fits best on my small laptop screen). Obviously scaling up 2D art is not going to look perfect, but it isn't too bad. The text probably looks the worst, but it's still readable.

I still need to test it on Windows, but assuming it works I'll put up a new version sometime later this week.

alandale wrote:I experimented with scaling over the weekend, and I've actually gotten something that works fairly well. It doesn't adjust automatically with the window size, but there is an easy enough slider in the options dialog. It defaults to 1x, but the slider goes up to 4x and allows fractional scale values (1.7x is fits best on my small laptop screen). Obviously scaling up 2D art is not going to look perfect, but it isn't too bad. The text probably looks the worst, but it's still readable.

I still need to test it on Windows, but assuming it works I'll put up a new version sometime later this week.

FANTASTIC NEWS Alandale! Wow can't wait to check it out! Let us know when it's uploaded man.

The new version with dungeon view scaling has been uploaded.

alandale wrote:The new version with dungeon view scaling has been uploaded.

Just wanted to say good job, and thanks