Black Bars/Borders on Asian Dynasties

No Flag jzwarchief
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Black Bars/Borders on Asian Dynasties

Post by jzwarchief »

Hi All,

While the DE continues to fix its many problems, my friends and I have decided to return to the RE -- but since we've learned all the new civs and mechanics, we want to try Asian Dynasties instead of Vanilla.

My problem is that when I try to play on 1280x600 resolution (in both windowed and full-screen mode), I have black bars at the top and bottom of the screen, making my view of the game very small. This doesn't happen in the Vanilla, and the bars go away when I reduce the resolution to 1152X864, but then the graphics aren't as good and I can't seem to zoom out as far.

Does anyone know how to get rid of those black bars? I've searched the topic extensively and can't seem to find an answer. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
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Re: Black Bars/Borders on Asian Dynasties

Post by Riotcoke »

You play with a monitor that's not 16:10 and isn't over a decade old.
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No Flag jzwarchief
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Re: Black Bars/Borders on Asian Dynasties

Post by jzwarchief »

Actually the answer is even dumber than that -- my scroll button on my mouse wasn't working, so I didn't realize there were higher resolution settings that would eliminate the black bars. *embarrassing*

Though I will say, the 'very far' zoom level from game to game and resolution to resolution does seem to vary. I can't quite figure out what's going on there.
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Re: Black Bars/Borders on Asian Dynasties

Post by jzwarchief »

Anyway, appreciate the quick response.
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Re: Black Bars/Borders on Asian Dynasties

Post by EAGLEMUT »

jzwarchief wrote:Though I will say, the 'very far' zoom level from game to game and resolution to resolution does seem to vary. I can't quite figure out what's going on there.
That's because various maps have different ground levels.
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Re: Black Bars/Borders on Asian Dynasties

Post by deleted_user »

wish that were standardized tbh
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Re: Black Bars/Borders on Asian Dynasties

Post by EAGLEMUT »

There's actually a config option that enables dynamic camera zoom based on ground level, so the devs did play around with this. Unfortunately, it's bugged as shit; they never got it to work properly.
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Re: Black Bars/Borders on Asian Dynasties

Post by harcha »

Black bars depend on how your graphics card displays the resolution on your specific screen. Either this scaling can be adjusted in the graphics card driver, or on the monitor OSD, or it cannot be adjusted at all (possible with older laptops w/ integrated graphics).

Unfortunately the zoom level is fixed to the height. Your 1280x600 resolution is basically 21:9 ratio which means it gives a ton of line of sight on the sides, while 1152x864 is 4:3 (could multiply it to 12:9 for comparison), which means you get (21-12)/21 = 9/21 or 42% less line of sight just from the lost area on the sides. This is just how aoe3 works.

If you are unable to find a way how to fix black bars you could go for a compromise and use smth like 1280x800 (16:9) resolution which would reduce black bars but also increase the LOS a little bit.

However the actual fix would be to use the same resolution setting in-game that your monitor is intended to be used. I suggest you write the monitor (or laptop model) here or in google and find the screen resolution. Then just make the AOE3 (and windows) resolution to the same setting. This does possibly mean taking some losses in line of sight.
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