Does the original C&C95 640x480 resolution work as intended?

[MrFlibble]

Some time ago I used some old community patch (not yours, Nyer) that would fix XP compatibility issues plus do something else, and I think that with this patch the 640x480 mode would actually stretch the image to fit the entire screen, rather than add empty stripes to the top and the bottom. This made me wonder, in retrospect, if this was what the developers actually intended with the 640x480 mode, yet for some reason it didn't work. Can this be somehow confirmed by the actual code of the game?

[Nyerguds]

Actually, what you describe there is the normal behaviour of 640x400 mode on CRT monitors.

[MrFlibble]

I meant to say, was it intended by the developers to have an unstretched screen with black bars in the 640x480 mode? Because the "normal" behaviour as I understand it would be to stretch the image vertically?

[Nyerguds]

Nope, totally impossible. 640x480 was simply a "black strips" widescreen-movie-on-TV-like workaround for the real 640X400 resolution. I've personally removed these exceptions from the game, and I've never seen any fan-hacks before mine that did such a thing. Note that this isn't just a game hack, either: it requires adapted sidebar graphics to fit that larger height.

[MrFlibble]

Nope, totally impossible. 640x480 was simply a "black strips" widescreen-movie-on-TV-like workaround for the real 640X400 resolution. I've personally removed these exceptions from the game

Thanks for the explanation!

 

I've never seen any fan-hacks before mine that did such a thing. Note that this isn't just a game hack, either: it requires adapted sidebar graphics to fit that larger height.

The patch I referred to did not expand the actual game screen to 640x480 dimensions, it just stretched the original 640x400 screen image to the 640x480 screen, effectively making the 640x400 and 640x480 modes indistinguishable. I assumed back then - possibly wrongly - that in case of the "true" 640x400 mode it was the hardware that did the stretching of the output, and in the 640x480 mode in that patch it was the game that did the stretching? Honestly I didn't give this much of a thought, I just noticed that both modes gave the identical result on the screen

[pichorra]

The 640x480 mode is S3's fault. Trio cards could not run 640x400.

 

But you could make 640x480 look like 640x400 messing arround the CRT monitor configurations.

[Nyerguds]

The patch I referred to did not expand the actual game screen to 640x480 dimensions, it just stretched the original 640x400 screen image to the 640x480 screen, effectively making the 640x400 and 640x480 modes indistinguishable. I assumed back then - possibly wrongly - that in case of the "true" 640x400 mode it was the hardware that did the stretching of the output, and in the 640x480 mode in that patch it was the game that did the stretching? Honestly I didn't give this much of a thought, I just noticed that both modes gave the identical result on the screen

That just seems like what cnc-ddraw does... are you absolutely sure it didn't simply run in 640x400 though?

[crmb]

Hello !

 

I found this topic and i have a question too regarding to the aspect ratio of RA.

When if first played RA (i had a 15inch crt with Win95) the 640x400 mode (streched by the monitor to a 4/3 a:r) immediately looked weird to me, like streched vertically. I don't had any issue with C&C DOS.

That's why i played in 640x480 mode with black bars (or maybe 640x400 with monitor tweaking i don't remember)

 

I think C&C95 is OK. (The UI is maybe not perfect but the game sprites are OK)

 

Did the programmers made a mistake at the time ?

This is obvious on the blue circle on the right. But the whole game look streched.

[FunkyFr3sh]

The game tries to go into 640x400 and if it fails it goes into 640x480 mode, this happens automatically

 

it depends on your hardware if 640x400 is supported or not. You can however just force the game to 640x480 even if 640x400 is supported and would work, just modify redalert.ini for that

 

Our patched version of red alert doesnt support the black bars anymore though so you will end up with a slightly bigger view and 10sidebar items instead of 8 (our high res patch is doing that)

[Nyerguds]

640x400 stretched to 640X480 is indeed the game's intended resolution; a leftover from DOS C&C's 320x200-fullscreen, which also has stretched pixels which are 1/5th higher than they are wide. All graphics in C&C1 are rendered for that, and in the C&C1 videos, you clearly see that the (normally round) GDI logos in the videos look squashed if you play in a non-stretched resolution.

 

Though, about RA... no idea. There are indeed some inconsistencies, even in them bringing C&C1 to 640x400, because the C&C95 GDI logo in the sidebar is not adapted to look correct in the stretched resolution. So, on RA's building graphics... honestly, no idea. 

 

FunkyFr3sh: You can technically still emulate the black bars with the Letterbox option on cnc-ddraw