4K & UI Scaling

[Deslen]

So, I believe I heard that the devs are going to introduce 4K support as well as UI scaling some time this year.

Does my memory serve me correctly? Any eta on that?

I just won a raffle on a 58" 4K TV... but can't stand the micro hot bars u.u;

[LeoLionxxx]

Latest I heard was from the November Severlin interview where he said it's on the wish list. No concrete guarantees in the slightest so I wouldn't hold my breath.

Here's a link to the interview with the rough time code:




https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1208164886

-----

26:15: UI updates to handle 2K & 4K

Engineering resources are looking into Lag. When lag is better, can start looking into that type of thing.
UI scaling is hard!
Might hopefully start on that next year?

[Cordovan]

It is on our wish list but it will be a big effort to do and just resizing/rescaling icons alone is...a thing. Something like 10,000+ icons?

[LurkingVeteran]

If the problem is just that it's too small, I think you can override the "Application" scaling in properties on the dndlauncher.exe. Doesn't actually increase the icon resolution to 4k though.

Maybe there is some "super resolution" deep learning tools the devs could find that could just batch "AI upscale" the game icons to 4k. Some will likely need small manual touch ups though.

[apocaladle]

It is on our wish list but it will be a big effort to do and just resizing/rescaling icons alone is...a thing. Something like 10,000+ icons?

Why not just write a script to automate scaling them up so they are blurry then sharpen them with a filter and re-save them. I mean it would not be perfect as the ai would mess some of them up but the script plus fixing the ones the sharpen filter messed up would still likely be way faster to program and run than getting an artist to remake 10 thousand icons.

Maybe someone with more experience could explain why this would or would not work?

[Chacka_DDO]

It is on our wish list but it will be a big effort to do and just resizing/rescaling icons alone is...a thing. Something like 10,000+ icons?

The question is if you have to change all these icons by hand (so to speak) in order to make 4k and UI scaling possible or if it is enough, for now, to let all icons just as they are and only make them bigger (I know then the quality suffers) and then your artists could rework the icons with higher resolution afterward (the most important/used icons first).
And maybe the new Icons should be also sufficient to use with 8k or 16k screens or whatever or for use with DDO with another/new game engine so you don't have to do that work again in 10 or 20 years (yes I'm optimistic for DDO).
We all wish for a perfect game and a perfect solution but that's sometimes not always the best way, I assume those folks (not me) who want to use a 4k screen would rather have bigger but pixeled icons/UI than a tiny UI and tiny short cuts.
So the 10k+ icons are not really a sufficient "excuse" if you ask me :o

[Logicman69]

It is on our wish list but it will be a big effort to do and just resizing/rescaling icons alone is...a thing. Something like 10,000+ icons?

I wonder if you would consider outsourcing this to the player base. I know there is a good amount of players who would take on this project if they were given exclusive in game perks and/or items. Say if they help with the rescaling of icons, then they get VIP for 2 years, the next expansion for free, and an exclusive in game cosmetic (maybe a special SSG cloak or armor). Just a thought to help lessen the burden on your dev/art team.

[Wahnsinnig]

It is on our wish list but it will be a big effort to do and just resizing/rescaling icons alone is...a thing. Something like 10,000+ icons?

But why do you have to do all icons at once?

I am absolutely certain most DDO players would be perfectly happy to live with some icons beeing lower resolution files in the beginning. It does not all have to be done before you make UI scaling and 4k suppport.

And while you probably are correct there are 10k icons in DDO I would bet that at most a couple of hundred are in regular use. Spell icons for example, there are a lot of spells noone ever use because they are not useful for anything.

[LurkingVeteran]

At the very least the game should automatically rescale the UI on 4k screens to match the default size, so it's not unreadable by default for new players, even if the exact same low res icons are used. This can't be that many lines of code since you can even do it with a checkbox in the Windows properties. Heck, an engine developer could probably implement a dumb fractional image rescaling in a few days (maybe e.g. 75% size would be better on 4k screens, not sure how good it would look).

[dredre9987]

Why not just write a script to automate scaling them up so they are blurry then sharpen them with a filter and re-save them. I mean it would not be perfect as the ai would mess some of them up but the script plus fixing the ones the sharpen filter messed up would still likely be way faster to program and run than getting an artist to remake 10 thousand icons.

Maybe someone with more experience could explain why this would or would not work?


Because they are bitmaps

[LiquidZombie]

"It would make icons blurry" is not a good excuse not to have UI scaling.

The current workaround for a too-small UI is to play the game at a lower resolution, which also makes icons (and other elements) blurry compared to the non-scaled versions. It's difficult to see how in-game UI scaling would be any worse than this, and it would offer the advantage that the actual world rendering could still happen at full resolution.

The odd thing is that LoTR Online already has UI scaling, and it uses the same engine. So couldn't the same code be used in DDO?

[eightspoons]

*Surely* there are source images created at a higher resolution or even as vectors .. or did someone over the years forget to back them up.

I find it impossible to believe that anyone could possibly have restricted their artistry to 32x32 pixels (or whatever size those are in game).

[apocaladle]

Because they are bitmaps

Okay, and why does that matter?

Explain like I'm 5 please.

[dredre9987]

Okay, and why does that matter?

Explain like I'm 5 please.


Bitmaps are locked and not scalable. To scale them you actually have to remake them. They are literally 32x32 pixels

[eightspoons]

Bitmaps are locked and not scalable. To scale them you actually have to remake them. They are literally 32x32 pixels

It's been many years since I worked in it, but this used to be a very common issue in the printing industry, and I'm willing to bet that it still is. Clients would send in a miniscule, heavily compressed JPEG of a logo, for example, and say something along the lines of 'we want this printing on a billboard or sign at a size that's over a 100 times larger.'

They just didn't understand at all when it was explained to them that the printing could be done, but the result would look absolutely hideous, and asking for a version in a scalable image format would be met with blank looks every time.

But as I indicated above, I'd just be bowled over if the source images of game icons were restricted to such a small size. You start large and scale down as necessary. Solves so many issues later on. It's been my mantra for years.

[Arkandor]

Bitmaps are locked and not scalable. To scale them you actually have to remake them. They are literally 32x32 pixels

Scaling to various screen resolutions while keeping a fixed UI size would be a PITA, yes, but scaling from 32x32 to 64x64 is quite easy: Fill each pixel of the 64x64 bitmap with the value at pos (x/2, y/2) in the 32x32 source.

Implementing true scaling might be far too much effort, but a "Double UI Size" checkbox seems realistic, and playing in 4K while having the 1080p UI size sounds fantastic.

[dredre9987]

It's been many years since I worked in it, but this used to be a very common issue in the printing industry, and I'm willing to bet that it still is. Clients would send in a miniscule, heavily compressed JPEG of a logo, for example, and say something along the lines of 'we want this printing on a billboard or sign at a size that's over a 100 times larger.'

They just didn't understand at all when it was explained to them that the printing could be done, but the result would look absolutely hideous, and asking for a version in a scalable image format would be met with blank looks every time.

But as I indicated above, I'd just be bowled over if the source images of game icons were restricted to such a small size. You start large and scale down as necessary. Solves so many issues later on. It's been my mantra for years.


This and so much this. I have been trying to tell people for years why they haven’t done it yet…

On the last yes the icons were all made at 32x32. Poor foresight but that’s what they did.

[dredre9987]

Scaling to various screen resolutions while keeping a fixed UI size would be a PITA, yes, but scaling from 32x32 to 64x64 is quite easy: Fill each pixel of the 64x64 bitmap with the value at pos (x/2, y/2) in the 32x32 source.

Implementing true scaling might be far too much effort, but a "Double UI Size" checkbox seems realistic, and playing in 4K while having the 1080p UI size sounds fantastic.


That’s the problem though, literally everything in the UI is 32x32 bitmaps. I mean it is totally possible to do but the hours it’s going to take is very tremendous. There is literally no shortcut for this issue. They just need to hunker down and hire some temps for the art dept and get it done.

[BurnerD]

It is good to hear this is at least being considered.

The UI problem is only going to become more of an issue as technology progresses.

I would think somebody trying this game on a gaming setup at high resolution is going to be immediately annoyed by the tiny non-scalable UI before they even get into gameplay and lag. The more things that make the game annoying means less time I spend giving it a chance.

I would think this the scaling could be farmed out so it just becomes an issue of money and not time. What would it take? Is it something that could be funded through a special event of offer in game?

I'd spend some cash on something in game that would go to support UI scaling and UI inventory improvement.

[eightspoons]

This and so much this. I have been trying to tell people for years why they haven’t done it yet…

On the last yes the icons were all made at 32x32. Poor foresight but that’s what they did.

Consider me bowled over ...

[Zargarx]

I've had to deal with stuff like that in lots of older code.
The monitor resolution was relatively stagnant for most people for a long time from mid 90s up until 2010 or so. Smaller monitors normally had lower resolution.
So with resolutions of 1024x768, 1280x1024, 1368x768, 1440x900, 1920x1080, etc. so the size of an icon was relatively similar for the large majority.
It would be crazy to develop commercial software with that thinking currently or in the last 10 years. But for DDO (and so much more), that code was already done, and most likely in an old (depreciated) framework that almost nobody uses to develop new projects. For some projects, the better approach might be dumping the UI and creating a new one but it is a lot of work and often has lots of hidden gotchas that need to removed. Without examining the DDO source code, it is hard to estimate the pain level. And I suspect this is not high on their priority list unlike lag issues.

[ahpook]

That’s the problem though, literally everything in the UI is 32x32 bitmaps. I mean it is totally possible to do but the hours it’s going to take is very tremendous. There is literally no shortcut for this issue. They just need to hunker down and hire some temps for the art dept and get it done.

Well, no, there literally is a shortcut for this (within the limited parameters of a doubling of size).

The code to scale an bitmap image from 32x32 to 64x64 exists and is probably already in the game in some library they are already using. People do not need to do it by hand if they are comfortable with automated scaling. Scaling up images like this does not produce great results and would not be recommended to get to full screen size (let alone a billboard) but a doubling would not be that bad. In fact, it should look identical to double the image to 64x64 on a 4k as it would to drop the resolution of the 4K in half to run at 1920x1080 and show the 32x32.

[yfernbottom]

Well, no, there literally is a shortcut for this (within the limited parameters of a doubling of size).

The code to scale an bitmap image from 32x32 to 64x64 exists and is probably already in the game in some library they are already using. People do not need to do it by hand if they are comfortable with automated scaling. Scaling up images like this does not produce great results and would not be recommended to get to full screen size (let alone a billboard) but a doubling would not be that bad. In fact, it should look identical to double the image to 64x64 on a 4k as it would to drop the resolution of the 4K in half to run at 1920x1080 and show the 32x32.

Even if they don't have the code in one of their existing libraries, if you have all the image files in a folder, it would be pretty **** easy to write a small script to rescale them in integer multiples of the original resolution in the language of their choice.

And yes, though they would look absolutely atrocious if you blew them up too much, by the time they get scaled back down to the size of a 1c postage stamp on a huge 4k monitor you probably wouldn't even be able to tell that you were looking at blocks of four cells with identical values mimicking giant pixels.

Regardless, since most gamers have 4k monitors, this isn't something they can ignore for much longer if they want new players. I can count the games I have to turn my monitor resolution down for on two fingers, and I find it deeply annoying to have to do.

[koriolis]

And maybe the new Icons should be also sufficient to use with 8k or 16k screens or whatever or for use with DDO with another/new game engine so you don't have to do that work again in 10 or 20 years (yes I'm optimistic for DDO).
So the 10k+ icons are not really a sufficient "excuse" if you ask me :o

It's only an acceptable excuse if the original artwork files were lost or the actual icons were created in 32x32 pixel format to begin with. If you have the original artwork and it's on a suitable resolution, then in theory the exporting can be automated
But if you need to upscale 10k icons manually by hand, then you might as well rasterize them - redo them literally - to vector format so it's resolution independent (and be prepared for it to take months).
If the graphic engine requires bitmap - which it probably does - it's then trivial to batch export them to any resolution required.

[dredre9987]

Even if they don't have the code in one of their existing libraries, if you have all the image files in a folder, it would be pretty **** easy to write a small script to rescale them in integer multiples of the original resolution in the language of their choice.

And yes, though they would look absolutely atrocious if you blew them up too much, by the time they get scaled back down to the size of a 1c postage stamp on a huge 4k monitor you probably wouldn't even be able to tell that you were looking at blocks of four cells with identical values mimicking giant pixels.

Regardless, since most gamers have 4k monitors, this isn't something they can ignore for much longer if they want new players. I can count the games I have to turn my monitor resolution down for on two fingers, and I find it deeply annoying to have to do.

They aren't all in one folder either LOL. Again not saying this can't be done but it is a very time consuming process on their end. It is literally every single icon in the game. It DOES need to get done though at some point.

[dredre9987]

It's only an acceptable excuse if the original artwork files were lost or the actual icons were created in 32x32 pixel format to begin with. If you have the original artwork and it's on a suitable resolution, then in theory the exporting can be automated
But if you need to upscale 10k icons manually by hand, then you might as well rasterize them - redo them literally - to vector format so it's resolution independent (and be prepared for it to take months).
If the graphic engine requires bitmap - which it probably does - it's then trivial to batch export them to any resolution required.

Original creations are in 32x32 pixel. Not sure if all original files are there but I sure hope they are. It is something they have to do by hand, so yes they should be recreated to vector. Not sure if it requires bitmap or not.

[scut207]

It's been many years since I worked in it, but this used to be a very common issue in the printing industry, and I'm willing to bet that it still is. Clients would send in a miniscule, heavily compressed JPEG of a logo, for example, and say something along the lines of 'we want this printing on a billboard or sign at a size that's over a 100 times larger.'

They just didn't understand at all when it was explained to them that the printing could be done, but the result would look absolutely hideous, and asking for a version in a scalable image format would be met with blank looks every time.

But as I indicated above, I'd just be bowled over if the source images of game icons were restricted to such a small size. You start large and scale down as necessary. Solves so many issues later on. It's been my mantra for years.

I work in industrial print, specifically image quality and embedded vision. You're 100% correct as to why it looks like **** scaling up small pixelated images.


BUT

https://i.ibb.co/NTdWQTC/upscaled.png (https://ibb.co/CP3VNP8)
Realistically, how many people would really complain if their icons were blurry if they got to scale their interface? I certainly would live with it just fine.

this took all of 2 methods in gimp: a cubic resize and sharpness algorithm. both easily done in C or C++ or whatever.

The problem more than likely is making the mouse click detection work in the archaic interface.

[J1NG]

Realistically, how many people would really complain if their icons were blurry if they got to scale their interface? I certainly would live with it just fine.

Well, I think you'll be surprised.

Whilst it is easy enough for players to know and muscle memory where they placed their favourite spells and effects or items on their own hotbars that they set up and then key specific keypress combinations, specific gestures, or mouse buttons.

The same can't be said of the Buff/Debuff bar at the top of the screen.

Right now, it is still possible to quickly glance at the top of the screen to look at what Buff/Debuffs you have going on and recognise from Icons that are clearer. What happens when the icons are fuzzy/blurry and you now have identical ones visually that you need to mouse over the Buff/Debuff to find out which is which? Because, the Buff/Debuffs don't stay in the same position as they are refreshed or renewed as well. This adds an unnecessary complexity where (like the UI issue itself) there shouldn't be.

So I personally feel that if left for a full rework would be the best idea rather than just let an automatic scale up of the images do the job. If we say lets just identify the ones that are troublesome and fix just those, we might as well go the full hog and do them all. Since they will need to inspect which ones (from ALL the icons) to see if they need to rework those specific pairings. Not only that, but to also do minor checks for Colour Blindess issues as well. Which again, means we may as well get the Devs to do it all again from the ground up instead.

J1NG

[LurkingVeteran]

Having the UI not default to unreadable dimensions on 4k screens should be #1 priority. Rly bad first impressions for any new or returning players.

[dredre9987]

I work in industrial print, specifically image quality and embedded vision. You're 100% correct as to why it looks like **** scaling up small pixelated images.


BUT

https://i.ibb.co/NTdWQTC/upscaled.png (https://ibb.co/CP3VNP8)
Realistically, how many people would really complain if their icons were blurry if they got to scale their interface? I certainly would live with it just fine.

this took all of 2 methods in gimp: a cubic resize and sharpness algorithm. both easily done in C or C++ or whatever.

The problem more than likely is making the mouse click detection work in the archaic interface.

Hotbars and such are not scalable either so work to be done there as well. I think the only thing actually scalable is the chat font LOL. mouse click detection is probably also an issue as you suggest

[PaddyMaxson]

This and so much this. I have been trying to tell people for years why they haven’t done it yet…

On the last yes the icons were all made at 32x32. Poor foresight but that’s what they did.

It's a reasonable explanation of why it'll look like **** to just shoot them all through a macro that creates a copy where each pixel is a block of 4 (64x64px) then just had a 1x or 2x UI scaling option but I think maybe looking like **** might be better than looking like a UI for ants.

Appreciate it's not quite as easy as that, but if doing the icons is the major drawback, I suspect "The double size UI is in beta and icons might look terrible" isn't that big a sticking point for people who are willing to live with DDO's larger technical issues.

[yfernbottom]

They aren't all in one folder either LOL. Again not saying this can't be done but it is a very time consuming process on their end. It is literally every single icon in the game. It DOES need to get done though at some point.

Derp....

Yes, I know that. What I am saying is that if you put all the images in the same place, it's literally only a few lines of code to import the files into any programming environment, rescale them and spit them out at a higher resolution with slightly modified names. If you have a database (a flat csv file would be fine) that includes the paths to the correct directories/ folders, they can be anywhere at all and you can just have your script crawl through the list.

[yfernbottom]

I work in industrial print, specifically image quality and embedded vision. You're 100% correct as to why it looks like **** scaling up small pixelated images.


BUT

https://i.ibb.co/NTdWQTC/upscaled.png (https://ibb.co/CP3VNP8)
Realistically, how many people would really complain if their icons were blurry if they got to scale their interface? I certainly would live with it just fine.

this took all of 2 methods in gimp: a cubic resize and sharpness algorithm. both easily done in C or C++ or whatever.

The problem more than likely is making the mouse click detection work in the archaic interface.

I would take icons that looked like that all day every day instead of having to turn my monitor resolution down to 2005 to be able to play the game. If you load up the game at 4k it actually looks really good, except for the tiny UI icons you can barely see.

However, I can also see where mouse click detection would probably be bear to figure out. That's a good point, it had not occurred to me.

[Oxarhamar]

Derp....

Yes, I know that. What I am saying is that if you put all the images in the same place, it's literally only a few lines of code to import the files into any programming environment, rescale them and spit them out at a higher resolution with slightly modified names. If you have a database (a flat csv file would be fine) that includes the paths to the correct directories/ folders, they can be anywhere at all and you can just have your script crawl through the list.

Indeed it's not asmuch work as it's being made out to be

&

it's worth it it's long past time for the scalable update



looking for problems instead of looking for solutions

[Oxarhamar]

I work in industrial print, specifically image quality and embedded vision. You're 100% correct as to why it looks like **** scaling up small pixelated images.


BUT

https://i.ibb.co/NTdWQTC/upscaled.png (https://ibb.co/CP3VNP8)
Realistically, how many people would really complain if their icons were blurry if they got to scale their interface? I certainly would live with it just fine.

this took all of 2 methods in gimp: a cubic resize and sharpness algorithm. both easily done in C or C++ or whatever.

The problem more than likely is making the mouse click detection work in the archaic interface.

Beautiful

Well done +1

[Loriega]

"Blurry icons" is non-issue that certainly is a poor excuse for not having a scalable UI.

I switched back to 3840x2160 and while I can't read the small fonts anymore while being laid back in my chair, at least my eyes don't bleed anymore and the colors are more vibrant and almost everything looks sharp.

Lag has improved but is still present.
Inventory space is still too small.
The mouse still defaults to hover over the reroll loot button for accidental shard wasting (I doubt this is even legal in the EU).

[dredre9987]

"Blurry icons" is non-issue that certainly is a poor excuse for not having a scalable UI.

I switched back to 3840x2160 and while I can't read the small fonts anymore while being laid back in my chair, at least my eyes don't bleed anymore and the colors are more vibrant and almost everything looks sharp.

Lag has improved but is still present.
Inventory space is still too small.
The mouse still defaults to hover over the reroll loot button for accidental shard wasting (I doubt this is even legal in the EU).


It isn't just blurry issues...The complete UI would need to be recoded....I don't understand how people don't get this...

[dredre9987]

I work in industrial print, specifically image quality and embedded vision. You're 100% correct as to why it looks like **** scaling up small pixelated images.


BUT

https://i.ibb.co/NTdWQTC/upscaled.png (https://ibb.co/CP3VNP8)
Realistically, how many people would really complain if their icons were blurry if they got to scale their interface? I certainly would live with it just fine.

this took all of 2 methods in gimp: a cubic resize and sharpness algorithm. both easily done in C or C++ or whatever.

The problem more than likely is making the mouse click detection work in the archaic interface.


Yes but nothing in the UI is scalable. The whole thing would need to be recoded.. I don't get why people don't understand this/ The UI isn't just icons...it's click detection, borders, hell it is the whole overlay. That also means every single window you open in game.

You have Non-diegetic, Diegetic, Meta, and Spatial. They literally have to recode everything


https://www.toptal.com/designers/gui/game-ui

Maybe that will give some scope



Then on top o that think of everything in DDO that uses something like that.

[dredre9987]

Again I am not saying this shouldn't be done, but you have to see why they are hesitant to do so.

[Oxarhamar]

It isn't just blurry issues...The complete UI would need to be recoded....I don't understand how people don't get this...

Even if that were true it’s long past due

[dredre9987]

Even if that were true it’s long past due

This I can definitely agree with. I'm just trying to get folks to see that it is definitely not as easy as some are saying. I have done this work on a text based MMO and it took 8 of us 3 years. That game was nothing compared to the scope of DDO.

Yes it should have been done years ago. With under 100 staff members and probably quite of few of those that can't do the work they definitely need to hire more coders and art staff to get it done.

[Oxarhamar]

This I can definitely agree with. I'm just trying to get folks to see that it is definitely not as easy as some are saying. Yes it should have been done years ago. With under 100 staff members and probably quite of few of those that can't do the work they definitely need to hire more coders and art staff to get it done.

Doesn’t really matter how difficult it is it’s past time for it long past time

If they need to hire a temp art staff & coder to do it they probably should they should that’s not really on our end to worry about how they get it done thou I don’t think they need to if they prioritize

So much work went into U51 that cookies got removed & Hardcore V went out as a repeat of season 1 it’s about what do they focus their energies on

This should be a priority if they want new players to come to the game something they touted U51 as being to help new players

New players don’t want to jump into a dated non scaling UI that doesn’t work well with modern techs

I been saying for sometime since before U51 that what we need isn’t more content at the moment but a U51 style QoL update focus on fixing things this included

[dredre9987]

Doesn’t really matter how difficult it is it’s past time for it long past time

If they need to hire a temp art staff & coder to do it they probably should they should that’s not really on our end to worry about how they get it done thou I don’t think they need to if they prioritize

So much work went into U51 that cookies got removed & Hardcore V went out as a repeat of season 1 it’s about what do they focus their energies on

This should be a priority if they want new players to come to the game something they touted U51 as being to help new players

New players don’t want to jump into a dated non scaling UI that doesn’t work well with modern techs

I been saying for sometime since before that what we need isn’t more content at the moment but a U51 style QoL update focus on fixing things this included

No complaints from me on that score.

[Iwant_DiabloThree]

Sure miss my old man.
He would have said.... Because I don't wanna, now dont ask me again.

How many updates are old enough that anything "new"..... could have had hirez versions created at the same time?
Which would have left them only needing to update a very small portion of the game.
Occums Razor, the simplest answer is the best answer..........there is no intention to do anything and never was, just lip service.

[dredre9987]

Sure miss my old man.
He would have said.... Because I don't wanna, now dont ask me again.

How many updates are old enough that anything "new"..... could have had hirez versions created at the same time?
Which would have left them only needing to update a very small portion of the game.
Occums Razor, the simplest answer is the best answer..........there is no intention to do anything and never was, just lip service.

It isn't an issue of hirez but all the underlying code.

[Amorais]

Its not beyond the wit of man to develop code, when your job is developing code.

[dredre9987]

Its not beyond the wit of man to develop code, when your job is developing code.

Nothing to do with ability per se, just time and bodies doing it. If my job is digging holes I am not going to dig building foundations without time and people.

[scut207]

Yes but nothing in the UI is scalable. The whole thing would need to be recoded.. I don't get why people don't understand this/ The UI isn't just icons...it's click detection, borders, hell it is the whole overlay. That also means every single window you open in game.

You have Non-diegetic, Diegetic, Meta, and Spatial. They literally have to recode everything


https://www.toptal.com/designers/gui/game-ui

Maybe that will give some scope



Then on top o that think of everything in DDO that uses something like that.


Please read the last sentence in the post you quoted. You're preaching at the choir. I get the whole thing likely needs a rewrite.

[dredre9987]

Please read the last sentence in the post you quoted. You're preaching at the choir. I get the whole thing likely needs a rewrite.

Sorry was just putting some info out there for others ;p

[LightBear]

He would have said.... Because I don't wanna, now dont ask me again.

..........there is no intention to do anything and never was, just lip service.

That answer would have him replaced by the uppers in less then a heartbeat, that's why so much gibberish is reflected around the topic.

It's just stunning that an answer like "we have to rescale all the icons and that takes to much time" is taken for granted.
There are tons of services in the wild that can do it auto-magically.

Even I can write a script for passing every file in a dir to a service that returns some different format in its return message and fish out the what I need from the payload and that as a new file a different dir with a new name and extension.
I can probably start it up in parallel as well to save time.

In DDO most ui elements are scalable all ready, for the most part it's the hotbars that do not scale properly and to a lesser extend the menu.

Now, I do hope that what we have in game are scaled down versions of larger images as blowing them up will lead to a pixelated soup.
(As pointed out by others.)


Edit:


https://www.toptal.com/designers/gui/game-ui
.

Thx for the article, appriciated.
One of ddo's unique selling points is the customizable hotbars. Makes DDO kinda unique.
It can handle a variety of resolutions, most of which lead to some version of the UI elements.

I do wonder how many people play at 800*600 vs how many play at 4096*2160.
And what the trend is showing for each of them.
I do think on is going down and the other going up while 1920*1080 is kinda steady.

On the other hand, maybe all the wales are sitting behind a 4k screen.
And if that's where the money is...

Second edit:
I do know that we all have our preferences on what we want to work on and that if one came on board to design content or make it easier to make that content, that being a hardcore user interface coder might not be ones thing to work on.
I also get it that when you're told that there are a whole lot of icons to rescale while its the first time you run into such a problem to tackle in your project you might think it's time consuming and you'd rather spend that at something else and more fun. Like a 64bit engine and reducing lag.

[storm357]

I was forced to stop playing DDO when my monitor died and I was given a 4k monitor as a gift to replace it. I am old. Old enough to remember a time before D&D existed and my eyes and general hand control are not good enough to see or click on hot buttons that are smaller than my mouse pointer. I miss the game but till UI scaling is a thing, I am forced out.

[gravisrs]

It is on our wish list but it will be a big effort to do and just resizing/rescaling icons alone is...a thing. Something like 10,000+ icons?

You may want to switch to vector graphics in the process, so you won't have to worry about scaling issue ever after.

But for now the only solution for 4k users is to... switch screen resolution to FullHD (game only or both, windows and game).

Or go buy that steam-deck, it's awesome :)

[GeneralDiomedes]

I was forced to stop playing DDO when my monitor died and I was given a 4k monitor as a gift to replace it. I am old. Old enough to remember a time before D&D existed and my eyes and general hand control are not good enough to see or click on hot buttons that are smaller than my mouse pointer. I miss the game but till UI scaling is a thing, I am forced out.


why can't you run your 4K monitor at a lower resolution? doesn't 1080p divide equally into 4K?

[ekaterina]

Lucky me - I don't have the issue because my eyes are old enough to be 3K or maybe 2K so a 4k monitor would do me no good at all.

[PaddyMaxson]

why can't you run your 4K monitor at a lower resolution? doesn't 1080p divide equally into 4K?

Most modern monitors look very bad when run at their non-native resolutions.
Also if you have multiple monitors it messes with your screen layout when you change resolution
Also most people probably prefer playing borderless windowed which means changing the resolution outside of the game

Funnily enough it was actually totally possible in Windows 8.1 to scale DDO using Windows' scaling options, it stopped working in Windows 10.

I am genuinely amazed there isn't some modern tool that just lets you take a window, render it at a certain resolution then upscale what's being rendered to stretch it to a higher resolution. Considering modern graphics cards let you dynamically scale the rendering resolution of games you'd think there'd be a way to ask them to do this.

But more importantly, this shouldn't be something you need a hacky fix for. LOTRO has it, it's the same engine. It doesn't seem that functionally impossible. Obviously there's dev timne involved and it's not as quick/easy as many people would say but DDO had a bunch of issues that discourage new players and this is one of them. But I suspect that DDO is probably fairly happy not seeing major growth from new users, it has a very devoted fanbase who are probably happy to cover the costs.

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

Most modern monitors look very bad when run at their non-native resolutions.

If monitor builders just decide that you just shouldn't use lower resolutions, then you are out of luck.
You should complain at the monitor builders, then. The DDO staff is not reponsible for that happening.


LOTRO has it, it's the same engine.

Personally, I very much doubt that LOTRO has the same engine, as it came out much later than DDO.

Quoted from Wikipedia :

DDO :


Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach was developed by Turbine over two years.

On August 1, 2005, Turbine sent invitations to people interested in participating in the public alpha test. On November 1, 2005, Turbine announced that the public beta test was open.[23]

LOTRO :


A closed beta was announced on September 8, 2006. An open beta began on March 30, 2007, and was open to all who pre-ordered the game's Founders Club edition. On April 6, 2007, the beta opened to the public.

Considering how fast things evolve in the computer industry, even 2 years can make a huge difference.

[Eantarus]

I play on a 43" 4k monitor and have for many years. While UI scaling "would be nice" I really only need 3 things from the dev team to fix it:

*Make the buffs bar free-floating.
*Text scaling on the chat window
*Fix whatever god **** nonsense makes the game think the center of the screen is the upper-left quadrant.

And even #3 up there is definitely a "would be nice".

For those out there trying to figure it out: move all your hot bars, map icon, etc in the middle bottom of the screen. Its plenty easy to see everything as-is(in fact I'm not sure I'd want to scale up my hotbars if I could). Though my experience is on a 43" screen, not sure how fun it would be to play like this on 58"s.

[Eantarus]

Personally, I very much doubt that LOTRO has the same engine, as it came out much later than DDO.


Both LOTRO and DDO are based heavily on the engine from Asheron's Call. Even today the two games share a shocking amount of code for how different they are. Its all in the directory structure, you can even find references to AC in the modern updates.

[Manchild]

It is on our wish list but it will be a big effort to do and just resizing/rescaling icons alone is...a thing. Something like 10,000+ icons?

Hey Cordo, why not get the fan base to do it, look at all the awesome stuff they have already done for free. The ddo audit, population website. The github auto follow addon, with a shroud crafter. So many gifted fans that would be willing to help, I'm sure. It's just a small picture right?