29 replies to this topic

[ikonomov]

This mod improves the GUI generated files by Widescreen Mod for Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast and Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal in 1280 x 720 resolution.

Click here to open this mod's page

Edited by ikonomov, 17 October 2022 - 05:25 AM.

[The Imp]

Nice. Very much so. I don't personally play the BG1 anymore, but it's always nice to have it as an option.

Edited by The Imp, 28 July 2016 - 03:23 PM.

[ikonomov]

Thanks mate.

[James M]

1280x720 is exactly what I was looking for! Thank-you very much for this fabulous work! I've been playing BG1 for a couple of hours now and it works great on my old Vista laptop. Your install order is flawless.

 

Gameplay potential room for improvement: centering during dialog seems to not be centered; I think during dialog your mod currently "auto-moves"/centers as per 640x480.

[ikonomov]

Thanks man.  I have been playing BG1 myself and also noticed the centering during dialog.  Unfortunately it's not something that we'll have an easy fix for, as this is one of those things that has been hard coded into the .exe file.

Edited by ikonomov, 14 January 2017 - 09:44 AM.

[ikonomov]

Recently I had to reinstall BG1 and for some reason setup wasn't starting as normal, so I found a solution:

If Setup.exe does not start:
        1. go to Task Manager/details tab
        2. right click on setup.exe and 'analyze wait chain'
        3. close the program that is blocking the installation.

[ikonomov]

I finally finished my playthrough in BG1 and I found some graphical glitches which I thought at first were due to playing the game at a different than the original resolution, but after some testing confirmed that they exist in BG1 by default.  I really enjoyed playing the game with its original engine and thought about reporting the bugs that I found so that maybe somebody in the future might have a go at fixing them.  The subtle differences between the original engine and EE/BGT/Tutu make for a substantially different gameplay experience.  The more general weapon proficiencies and slower walking speeds in particular made me really appreciate the original engine and feel of the game.

 

Edit:  I listed all the bugs I found on the main download page.

Edited by ikonomov, 23 November 2017 - 09:06 AM.

[ikonomov]

I updated the guide for running BG1 with a new DirectDraw wrapper (DDrawCompat) which should work better on more systems and updated the readme inside BG1_GUI_720_v1.2.rar.  Nothing else has changed, so I've kept the same version 1.2.

[ikonomov]

Hah, I knew this would eventually come up lol.  When I did the font I noticed that the fonts that I found similar to the ones used in the game had larger than normal spacing between lines.  It is just the way these fonts are made, their styling.  I think that they used custom fonts for the games with capital letters made smaller specifically to allow smaller spacing between lines.  I assume you are referring to some of the capital letters like A with symbols on top not showing.  I had to chose a compromise; use the font as is, which will allow less lines to show in the dialog window, use another font, which would differ significantly from the ones used in the game, or make a small adjustment of the font, crop the symbols on top of some of the capital letters, which are not used for the English alphabet...

 

There is an easy fix however, download another font:
ghostdog
Corvias
Delfosse

open the archive files for the font mods, rename normal.bam (norma1.bam for ghostdog) to normalN.bam and place in the override folder of BG1 or BG2 after you install my mod.  This will replace only the font in the dialog windows, just as it does in my mod.

 

Edit: Also I'm not sure if all of their fonts support Polish characters, but ghostdog has a font that shows correctly in Polish.

Edited by ikonomov, 07 March 2018 - 02:33 PM.

[Lorfean]

First of all, thank you SO much for this! I am one of those players who vastly prefers the look and feel of vanilla BG and have, for years now, been looking for a resolution solution that doesn't result in blurry scaling or other issues. This looks to be it. Thank you! It was very cool to find out that there are still creators out there who are passionate about vanilla BG.

 

2nd, in the readme you mention that some known issues are caused by unknown offset values. They seem like minor issues but it seems you are open to fixing them if the offset values could somehow be found. If I'd want to help out, how would I go about finding these offset values? I imagine it might be more complicated for centering the camera during dialogue than it would be for the loading screens...

 

3rd, how easy would it be to adept this mod for other resolutions? Maybe you could share which tools you used to create the mod?

Edited by Lorfean, 06 June 2018 - 03:07 AM.

[ikonomov]

Thank you so much Lorfean for the kind words.  I'm happy you enjoy vanilla BG.  I've played BGT and tried BGEE, and finally made this mod coming to the conclusion that nothing can beat the vanilla experience.

 

I am not quite sure how pb1866 found the offset values in BG1.  I've tried opening the .exe file in a hex editor, and it looks nearly impossible to locate anything.  I'm sure there are people that might be able to help, but I don't think it'd be an easy task.  I wish I can point you in the right direction, but I can't, if I knew a bit more I would have tried to find them myself.  The best suggestion I can offer is if you know somebody who has worked on a trainer or hack for an older game to ask them.

 

The reason I chose this resolution is two fold.  First I tried how the gameplay screen looks in a few 16:9 resolutions.  My monitor is 2560x1440, so I tried a few between my max resolution and 800x600.  I came to the conclusion that since the visible radius around the characters is only so big, there is not much point to try to zoom out the view too much beyond that.  It's just a dark screen when you do.  Too close and everything looks too pixelated and you have to move the view around too much, which is also not ideal.  The second consideration was I wanted to pick a resolution that is standard.  When I played BGT I played at 1366x768, but that's not exactly 16:9.  Anything around that to me looked good, so I tried the standard 1280x720, and as soon as I tried it things just looked perfect, with enough view, and still preventing pixelation.  So the limitation mostly has to do with the graphics and the format of the game itself, not so much with our monitors anymore.  You can test a few resolutions with BG2 and the widescreen mod.  If you are still convinced you want to try something else, here is what I used, and how:

 

- Near Infinity to import/export the .mos files into .gif files that I then changed in Photoshop.  I don't remember if it was .gif or .png, but it has to be lossless.  This is also where I changed the values of the placement of the interface elements in the .chu files.

 

- The values that you have to change in both x and y direction are many, but usually they had to be increased by the same number, so in order to automate the process, I used AutoHotKey.  I made a few scripts that copy, then increase some value, and then paste it at a certain mouse pointer location.

 

- The .gif or .png I had to edit into Photoshop.  They are all the different user interface elements that had to have different dimensions.  In all cases they had to be made bigger, so you have to take some part of the graphic from somewhere else to extend it.  In some cases I took parts of some other image that I found used in the game somewhere else in order not to change the theme of the graphics.  To make everything look seamless it takes some patience in Photoshop.  In the end things seemed to look pretty good, so after I finished with BG1 I looked at the files generated from the widescreen mod in BG2 and found some artifacts that I decided to correct, and upload in a BG2 version of the mod.

 

- The custom fonts that I made I had to also edit in Photoshop.  First I used the bam generator, and then exported each letter into a separate .gif file with Near Infinity that I cropped in Photoshop.  I used recorded Actions in Photoshop to automate the process.  Then reconstructed the font back in Near Infinity.  I did a similar thing with the clock in BG2, which is an animation made of different images that I slightly edited in Photoshop.

 

All in all, it took quite some time.  Zed Nocear (the creator of TWM) probably used a better method, as in his mod he allows couple of different resolutions.  You might want to contact him as well before you try this.

[Andrea C.]

Bit of a necro here (sorry about that!) but I wanted to ask whether this mod can work with the revised BG2 UI from 1PP? I really like some of the touches in that UI and it would be great to be able to keep them.

Edited by Andrea C., 29 July 2019 - 10:33 AM.

[Adul]

If there's anyone here who's familiar with the technical aspects of this mod, could you please explain what would be involved in reworking it for resolutions other than 1280×720? I play on a large screen, and 1920×1080 would be much more suitable for it, but when I looked at the files in the mod archive I honestly couldn't make heads or tails of it.

[ikonomov]

Bit of a necro here (sorry about that!) but I wanted to ask whether this mod can work with the revised BG2 UI from 1PP? I really like some of the touches in that UI and it would be great to be able to keep them.

 

I just downloaded and looked through the GUI files in the 1PP mod and I'm fairly sure that the mods are not compatible.  Whichever mod is installed second will overlap some of the GUI files from the first mod, while other files will be left over from the first, likely resulting in a buggy interface.

 

If there's anyone here who's familiar with the technical aspects of this mod, could you please explain what would be involved in reworking it for resolutions other than 1280×720? I play on a large screen, and 1920×1080 would be much more suitable for it, but when I looked at the files in the mod archive I honestly couldn't make heads or tails of it.

 

You can read my previous post (#12) to get a more detailed explanation.  Almost all files in the mod are specifically edited to display perfectly for 1280x720 resolution, the same way that 640x480 (and 800x600 for BG2) were made to display perfectly in the BG1 and BG2 engines.  Even some elements used for the GUI in 1024x768 by the BG2 engine have some obvious cloning artifacts that it seems they didn't bother to mask.  The GUI files created after installing the Widescreen mod have even more pronounced artifacts as well, especially in the BG1 engine.  My changes mostly address those issues, but almost all the files are specifically sized for 1280x720 and they would have to be edited again for any other resolution.  I did most of the work in Photoshop, basically editing various image files that are part of the GUI.

Edited by ikonomov, 14 September 2019 - 09:32 PM.

[alrightm8]

I'm getting inventory menu and all other menus in 640x480 in the top left corner, not sure what I'm doing wrong.

GoG version

Clean install of BG1 (non-tutu, non BGT) apart from the following mods:

-plainab's BG1 Fixpack
-BG1 Unfinished Business
-G3 Tweakpack

Also the widescreen mod and the DDrawCompat

Is there any reason these should conflict or am I looking for some golden intallation order?

Edited by alrightm8, 14 September 2020 - 09:21 PM.

[The Imp]

I....Also the widescreen mod and the DDrawCompat

Is there any reason these should conflict... ?

And in what resolution did you install the Widescreen mod with ? Aka, for this to be perfect, the resolution needs to be 1280x720 ... and this installed after the Widescreen mod.

[alrightm8]

Yes, 1280x720 resolution, after widescreen installation. I read the instructions.

[ikonomov]

Yes, 1280x720 resolution, after widescreen installation. I read the instructions.

 

Just to eliminate the most obvious and simple explanation first.  After extracting the .rar file into your BG1 install folder (next to chitin.key) you did go inside that same folder and ran the Setup-GUI_720.exe file right?

 

From what you describe it sounds like the Widescreen is installed and working as it should.  I don't think that any of the mods you listed modify the GUI files, so I don't think those mods should cause a problem.  I also think all of them come with a windows installer that points to their Weidu installer, while my mod only comes with the Weidu installer inside the .rar file, so there's an extra step required to simply run the .exe file once you extract it.

[Reedu]

Hi. First i'd like to say that BG1 with yours mod looks great for me. It's playing smooth and nice. Yet i've got some text problems. Becouse i'm playing polish version all polish letter are just gibberish. It' looks that font type you've used cannot properly show them. Any hint to resolve it ?

 

Edit. Ok... mb it's not too nice to change mods contents, but before instalation i've replaced file: normalN.bam with one from TWM_GUI - changing it's name of course.

Now it's just perfect

Edited by Reedu, 10 February 2021 - 12:11 PM.