Elemental and 720p

A Plea to Frogboy

from Stardock Forums

I'm one of those people who play PC games on his HDTV and I usually play all my PC games at 1280x720 for many reasons and I could get Galciv2 to run at 720 by selecting custom resolution and then entering the proper resolution in the  pref.ini file.  However when doing this with Elemental it keeps reseting the resolution and doesn't fill my whole screen forcing me to use the zoom feature on my TV that makes all the graphics and text fuzzy.

Sure I could play it at 1080p however at that res the text is so small it's impossible to play (I sit about 5 feet away from my TV in the living room).  So I'm begging for a 720p option or a an option to make the interface and text 2x bigger for 1080p res.  Prefably I like 720p since it looks just fine from 5 feet away and I can usually put all graphic settings to max on most modern games.

So please Stardock give me 720p or allow me to enter it in the pref.ini file like in Galciv2.

 

***EDIT/UPDATE***

I was able to fix this problem, look at reply #3 post for details.

25,327 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

Most HDTVs will handle 1280x768 which is close enough to work out just fine. Try setting that as your desktop resolution and see what happens.

That's how I have mine setup and it works great.

 

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Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

When I set my TV to anything but 720p or 1080p it will just use 720p or 1080p and scale the resolution within those sets (resulting in blurry text and graphics).  It will also not use an HD color matrix if it's not running anything from 480p, 720p, or 1080p which means I play the game on 16-bit color instead of 32-bit unless I use a standard resolution.

 

My HDTV is a Panasonic plasma from 2006, it doesn't really have good scaling options.  As stated above it comes with a zoom feature that I use to get the game to be fullscreen but then it's fuzzy and only runs in 16-bit color.  There's no way for me to unlock the HD color matrix on my TV unless I take it to a guy who can hack/unlock that setting (the setting is only available in the standard resolution modes that my TV supports).  In reality my TV doesn't do 1080p officially, it can pull off 1080p but only at 16bit color, in reality it goes up to 1080i with 32-bit color (making it unacceptable for playing games since my framerate is locked below 30fps with 1080i).  My guess is that when ever I do a resolution that isn't officially supported by my TV, it will just display it in 1080i resolution resulting in a picture that doesn't fit my whole screen and 16bit color.

 

I can play the game in fullscreen usnig zoom and 1280x768 it's just that after about an hour or 2 the eye strain due to the fuzzy graphics makes me have to give it up.  It's strange cause I can run games over a decade old like jedi knight in 720p right out of the box and 95% of the games I own have this resolution, the only ones not having it are all dosbox games and thoes don't really need a 32bit color matrix (though they run at 480p which means my TV displays it just fine).  I mean borderlands, oblivion, sword of the stars, galciv2, armada 2526, gratuitius space battles, fallout3, quake3, and so forth, all these games do 720p (though some I have to tinker with a ini file but it works).

 

Thanks for the help though.

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Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top

Heads up I just got the game to run in 720p.

 

Here's how for those who have the same problems I had.

 

First start the game up and go into options then select "Custom resolution" and make sure the "use fullscreen" is unchecked/off

 

Now go into user documents (documents from start menu if on windows7)

Find the "My games" folder then find the Elemental folder in it, find the file "Prefs.ini" and open it with notepad or any text editor

find the resolution under [video] should be the first 2

DisplayWidth=1280
DisplayHeight=720

Use those values and save the ini file.  Then start up the game and it's running in 720p fullscreen (my TV confirms it cause it's using the HD color matrix and the text is nice and big so it can't be 1080p).

Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to play the heck out this now.