Mission Loading Screen

Need to finish this up, before it gets lost with all other projects.
The quickest fix I can think of that will work right off the bat is offset the bitmap size by one pixel, either the height and/or the width, so that the game only affects those sizes.

On the other hand if the game has built in resizing, we need to tap into that.

UPDATE: The game's built in resizin will only work if the default bible hack is set to 800 x 600, obviously we want it larger than 800 x 600, setting the bible hack any larger will lock the window to that size and the image will display small in a 1920 x 1080 resolution.

A compromise can be made here with the following observations.

• people like to play with large menus, (don't know why if their 3d game resolution is set to 1920 x 1080)
• the ideal LRM resolution for the loading bitmaps is 1920 x 1080 but there are issues with this size
• the use of bible hack for 1920 x 1080 will break the game's resizing of 800 x 600 bitmap to larger resolutions
• compressing a bitmap from 1920 x 1080 to 800 x 600 is such a big difference and would be noticeably bad
• Stretching up gets worse, Stretching from 800 x 600 to 1920 x 1080 looks real bad
• The loading text gets smaller and smaller the larger you go, need to have it fixed and somewhat consistent
• we need a more elegant solution than adding 1 pixel to a 1920 x 1080 bitmap
• im tired of looking at
  
  code for 3 hours straight, with no
  
  luck
• also
  
  that I am the only one working on this
  

If you take the lowest and highest bitmap resolutions and find a middle ground (Low_Res + HghRes  Divided by 2), the middle ground is the resolution 1360 x 840. Set the LRM loading bitmaps to this resolution, and check for it and resize (stretch or compress) bitmap image to what ever bible hack resolution we use. This by no means is the final patch, just a completed patch that needs more attention.
 

I hear you. The other project that you are speaking about (ie dealing with colour banding) is just at the thinking out loud stage.   We have a severe lack of knowledge about tackling that issue.   It may just be a pipe dream that leads to a dead end.

Truthfully I thought we were giving up on the improved load screen idea because we couldn't find an elegant solution.

OOPS, updated after you posted again, sorry...

I will continue to pick at it, until we are happy happy happy.

Now it is possible that doing the Directdraw research could help us with this problem too.

If we understand the parameters that are used during the call it could lead to ideas.

For instance what if we figured out a way to simply center the load screen. If an original 800x600 load screen is centered in a 1920x1080 window that is acceptable visually and there would be no need for a stretch cave code. In that case we could just use the simple bible hack to get the right size and perhaps another direct draw hack to center the window?

again just spitballing...

I think I have those location values saved in CE, gonna run a quick test.

UPDATE: Found a string variable for the name of the bitmap "Loading _MissionA" on the stack when method is called to setRect, I can compare the first 16bites (Loading_Mission) of the file name and if matched then modify the size accordingly no more issues with Loading bitmap.
Gonna run a few tests to see if the variable is within scope of the method, in order to use it.

Interesting.

Wife is at work tomorrow so will have access to the main computer. Will visit you on TS if you are around in the afternoon.

Final part for computer arrived today but can't build it yet until I solve an issue with the store I bought it from. Fighting for a discount since it took 21 days for the shipment to arrive and now the price has gone down.  The shipment literally only had to travel 40 minutes to my apartment but instead got lost and shipped across the country.