I need a way to determine the user monitor ratio (4:3, 5:4, widescreen, etc) so that I can put black area for widescreen.

Actually, what is the best solution to make screen cliping area? My idea is to put black panel. Because in my game, user with widescreen will have advantage because he can see more. If I make fixed resolution using video_mode, widescreen user will see wider character or oval-look ball.

You can estimate the monitors set resolution with sys_metrics(0), sys_metrics(1). The ratio is width/height => sys_metrics(0)/sys_metrics(1).

All supported resolutions of the monitor you can estimate with the API-functions EnumDisplaySettings and EnumDisplaySettingsEx.

And just a hint: do not display "black panels". This will look very bad on widescrenn monitors.

Thank you for the functions. I didn't found them in the help file.

If I fully utilize the widescreen, I have to crop the top+bottom to maintain the graphic's ratio. This will disadvantaging them.

If I put top+bottom black panel for the non-widescreen, this will makes my game too hard because the enemy attack from verticle. My top menu has took 1/7 of the screen height. If plus more black panel at top+bottom, auch!! Just imaging playing flight shooter on widescreen, you only have a few secs to react at the moment you see enemy approacing.

Any suggestion?

Good question!

With this type of game (where the size of the view is controlling game difficulty)
I would eventually change the AI (health/power/fire speed/speed) of the enemies with the viewrange to eliminate the advantage of widescreen users.

Oh! What a strange way but should be considered! I've never thought to control bias in that way. How do you determine the multiplier factor? I means, if monitor A is 10% smaller than monitor B, does that means we must makes movement in computer A 10% slower? Fine.... but we have a lot of other variables, did you simple makes everything less 10%? Or you adjust based on user experience and your instinct?

You have a very nice idea.

I would start to check if a linear change of (e.g. the enemies speed) solves the problem:
[edit: I would try to solve it by changing just one parameter unless I get no good results]

Starting with the default ratio (4/3) I would calculate the ratio between the widescreen-ratio and the default screen-ratio:

e.g. 4:3=1.33, 16:9=1.77 => 1.77 : 1.33 = 1.33 (ratio-factor)

Now I would multyply the enemies speed with the ratio-factor and a constant (to change the power of the ratio-factor).

I would test this by setting extreme monitor-aspects (with video_set()) and play with the constant.


If all this returns no good result I would try to use non-linear methods (edit: or change more than one parameter with this ratio-factor).

mercuryus

I see... so we need to experience the "feeling" itself. Nice trick.