An Axe..? I figured it would be the Banhammer...

I hope the axe in question is imbued with fire. Best way to deal with trolls.

In DosBox you can set a flag for aspect ratio correction which works well with any DOS game so far I've played on it, without any need to modify any game resources.

It appears the technique consists of repeating pixels across the vertical plane of the screen. This makes the screen area too "tall" for normal screens but perfect for wide screens. And even in low res games you don't really notice it unless you specifically look for it (at least I don't).

Maybe a similar technique could be employed for Book III without a need to modify game resources. I'm not sure I fully understand the DosBox feature's application, though. It may only make sense to use for games already intended for specific aspect ratios. I'm probably not explaining it too well as I find it hard to wrap my head around how/why it works, but check it out for yourself.

Your explanation of why it would cause so much extra work doesn't quite make sense to me, only because I don't understand why the elements could remain the same, but the position be moved, and the viewport just be larger. At the same time, i trust that it makes sense from the developer side of things.

Anyway, I wanted to add, that if it's reasonable to go up another notch in resolution, that would be really sweet. I love the isometric game style, but I always yearn for greater detail in the sprites. A great example is Neverwinter Nights. Of course, I know that game is actual 3d rendering, and not sprites, but I guess I'd just love to see a Book III have more detail.

Additionally, I'd love to see a (slightly) redesigned HUD that took up less screen real estate. Maybe these two wishes are better left for the next engine (here's hoping).

Well what I got out of what BW said is that if he made a widescreen resolution he would have to redraw all the pixels for the HUD (maybe even the game. (I don't know because I haven't completely figured out programming, and I don't know how the Eschalon Engine is set up.)

Also I am fine with a 4:3 resolution as on my laptop full screen on any resolution besides 16:10 is full screen mwahahaha. Even though I play in windowed XD.

I like to multitask so windowed is awesome for me.

I only wish the game didn't stop when I went to a different screen, but oh well. :/

Just curious, BW:

How much trouble would it be, leaving the main interface/playable region at 4:3, but allowing popup windows (player inventory, chests, etc) to be dragged outside the 4:3 region, for players with widescreen monitors?

It would give us more real estate to work with for inventory manipulation, while still leaving the main interface intact...

If it's too much grief, don't worry. We've loved your first two games in 4:3, we'll love this one too...

It wouldn't be too hard if the screen was left-justified, with the remaining "black" area all to the right. But, to center the 4:3 game screen within the wide LCD monitor means the "x-axis zero point" would be somewhere about 100+ pixels to the right of the left side of the screen. This literally messes EVERYTHING up- mouse focus points, all graphic elements, etc.

It was an honest and simple mistake: when we designed the first engine back in 2005, it was done on a 4:3 CRT monitor. Shortly after we started, we thought "we'd better get an LCD monitor in here to test on"...and so we got a 4:3 LCD. Now, all we have are widescreen LCDs here, but it's just too late to make the jump with this engine.

I will take Win95 unpatched over Vista unpatched ANYDAY.

If there is no widescreen it wont be a deal breaker for me, the only thing I would really love to see is better support for Intel gra..... (cough) graphi........(COUGH) graphics chips (I think a Dorito would work better than what Intel puts out), Book II just crawls on my fairly recent (2009....ok maybe not so recent) laptop when there are trees.

Also I tend to run the game in the "low" res mode just to speed up the game, mine runs in the low 10s to mid 20s and up to 40s underground, so no widescreen is no biggie for me just means less my laptop has to chug out.

HP Pavilion DV6-1245DX
Intel Core Duo 2 GHz
4GB RAM
Intel Mobile Express 4

R u kiddin?? what r u gonna cut next, 3D support?!?!

Hi,

New here but already playing Eschalon since I came accross with it some months ago.

I usually like to play these old-school games in my netbook. Eschalon Book I ran without problems but Book II won't start since my max resoultion is 1024x600.

If you are not supporting widescreen, could you, at least, make Book III compatible with 800x600? That would make a lot of people happy because this is the kind of games you like to play in low-end systems.

Thank you

Personally...am ok with 4:3. Its the content and game flow which appeals more.