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Small screens and Torque Engines

by Adam Bilbrough · in General Discussion · 07/14/2009 (3:34 pm) · 9 replies

I think probably, a lot of people know about the issue with running Torque Engines on small screens (10 - 13") and it being useless (as the screen corrupts). I was wondering, since I'm very tempted by the new 13" Macbook Pros :D if this is something that is fixable within the engine source for TGB for example. I would have thought, you could set the resolution for the TXB gui, exactly to how it is on a smaller computer screen. My reasoning is that I'd love to 'dev on the road' but am unable to, due to this issue.. ditto on my netbook.

I've had no luck with the TX2D source but have yet to nab TGB (using trial atm) to check that for myself.
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Torque Owner Adam Bilbrough

About the author

I've been gaming since the mid ninties (Doom, Wolf3D, RoTT etc), first I got into WAD creation with Doom, map making for Duke3D and modding Quake. Programming interests ensued and the rest is history :)

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    Associate Jaimi McEntire
    King of Flapjacks
    #1
    07/14/2009 (5:51 pm)
    To be honest, I haven't heard about any issues with the torque engines on a small screen. I don't know what the size of the screen would have to do with it - it sounds like something that would be more resolution dependent. Still, I've ran TGE, TGEA, and T3D at low resolutions without any screen corruptions - 800x600 resolution, and even smaller when running in a window.

    Torque 3D Owner Sherman Pendley
    #2
    07/14/2009 (8:01 pm)
    Quote:I think probably, a lot of people know about the issue with running Torque Engines on small screens (10 - 13")

    What issue is that?

    Quote:I'm very tempted by the new 13" Macbook Pros :D

    The specs for the MBP say its screen is 1280x800 - not what I'd call "small" in terms of resolution. I've run Torque and Torque games at lower resolution than that - 1024x768, and even 800x600 with no problems.

    Quote:I've had no luck with the TX2D source

    Torque X is Windows-only. It won't run on Mac OS X, regardless of screen size or resolution.

    Torque Owner Tyler Slabinski
    #3
    07/14/2009 (8:28 pm)
    Get the computer, I have one and TGE, TGB, and even TX works perfectly (bootcamp).

    Torque 3D Owner Sherman Pendley
    #4
    07/14/2009 (9:07 pm)
    Quote:even TX works perfectly (bootcamp)

    So what you're saying is that a Windows-only app works perfectly when you run it on Windows. Gee, imagine that...

    Associate Michael Hall
    Distracted...
    #5
    07/14/2009 (9:55 pm)
    The only "issue" I've ever seen is that most of the default GUI's are setup with a minimum resolution of 640 X 480 in mind (TGE and TGEa -- it's higher in Torque 3D). Running at a lower resolution than that results in some areas of the various GUI's being inacessible -- but if you design with low res in mind it's no longer an issue.

    I've not seen any screen corruption based upon resolution or overall screen size, nor heard of it. But then I've never used TX or TGB...

    Torque Owner Adam Bilbrough
    #6
    07/15/2009 (1:05 am)
    Well I tried it on my netbook once and taking up the whole screen, it was just a bit too small to access most areas (right hand panel), resizing it caused the entire gui to corrupt and just appear as a garbled mess until you resized it again. Though the res is 1024X600, I was wondering if resizing it on a MBP 13" would have the same issue.. I guess if the gui does have a min res of 640X480 and resizing it past that causes it, then that is a problem.. But as the MBP 13" res is 1280X800, it might just be big enough to not hog the screen (guess there's only one way to find out!)

    Thanks guys!

    Torque 3D Owner Ronny Bangsund
    Torque Cheerleaders
    #7
    07/15/2009 (2:24 am)
    Since MacBooks are at least 1280x800, no. Mac OS X also supports scaling with aspect automatically. Even if you only support 800x600, it'll display without squishing.

    I'm using a 13" MacBook, and TGB's editor fits just fine in here. Resizing on integrated Intel graphics on a Windows-based netbook might have issues, though. Start at the desired resolution and don't mess with it is all I can say :P

    Associate David Montgomery-Blake
    David MontgomeryBlake
    #8
    07/15/2009 (7:07 am)
    I've not had a problem on small screens for TGE/TGEA. You can set your editor settings to be larger than your resolution in TGB and TXB, though. So resetting the editorSettings.cs file might be necessary if you copied it from a higher resolution desktop environment.

    Torque Owner Adam Bilbrough
    #9
    07/15/2009 (7:30 am)
    Ahhh, thanks David! I'll take a look at that when I get home :)