Normal aspect ratio on abnormally wide screen?

DinkyDogg_

Is it possible to force the screen into a 4:3 aspect ratio? Some games like Max Payne can't be run in a window and it's just generally dorky to run games in a window. This is on a dell laptop of mine. Is there a way to shrink the screen's width?

Thanks in advance, -jake

Google · Sponsor

PUTALE · SirTweaksabit Joined: 04 Feb 2005 Posts: 361

I dont' think you can modify the ration on laptop.

gmoney · Posted: Wed Feb 16, 2005 4:19 pm Post subject:

what do u mean... shrink the width of the game window.... if so.. just go into game settings and set it to a normal ratio like 1024x768 or w/e

DinkyDogg_ · Posted: Wed Feb 16, 2005 4:26 pm Post subject:

IF I change the resolution, it gets stretched to fit the abnormally wide screen. I was wondering if there might be some utility to change hwo the screen is displayed

gmoney · Posted: Wed Feb 16, 2005 8:22 pm Post subject:

oh... thats not normal.. my bro has a wide screen vaio laptop.. and it will run games with little letter boxes on the side of the screen if he changes aspect ratio

Sally · UberTweaker Joined: 31 Mar 2004 Posts: 1158 Location: WA

DinkyDogg_ · Posted: Thu Feb 17, 2005 5:31 pm Post subject:

Most somewhat old games. Max Payne, Deus Ex, System Shock 2... Some newer ones like Unreal Tournament and Half Life 2 work okay, but the others get stretched. Any advice on how to get them to run in a "letterbox" thing inside the screen would be great.

DinkyDogg_ · Posted: Thu Feb 17, 2005 6:06 pm Post subject:

fussnfeathers · Lord of the Tweak Joined: 14 Dec 2004 Posts: 2763

It's really dependent on the game, not the monitor or vid card drivers. Since widescreen really only hit consumer markets a year ago or so, game programmers didn't do anything with it. I mean, why go to all the trouble to program wide-aspect gaming for maybe 1% of the market?

I do agree, though, that if you set the monitor resolution fo the "default" (whatever your monitor native resolution is), then the game for 800x600 or whatever, it *should* default to a normal "square" resolution, with the black bars on either side. If it doesn't, I don't know what to tell you.......except that all games made in the last 10 years have the option to run in a window, and barring that, using Windows XP Compatibility settings allows you the option to run the program in a window, so check that as well.
_________________
Big enough to scare you