Default 1920x1080 resolution almost unplayable

[TheGreatSnoop]

My default resolution is 1920x1080 when I load up CK2, this is obviously the default for my monitor as well, so it makes sense, the problem is that it makes everything, not just the text, very hard to see. The text is extremely small, especially for things like the culture of a character, the character portraits are themselves very small, it makes things not just hard to see, but actually makes the game seem very 'impersonal' in the sense that it's a lot harder to read and just immerse yourself into the characters of the world.

I've tried lowering the resolution to various different options, but the ones closer to 1920x1080 don't seem to make things any bigger, and those lower down the list end up making everything looked scrunched up and/or blurred, as well as having bits of text not appear because they are off-screen. My previous monitor was fine because I could take the resolution down to a lower resolution and things stayed sharp but were easy to see as well.

I don't suppose anyone knows of any suggestions to make things easier to see?

 

[AndrewT]

Please post a dxdiag.txt (you can delete everything after the "Sound devices" section for brevity), settings.txt, system.log files (you'll need to rename the .log files to .txt to upload).

 

[TheGreatSnoop]

Please post a dxdiag.txt (you can delete everything after the "Sound devices" section for brevity), settings.txt, system.log files (you'll need to rename the .log files to .txt to upload).

How do I find them? Are they in the CK2 folders?

 

[AndrewT]

DXDIAG is a program you run from a command prompt or the Windows start menu 'run' dialog box (or 'search programs' in Windows 7). After running it will open a window and start collecting info with a progress bar in the lower-left corner. When it completes click the 'save all information' button and save it to a file then post the first part of that file (from the top down to include "Sound Devices" only) here.

The rest are in Documents/CK2 or /logs/ under that.

 

[TheGreatSnoop]

Thanks for the help.

View attachment DxDiag.txt

View attachment system.txt

I can't find a system.log file, but I found these two.

 

[TheGreatSnoop]

Is this a viable option?

I found it by googling for CK2 resolution problems.

CK2's engine allows you to create a custom resolution, which for example would be useful if you want to emulate a borderless window mode (not directly supported) or double the text size without making everything look too blurry. This can be simply done by opening the settings.txt file (see above for where to find it) and changing the "x" and "y" variables near the top of the file. "x" is the width and "y" is the height. Note that the smallest supported values are 1024 (for "x") and 768 (for "y").

If so, which would be a good resolution, to decrease from a native 1920x1080 resolution, that wouldn't make things squashed or blurry? If it isn't a useful solution to the problem then just ignore it.

 

[AndrewT]

Settings.txt was the other one I wanted, it's in Documents/CK2 . That 'solution' you found is just saying you can manually edit that file to set resolutions other than the ones listed in the games UI.

I don't see anything wrong in those files, but look at the end of system.txt - any of those resolutions should work cleanly. So drop down to say 1680x1050 - the game can go down to 1024x768 and still be playable. I'm not really sure what you mean by 'squashed' - what exact sizes did you try?

And there are mods available to switch to higher font sizes if you still want that.

 

[TheGreatSnoop]

Settings.txt was the other one I wanted, it's in Documents/CK2 . That 'solution' you found is just saying you can manually edit that file to set resolutions other than the ones listed in the games UI.

I don't see anything wrong in those files, but look at the end of system.txt - any of those resolutions should work cleanly. So drop down to say 1680x1050 - the game can go down to 1024x768 and still be playable. I'm not really sure what you mean by 'squashed' - what exact sizes did you try?

And there are mods available to switch to higher font sizes if you still want that.

Ah, I've found it.

View attachment settings.txt

I tried 1680x1050, the interface, names, font, portraits and the like were still far too small unfortunately, so I went down one to 1680x900 and it is definitely an improvement, the map itself looks in good proportion and maintaining a good level of sharpness, the character interface is still fairly squashed together, it's not terrible though, the font does need to be enlarged on the character interface though, hopefully I can find a mod that does this.

I've tried almost all of them at this point, 1440x900 seems to be the closest to a good resolution, only the left hand side of the display doesn't show, by that I mean, if I open up the character interface, the display of it, such as the Kingdom coat of arms next to his/her portrait, has about a quarter of itself cut off and not showing because it's pushing into the side of the monitor, to put it more clearly, that display resolution isn't allowing things in the left hand corner of the screen to fit in the monitor's view.

By 'squashed', I just mean that the character interface seems noticeably pushed towards the left hand side of the screen and not spread out enough to the right, the character portraits/text boxes seem compacted to the left more than they should, not overly, just slightly more. I'm not sure whether I'm only noticing it because I'm used to playing on a much lower resolution, 1024x something, I can't remember exactly, so I'm used to seeing things the portraits and font up close and easy to see.

 

[Aardvark Bellay]

I use

graphics=
{
    size=
    {
        x=1910
        y=1070
    }

for 1920x1080 and with the CKII UI Font Mod it looks perfect and i can easily go down to activate the task bar and start another program along. No problems experienced with this setting.
Hope this helps.

 

[TheGreatSnoop]

I use

graphics=
{
    size=
    {
        x=1910
        y=1070
    }

for 1920x1080 and with the CKII UI Font Mod it looks perfect and i can easily go down to activate the task bar and start another program along. No problems experienced with this setting.
Hope this helps.

I've downloaded the font mod and it's really helpful, thanks.

Regarding changing the settings to 1910x1070, I'm editing it in the setting.txt but when I load the game up it resets to 1920x1080. The only obvious explanation for this is because I'm using VIET with Project Balance, and the only setting.txt file I have is located in My Documents - Paradox - CK2 - Project Balance, I can't find it anywhere else, so that suggests that maybe a vanilla settings.txt is overriding the manual change? The problem is I can't find any other settings.txt file in any of the CK2 related folders?

 

[Aardvark Bellay]

I've downloaded the font mod and it's really helpful, thanks.

Regarding changing the settings to 1910x1070, I'm editing it in the setting.txt but when I load the game up it resets to 1920x1080. The only obvious explanation for this is because I'm using VIET with Project Balance, and the only setting.txt file I have is located in My Documents - Paradox - CK2 - Project Balance, I can't find it anywhere else, so that suggests that maybe a vanilla settings.txt is overriding the manual change? The problem is I can't find any other settings.txt file in any of the CK2 related folders?

Your welcome. The mod is amazingly helpful.

Regarding the settings, yeah that is mod related. The vanila one shouldn't override the mod one. Using PB with VIET should create a settings.txt in the PB folder, which you should edit.
As i understand you did edit it and it still reseted ? Might edit both. The vanila one though definitely doesn't override mod settings.txt files, that i know.

edit: Does editing the settings.txt file as i said work for vanilla without mods ? If not, then thats another issue related to either your screen or graphics settings or windows. I'll investigate.
edit2: Yeah, if these unofficial settings don't work at all, that may have to do with a fixed scaling setting in your graphics card software like Catalyst for AMD (aka ATI), i believe.

 

[TheGreatSnoop]

Your welcome. The mod is amazingly helpful.

Regarding the settings, yeah that is mod related. The vanila one shouldn't override the mod one. Using PB with VIET should create a settings.txt in the PB folder, which you should edit.
As i understand you did edit it and it still reseted ? Might edit both. The vanila one though definitely doesn't override mod settings.txt files, that i know.

edit: Does editing the settings.txt file as i said work for vanilla without mods ? If not, then thats another issue related to either your screen or graphics settings or windows. I'll investigate.
edit2: Yeah, if these unofficial settings don't work at all, that may have to do with a fixed scaling setting in your graphics card software like Catalyst for AMD (aka ATI), i believe.

I can't say, I'm looking but I can't find any settings.txt file outside of the Project Balance folder...which doesn't make sense because there must be a setting.txt file included from the base vanilla download. I tried verifying the integrity of the game cache but it's still not appearing. I've looked in the CK2 files in both My Documents and My Computer, no luck. Where is your vanilla setting.txt file located? I'm guessing here? ---> C:\Users\UserName\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Crusader Kings II

 

[Aardvark Bellay]

Where is your vanilla setting.txt file located? I'm guessing here? ---> C:\Users\UserName\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Crusader Kings II

Yup, right there below the logs, save games and screenshots folders.

Did you already start at least one vanilla game ? Might be it only gets created when starting a game actually, don't know, just guessing.
Or you played plain vanilla on another user account.

Maybe it gets hidden by Windows Explorer display settings then ?

Mysterious.

 

[TheGreatSnoop]

Yup, right there below the logs, save games and screenshots folders.

Did you already start at least one vanilla game ? Might be it only gets created when starting a game actually, don't know, just guessing.
Or you played plain vanilla on another user account.

Maybe it gets hidden by Windows Explorer display settings then ?

Mysterious.

I've got it, it was because I hadn't started a vanilla game, that's being too eager for mods for you!

Anyway, I've edited the vanilla settings.txt to the new resolution, 1910x1070, saved, loaded up vanilla, and it still resets to 1920x1080....agh.

Maybe it is this fixed setting for the graphics card software you mentioned? My card is an Nvidia Geforce GTX 770 if that says anything. Why they have these fixed scaling settings, I do not know..

 

[Aardvark Bellay]

I've got it, it was because I hadn't started a vanilla game, that's being too eager for mods for you!

Anyway, I've edited the vanilla settings.txt to the new resolution, 1910x1070, saved, loaded up vanilla, and it still resets to 1920x1080....agh.

Maybe it is this fixed setting for the graphics card software you mentioned? My card is an Nvidia Geforce GTX 770 if that says anything. Why they have these fixed scaling settings, I do not know..

Ah okay.

Nah, the scaling is not fixed, its optional.
Though by default its off in Catalyst. Don't know about Nvidia software.
In Catalyst its an option (GPU Scaling) in "My digital Flatscreen".

Might not be it, but i suspect it to be the reason. In the meantime i try to think about what else it could be.


edit:

Wait, i got confused. You didn't ask for windowed mode/non-fullscreen.
Errr..........sorry.

If you want to do so anway, you need to change "fullscreen = yes" to "fullscreen =no" in the settings.txt.
Why i even suggested that besides the mod i don't know.:blush:

 

[TheGreatSnoop]

Ah okay.

Nah, the scaling is not fixed, its optional.
Though by default its off in Catalyst. Don't know about Nvidia software.
In Catalyst its an option (GPU Scaling) in "My digital Flatscreen".

Might not be it, but i suspect it to be the reason. In the meantime i try to think about what else it could be.

Okay, I wonder why they even give people this option, I'm sure there's a reason to it. Okay.

 

[Aardvark Bellay]

Okay, I wonder why they even give people this option, I'm sure there's a reason to it. Okay.

See my edit text above. You'll need to not play fullscreen and change the settings.txt accordingly.
As mentioned above, i don't even know why i told you about that, as all you wanted was UI font size changes. Sorry again.

 

[TheGreatSnoop]

I didn't notice you had suggested it. So there's no solution where I could still use full screen? :\

 

[Aardvark Bellay]

I didn't notice you had suggested it. So there's no solution where I could still use full screen? :\

For the non-supported display values ? No, probably not.
Some resolutions even crash on me, though that's probably only in non-fullscreen mode.

The supported resolutions are mentioned in the system.log (in the 'logs' folder).
Have a look.

Regarding irregularities with the screen, ever thought of changing the values of your monitor/screen settings ?


Btw, playing with my suggestion above in non-fullscreen mode stills looks like it. I use to make notes at notepad at the same time or well anything. Can't play fullscreen mode anymore.

 

[TheGreatSnoop]

For the non-supported display values ? No, probably not.
Some resolutions even crash on me, though that's probably only in non-fullscreen mode.

The supported resolutions are mentioned in the system.log (in the 'logs' folder).
Have a look.

Regarding irregularities with the screen, ever thought of changing the values of your monitor/screen settings ?


Btw, playing with my suggestion above in non-fullscreen mode stills looks like it. I use to make notes at notepad at the same time or well anything. Can't play fullscreen mode anymore.

Okay, thanks for your help.

I'm going to keep trying the resolutions, just to make sure there are none I missed that would be a good fit, I'm also going to look for some mods that perhaps make all the font or portraits bigger, probably aren't any but it's worth a shot, I'm not prepared to leave full screen mode behind just yet.