Multiple resolutions?

I have a laptop now (woo). Here's the thing. I have a desktop monitor which roflstomps the laptop's display. And which is a different resolution.

Because of this, it makes a lot of sense for me to change resolution, window scale and window locations depending on whether I'm on the laptop or the desktop. Is there a reasonable way in-game to do this, or even remotely automate it? So far as I can tell, resolution is a registry entry, and I don't know of a reasonable way to automate those changes. And unfortunately, it appears that CoH stores window locations and sizes in absolute pixels rather than in some kind of scaling relative form, so if you change resolution, all your windows are screwed up. (One solution I've seen is to pick an arbitrary resolution, and simply declare that all window locations and values are intrinsically in that coordinate system, which then gets scaled appropriately when you change game resolution, so everything ends up in corresponding places... but that's a code-side thing.)

It seems like it might be possible to script this in some way, possibly by stashing a backup copy of the windows.txt file. On the other hand, that file is loaded explicitly; is there some other file which is loaded automatically on login that determines where windows are put, or is that information stored server-side for each character?

The concern I have is just that, since I'm likely to switch between the laptop display resolution and the monitor display resolution moderately often (and the monitor does not support the laptop's resolution, so even if I didn't mind the fuzziness it still wouldn't even be POSSIBLE to set it to that resolution), it seems like I'd want the process of switching between them to be as automated and automatic as possible.

You can create two different shortcuts to launch the game and on the Target line you can specify the resolutions and then use one shortcut for the laptop's screen and one for when the Desktop monitor.

I'm leaving work now and don't have the commands handy, but I'll look them up as soon as I get home and if someone hasn't given the commands I'll reply here with them.

There may be a windowsave and windowload command that can set your window sizes after logging in but I'll have to research that more to see if it's just a default file or if it will let you specify different files.

Even if it's just "the default file", I can hack around that, I think. Maybe.

Okay, so, True Confessions time: I know basically nothing about Windows. All my background is Macs and Unix.

What I'd presumably normally do would be to write a little tiny script which copies the appropriate window settings file in place, and then spawns the shortcut or whatever (or just executes the command directly). So far as I can tell, that should be doable under Windows, though I have no idea how. I have Cygwin, so if necessary, I can probably make a shell script to do it. :P

Is there an automatic "execute these commands at startup" file or something similar to handle loading window settings on login (assuming there's even a / command for that...)?

I'm with TJ on this one. You can indeed create window option files. Here are the details...

Log on with your desktop monitor and set the window size and positions the way you want them and type : /wdwsavefile wdwdesktop.txt

*Make sure you check the size and position of /info windows, store, market, and other "non-fixed" screens before saving.

Log in with your laptop screen and make any necessary adjustments, and type : /wdwsavefile wdwlaptop.txt

Then you can simply run each file with : /wdwloadfile filename.txt


I suggest making a "simple" rotating bind :
Create a file called bindlaptop.txt :
KEYNAME "wdwloadfile wdwlaptop.txt$$bindloadfile binddesktop.txt"
Create a file called binddesktop.txt :
KEYNAME "wdwloadfile wdwdesktop.txt$$bindloadfile bindlaptop.txt"
Type /bindloadfile bindlaptop.txt

Then, you can use the KEYNAME that you choose to quickly toggle the window layouts when you switch displays. The only problem is you'd have to remember to put that bind onto all your characters. The good news its only a one time set up. You can even add the bind to your default keybinds.txt file so that it'll automatically load to any new characters you create.


As for making the client start with the different resolution, here is an example :
"C:\Program Files\City of Heroes\CohUpdater.exe" -screen 1680 1050 -fullscreen 1

That will load the game in 1680x1050 resolution in fullscreen mode. Simply make changes to the command and rename each shortcut as you need.

On a sidenote, I tried putting a -wdwload in the shortcut, and it crashes while loading, so it doesn't look like automatic settings is available for this option. Sorry.


So overall it looks like the process wont be fully automated like you want, but it'll be as simply as running the appropriate shortcut when loading the client, then pressing one key of your choice when you log in. That's not that bad. I hope you get it to work the way you want.

Scooped by M-B as I was typing it up. Guess I'm just old and slow.

Thanks! I may try the -wdwload in the shortcut anyway on the off chance that it only crashed for you because it didn't really love you the way it loves me. ... This is actually exceedingly unlikely, but it'd be awesome if it worked.

Thanks a ton for the detailed advice, I haven't finished implementing it (haven't had cause to take the laptop out for a day or so), but I've got it partially done, and I'm loving it.