2 displays, different native resolutions

[FunkMonkey]

Hi all, and first let me say what a great site this is. I've found it very useful in the past solving problems I had with an old laptop and it's good to see it's still going strong.

Now, I've recently got a shiny new laptop with a native resolution of 1929x1200. However when I'm at home I like to use my 22" external lcd monitor, which has a native resolution of 1680x1050. The problem I've been having is that it's rather annoying having to change the resolution in games every time I switch between the two displays. Is it possible to set it up so that, when starting, a game will automatically look to see if 1920x1200 is available and, if not, run the game in 1680x1050 instead. This would solve the problem by automatically setting the game to the maximum resolution available for the display that's in use. I've tried everything I can think of to get this to work but have had no luck so far. If someone can think of any possible solutions to this it would be very much appreciated.

System specs:

17" WUXGA+ X-Glass TFT Screen (1920 x 1200)

T7300 2.0GHz CPU

1GB DDR2 RAM (soon to be upgraded to 2GB)

Nvidia 8700M GT GPU (512MB DDR3 Memory)

100GB, 7200rpm hard drive (soon to be upgraded to 160GB, 7200rpm)

Windows Vista Home Premium

[Bill]

You would probably need some sort of batch file to check the display settings and swap out configuration files for the games before they are run. (most games have INIs or config files almost similar to the driver INFs we provide to store settings)

I don't know how to code batch files though.

[FunkMonkey]

I was thinking along the same lines myself but don't know where to begin writing batch code either. :)

If anyone has any knowledge of batch code I'd love some advice on how to write such a program. Then it'd just be a simple matter of adding the game's .exe file and changing the game's shortcut to point to the batch file instead.

[Bill]

You might want to start by checking this one out.

http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/index.php?showtopic=756

It pulls resolution data, so you could use part of the batch as a base, then lookup the file replacement coding stuff online, or even better dynamic configuration file adjustment (only have 1 file that you constantly edit)

You'll need to talk to Teraphy though about releasing your findings if you include his DIRT tool.

[FunkMonkey]

You might want to start by checking this one out.

http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/index.php?showtopic=756

It pulls resolution data, so you could use part of the batch as a base, then lookup the file replacement coding stuff online, or even better dynamic configuration file adjustment (only have 1 file that you constantly edit)

You'll need to talk to Teraphy though about releasing your findings if you include his DIRT tool.

Many thanks for the suggestion Bill. I've downloaded and extracted the NERD files and have worked out that I need to cut and paste the relevant section of LV2GO_DIRT.exe (the .exe file itself rather than the logfile created by running it). I will of course ask Teraphy if I do redistribute any part of these files. The problem I'm having is that when I try to open LV2GO_DIRT.exe in notepad the majority of the file is written in code and I don't know how to convert this to plain text. I'm sure this is a relatively simple step but unfortunately my experience in this area is very limited and so I am unable to proceed any further. Would you be able to able to suggest a program that could do this?

[Bill]

You'll you have to decompile the EXE or ask Teraphy for the source code.

I'm currently not a programming expert (yet?) so I can't offer you any program suggestions.

Maybe in the next few years I will get a computer engineering degree and will be able to lend my talents here, but I haven't even decided on a major(s) yet. (I'm a college freshman this year)

[FunkMonkey]

Well, I've had limited success so far. I've realised that there's no point just sticking an application that changes the resolution (like ResSwitch in the shortcut's command line, as the game's .exe file loads it's .ini file which just changes the resolution back.

However some games like UT2004 that are set to start in 1920x1200 will automatically switch down to the next highest resolution available (in this case 1680x1050) when used with a different display. The only hassle is setting it back to 1920x1200 when playing on the higher res screen (as the game does not do this automatically). I've got around this by making a vbscript file that automatically overwrites part the game's .ini file that deals with resolution, setting it to 1920x1200 and then running the .exe file as normal, every time the script is run. By setting my UT2004 shortcut to point to this script I've been able to get UT2004 to always run in the correct resolution.

The next hurdle is getting the scrpt to take the results from a tool like NERD or ResCopy showing the highest available resolution and inputting this into the game's .ini file automatically (at the moment the script just sets the res to 1920x1200 every time). By the way, I found this site very useful, copying most of the script over from there and then editing it.