Higher resolution Monitors

Discussion in 'Player Support' started by Tiarette, May 28, 2021.

  1. Tiarette New Member

    Hello everyone!

    Currently trying to return to EQ but I'm having abit of trouble trying to get my UI to scale properly. I've read countless old posts and tried just about every UI available on EQUI to fix my current issue but it doesn't seem like I'm able to find a fix.

    I'm currently running an alienware 34" ultrawide with 3440x1440 resolution. I can scale the chat text and hotbars but when it comes to reading the text for the quests/stats/inventory its really, really rough and very small with no way to increase the size.
    Has anyone found a way around this? Or have a custom higher resolution UI available? Thank you all in advance. I understand EQ was not made to run with higher resolutions but I really would love to get back into the game again and be able to read what I'm doing!
    Corwyhn Lionheart and Stymie like this.
  2. Stymie Pendragon

    I have the same monitor and issues. It makes the game unplayable for me since I bought it. I lurk the forums hoping for a fix, but no matter what I try I'm in the same boat as you. Maybe someday they will address it, but I'm not optimistic at this point.
    Corwyhn Lionheart likes this.
  3. Karadim New Member

    Sure game used to have a /chatfontsize x command you could type within a window to increase it's size or maybe i got the wrong MMORPG.
  4. Stymie Pendragon

    They mention the ability to increase chat font size right after they described the monitor specs. It only works for chat windows. Nothing else scales which is the problem.
    Corwyhn Lionheart likes this.
  5. Rygaru New Member

    they have no issue enlarging the chat window font or size, this has every thing to do with hp bar thickness, quest log text size, character stat size, inventory size and spell text size, all things that you can't do without editing the xml yourself, which there are no guides anywhere on how to do it just that you need to basically code the width and height and size of every window yourself and 0 explanation on how to do it. There were a few small work arounds for some people like increasing default scaler in windows to make every program have 100-500% scaling and unchecking options all of which did little to nothing. I am in the same boat. There are a ton of users that have the same problem. One could argue it's a 20 year old mmo but I stand by if games like runescape that don't have a 15$ sub option and a large micro transaction shop can do it, so can what use to be one of the top 3 mmo developers. I realize that it's not soe anymore but hopefully this new company that has it will do something with it, I have hope anyways.
    Stymie likes this.
  6. I_Love_My_Bandwidth Mercslayer

    Totally get what you're saying. I would argue that this is an indicator of a company that simply did not change their development stance with changing technology. The default UI is designed to be used at 1080p MAX. Full stop.

    Does that mean there's no hope for 4k+ resolutions? Not at all. But you're going to have to get beside the idea that not everything is going to be perfect. I run at 27" 4k with the screen 20" from my face. The text is sometimes difficult to read, but hey - I get to watch all this goodness at high resolution. I will say the textures and game graphics look SPECTACULAR at 4k for a 22 year old game. Especially in the newest expansions.

    The UI will probably see another ground-up re-work soon-ish. But I wouldn't expect that until some time after the new EverQuest game engine goes 64-bit.
  7. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    I ran EQ at 2560*1600, back when I had a 30" monitor, so 1080p is not the max resolution for the UI to be useful. But I imagine todays high dpi monitors in the sub 30" category is different story. I completely agree that they need to invest some dev time on the UI, scale-ability is a must-have nowadays.

    Relying on window's "high-dpi scaling" is not optimal, It was afaik made for abandonware with inflexible resolution support, and It should only be seen as a temporary last resort by the devs...
    Stymie likes this.
  8. MasterMagnus The Oracle of AllHigh


    Probably not a very attractive solution, but have you tried windows accessibility features (magnifier)?

    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...r-to-see-414948ba-8b1c-d3bd-8615-0e5e32204198
  9. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    The Engine dates to 2004 and it has largely been stagnant in terms of further development on it for 17 years now, but there have been some new things done with it over time, most recently the "new ice shader".

    We will see the current launcher be replaced by a new "EG7 games" front-end that will have all the games EG7 has available able to be launched from it.
    We will also eventually see a new EverQuest client, there isn't a publicly disclosed timeline for that as yet but this will be 64 bit, whether that will allow for improved in-game graphics remains to be seen but the ability for the game to go beyond the 1080p limitations of the current UI is a "no-brainer" so an improved UI that can & will scale up to use current monitor tech and at least some way into the future's tech too. (i.e. 4k, 8K, 16k, 32k at least).

    It would be nice if there was a default UI available that helped address the issue right now but maybe that DarkPaw effort is best spent on creating a UI for the improved client, JChan herself has said she wants to hire a "UI Expert" but one that specifically is an expert on EQ's UI so that the game can have an improved, indeed an overhauled UI, it's long overdue a face lift after all.

    In the mean time maybe keep an eye out for a EQ User Interface developer creating a custom UI that helps.
    I did do some digging & found some 4k mods but no idea how many of these are still working.

    https://www.eqinterface.com/list.php?skinnerid=93040&showdays=&so=asc&sb=hits

    If none of those help enough your other option is to use windowed mode for EQ & reduce your desktop resolution to 1920×1080 or as close to that as you can get as your EQ window will use the desktop resolution.
  10. Febb Augur

  11. Corwyhn Lionheart Guild Leader, Lions of the Heart

    And it only works on the reading portion of the chat window. What you are typing in is still too tiny to read.
  12. Stymie Pendragon

    Absolutely!

    It's like the fine print in a used car contract, or the medication directions for a box 5 times the size of the bottle, why so freaking small?
    Corwyhn Lionheart likes this.