Aspect ratio issues (with Monkey Island games)

[fadetonoir]

I've been using SCUMMVM for a few years now, and recently reinstalled it to play through the Monkey Island games again, only to notice that I've got some aspect ratio issues. I'm not sure if these issues existed before and I've just noticed them, or they're new, either due to a new SCUMMVM version or the fact that I've got a new PC since I last used the program.

Anyway, I've got a 26" 16:10 monitor, set to a resolution of 1920x1200. I started playing Monkey Island 2 fullscreen and noticed right away that some of the picture was missing, as bits of the subtitles were off the edge of the screen. I hit alt-enter to switch to windowed and could see everything. I've also tried installing the first Monkey Island game, as well as Curse of Monkey Island, and have the same problem with each game, with about the same about of picture missing.

I've tried using the 'Aspect ratio correction' option in both global and game-specific options, as well as playing with some other settings, but no combination has worked.

I tried to take a screenshot to show how much was missing but, strangely enough, print screen captured a complete 640x480 image - even the bits that were off the edges of my screen. So I saved the screenshot anyway and did my best to manually grey out the area that I can't see -



Is there a way I can fix this? Any help would be much appreciated.

[Graxer]

It's possible that your computer monitor is the one cutting part of the image off when it switches to the resolution used by the game. Does your monitor have buttons on it which can be used to bring up a menu which can stretch and shrink the image on the screen? If so that may be worth trying out!

[fadetonoir]

Thanks for your suggestion - I checked through all the monitor settings and there was nothing that should affect the aspect ratio of the video sent to the monitor.

I actually have two monitors on my PC - the other is a 19" LG L194WT, which is also 16:10 but at 1440x900. The games display as they should on that monitor (they are 4:3 when windowed, stretched to 16:10 when in fullscreen, but without losing any content). Testing them on this monitor also made me realise that the quality on the 26" monitor was much lower than the 19" (more so than you'd expect from stretching to a larger resolution, like a lower colour depth as well).

After double checking that the Windows and nVidia control panel settings were the same for both monitors, I realised that one difference is that my primary monitor is connected via a DVI-HDMI cable (DVI in my graphics card, HDMI into the monitor), whereas the secondary has a DVI-DVI cable. I tried the DVI-DVI cable in the primary monitor and that has solved the issue! So I'm not sure why a HDMI input would cause that problem, but there you go!

[Lostech]

Check if your monitor has overscan activated for HDMI input, if yes then deactivate it or set it to 0%.

[fadetonoir]

Got it!

My monitor has something called 'AV Mode' which is not explained in any detail in the manual, but turning it off fixed the problem, so it now works even with the DVI-HDMI cable.

Thanks for your help, guys. You made me focus on the monitor as the source of the problem and I was pointed towards the 'AV Mode' option when I Googled my monitor's model number (it's a Samsung Syncmaster T260) along with 'HDMI overscan'. Apparently having AV mode turned on makes the monitor behave more like a TV than a PC monitor.

Now that SCUMMVM is running fullscreen without missing the edges, I have the choice of retaining the original aspect ratio or stretching the picture horizontally to 16:10 using the nVidia Control Panel, as I'm used to doing for other older games.

[Graxer]

Great! I'm glad we managed to help you get this sorted!