UI Scaling / Placement for Ultra wide monitors

[Koankuta 4]

Firstly, you'll have to bear with me as I've only started modding SC4 for a couple days. I've played for over 20 years completely vanilla, but coming across this forum has completely refreshed the experience!

I've downloaded all the critical mods from this thread, along with NAM, realistic weather / lighting and various texture replacers. With a DX wrapper, I've successfully been able to play fullscreen on my SUW monitor at a resolution of 3840x1080 with no crashes. It's beautiful! My monitor is 5120x1440, however at that resolution the game crashes after a few minutes. But that's beside the point...

What I'd like to change is the placement of the UI. It sits right in the center of the screen, and I'd like to move it to the bottom left corner at my resolution. I've seen other mods that move the UI by X number of pixels (like this one), so if I understand correctly it should be possible. However I'm not acquainted with modifying/creating plugins. I imagine it's more involved than, say, writing an .ini and implementing an offset by x number of pixels, but I have many years' experience working IT and am happy to learn. It's more of a question of if someone who does know how to do something like this, would they like to give me a hand in making it possible. 

Or, better yet, if there's a simpler solution I'm not aware of!

I appreciate any contribution, thank you all for keeping this game alive!

**Edit
I'm embarrassed to admit that I fell for an April Fool's upload, thinking the realistic lighting mod was going to work 

 

 

[Ulisse Wolf 4,426]

1 hour ago, Koankuta said:

Firstly, you'll have to bear with me as I've only started modding SC4 for a couple days. I've played for over 20 years completely vanilla, but coming across this forum has completely refreshed the experience!

I've downloaded all the critical mods from this thread, along with NAM, realistic weather / lighting and various texture replacers. With a DX wrapper, I've successfully been able to play fullscreen on my SUW monitor at a resolution of 3840x1080 with no crashes. It's beautiful! My monitor is 5120x1440, however at that resolution the game crashes after a few minutes. But that's beside the point...

What I'd like to change is the placement of the UI. It sits right in the center of the screen, and I'd like to move it to the bottom left corner at my resolution. I've seen other mods that move the UI by X number of pixels (like this one), so if I understand correctly it should be possible. However I'm not acquainted with modifying/creating plugins. I imagine it's more involved than, say, writing an .ini and implementing an offset by x number of pixels, but I have many years' experience working IT and am happy to learn. It's more of a question of if someone who does know how to do something like this, would they like to give me a hand in making it possible. 

Or, better yet, if there's a simpler solution I'm not aware of!

I appreciate any contribution, thank you all for keeping this game alive!

**Edit
I'm embarrassed to admit that I fell for an April Fool's upload, thinking the realistic lighting mod was going to work 

 

 

Unfortunately, the UI is hardcoded, so source code is required to make changes. Perhaps DLL Mods could solve the problem, but we are more in the realm of code rewriting, and that is currently impossible. 

[Koankuta 4]

47 minutes ago, Ulisse Wolf said:

Unfortunately, the UI is hardcoded, so source code is required to make changes. Perhaps DLL Mods could solve the problem, but we are more in the realm of code rewriting, and that is currently impossible. 

ah, too bad. I am curious, though, with that in mind how was Warrior able to make the Raise the UI mod?

[CorinaMarie 29,772]

38 minutes ago, Koankuta said:

how was Warrior able to make the Raise the UI mod?

All the UIs are created with images (usually PNGs and BMPs iirc) and bounding boxes (as in defined coordinates). In general it's like the lower left corner is anchored and then everything is offset from that. So for the Raise the UI Mod, they expanded the bounding box and then offset the images and text from the origin point.

For the game image you've shown, the starting position is somehow out of place and I believe that's what gets into the C++ coded part.

[Koankuta 4]

4 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

All the UIs are created with images (usually PNGs and BMPs iirc) and bounding boxes (as in defined coordinates). In general it's like the lower left corner is anchored and then everything is offset from that. So for the Raise the UI Mod, they expanded the bounding box and then offset the images and text from the origin point.

For the game image you've shown, the starting position is somehow out of place and I believe that's what gets into the C++ coded part.

I see, thank you for the insight!

[CorinaMarie 29,772]

I decided to tinker a wee little bit.  

Remove the Raise the UI Mod if you are using it. Then add my test one and load a city tile. I expect it to look goofy, but what I've done is try to move the bigger frame images to the left by 500 pixels. All we are looking for atm is if anything does change on your screen. (In other words, this is a proof of concept to see if my idea is feasible, but it's not a completed mod.) If there is any difference, please post a s/s.  

Partial Move UI Left 500 Test by Cori v0.01.dat