Any UI scaling mods?

[rob_mtl 435]

I've been away from SimCity 4 for awhile, but I'm back!

In the 4-5 years since I last played, my eyes have gotten older, and my screen resolution has gotten bigger. Has anyone come up with a way to implement UI scaling for SimCity 4?

[Null 45 3,120]

5 minutes ago, rob_mtl said:

Has anyone come up with a way to implement UI scaling for SimCity 4?

AFAIK that is something that is best handled by external scaling software like Magpie.

SC4 uses a fixed size UI that was designed when 1024x768 was high resolution. While in theory someone could override all of the scripted UI and rework it for 4K, I am not aware of anyone having attempted to do so.

[hugues aroux 3,867]

1 hour ago, rob_mtl said:

way to implement UI scaling

There are a number of "blockages": such as certain Budget data tables generated by the EXE; or the size and management of submenu banners... a number of objects with fixed dimensions (hardcoded in the EXE...??!!), plus windows/queries that won't support changes in text size. And as with my "CarbonSkin," all the other UIs of existing Mods will need to be adapted.
I am working, second or even third in importance among my SC4 projects, on a larger (readability) yet more compact interface (compact .. because: a limitation of the UI editor in Reader 1.5.x!), or at least, see how far I can "cheat" with fixed-size objects and partitioned images (button PNGs, etc.).
It's a long job, and to be honest: really annoying... sometimes... often! 
So .. maybe .. A day ... (And if our SC4 coding geniuses find workarounds for these blocks... yay!   )

[CorinaMarie 29,899]

5 hours ago, rob_mtl said:

Has anyone come up with a way to implement UI scaling for SimCity 4?

My answer won't be helpful, but there was another topic wherein they have a large screen and (at a minimum) would like to move the UI over to the lower left corner. Null provided the details of the difficulty and then I tried to explain it from my limited viewpoint.

However, I then had an idea and posted an attachment for testing. The OP never came back and of the 7 downloads, no one reported on any testing. (Using my antique 4:3 ratio screens the UI disappears (as expected), but that doesn't tell me if it works for extra wide screens.)

[Kel9509 1,484]

I don't have a 4k monitor so I have no personal incentive to work on UI scaling at the moment.  But I wonder if it'd be possible to team up to scale the overall UI of the game up to 4k.  If the limitations of the EXE described by @hugues aroux could be overcome with DLL modding, I can see a team working on the overall UI to scale it up similarly how the NAM team exists.  However, unless a person has a 4k display it'd be nearly impossible to test things out to see if they work.  And even still, I wonder if that project could really work given that so many things are intended for the expected display size.  Things like lot icons would need to be "doubled" somehow for every lot out there - unless there's an overlay that can do that I don't see how it'd be possible.

I find that a lot of UI editing is trail-and-error, although there are definite math ratios involved that make things easier to calculate for scaling purposes.  Part of the reason why I haven't scaled up the Census Repository to a larger font is because I'm not sure if there's a way to discern the scaling needed without a lot of trial and error.  I fear it'll again be more of an art instead of a science.  It's on my list of things to do, if I have the time, because I'd hate for the Census Repository to become relegated to the dustbin of history because it's too hard to read.

One idea I had was, given @CasperVg's Advanced Lot Plop thread, if it were possible to minimize the actual in-game UI, and then overlay a larger scaled recreation of that UI with something similar like the Advanced Lot Plop.  So we're not editing the existing UI, but never really using it and instead creating and using an entirely new one.  Ironically enough, as hard as that sounds, it might be easier than editing the existing UI.

[Ulisse Wolf 4,462]

2 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

could be overcome with DLL modding

If I remember correctly, it is difficult to create a Mod DLL because it requires the entire replacement of the game's DirectX and probably the game's graphics management. We are at the level of OpenSC4.

[rob_mtl 435]

Interesting stuff! For myself, I'm now using a 2K ultrawide monitor (so 3440 x 1440). Small icons are not a huge deal, but for the text I'll probably need to use some reading glasses. I wonder if a font change would be easier to implement?

Part of this is a "me" problem as I have been resisting getting reading glasses. 95% of the time my eyes are perfectly fine. My "real job" does not require particularly good eyesight, and most text on screens can be zoomed or otherwise scaled these days.

[CorinaMarie 29,899]

1 hour ago, rob_mtl said:

I wonder if a font change would be easier to implement?

In some thread long, long ago someone was using a STEX (iirc) file that made the fonts larger, but it went too much and that caused clipping. I looked into it way back then and made one that was about halfway between vanilla Maxis and the Too Large version. I'm sure we can prolly find that if you'd want to test. It might be a tiny bit better. 

[CorinaMarie 29,899]

@rob_mtl

I had time to search. There's a copy attached to this post.

[Propfam 2,309]

That's literally what I'd done. And the result, although just for intro, was actually that good.

But, my hiatus and subsequently, works on thesis made my progress frozen in time, with update time of Jan 1, previous year. I wish I can back working, but I'm working on my thesis and my other projects in RL. So, there won't be any progress from me.

[Turnstyled 539]

I play SimCity 4 on a 4K display.  For better visibility of the UI, I'm playing at 1080p windowed and upscaling using Lossless Scaling available on Steam. Of course, it's not lossless despite the name. Magpie (https://github.com/Blinue/Magpie) might be preferred because it's free (as in beer), it's open source, and it's not dependent on any DRM. Within Lossless Scaling, I'm using the Lossless Scaling's own LS1 upscaler with a sharpness of 1, which is LS1's default sharpness setting. A sharpness of 0 to 1 when using LS1 is recommended.

Using Integer Scaling worked wonders for me with SimCity 3000, which, unlike SimCity 4, is all sprites.

I had good results using Magpie with Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2 last year. Again, it wasn't "perfect," because of how that game presents its visuals, but it sure worked more than well enough for me!

[Lab Rat 16]

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