Grayout -Simple Linux freeware game

[Jonax]

I for one never encountered this scaling before. As you say the Lazarus forum is very helpful.

MyIntegerVariableForScaling := Screen.PixelsPerInch;

Seems to do the trick. Though it took some time to remake the program. I wouldn't be surpised if I missed something too. But now the new scaling ready version is downloadable on my site.

Gameplay and appearance are supposed to remain unchanged.

It turned out the UI scaling is possible in Linux too. At least for the KDE Debian I use.

Haven't found that option on Raspberry but I guess most Raspberry users don't use High DPI monitor. And frankly I don't either.

[Jonax]

And thanks for the extensive reply SilverWarior . It sure seems to be a challenge to handle all that. At least I'm aware of the scaling now.

[SilverWarior]

I for one never encountered this scaling before. As you say the Lazarus forum is very helpful.

I guess most Raspberry users don't use High DPI monitor. And frankly I don't either.

You probably never encountered this because you don't own High DPI monitor so Windows never went into this as they call legacy scaling mode which completely breaks some applications. And yes this can even break some of older Microsoft applications.
There is a reason why Windows 10 and Windows 11 are actually logging which DPI scaling their users use for certain applications (yes on modern Windows versions user can force specific application to use one of the four scalling methods) so that when a user installs some old application Windows can check Microsoft database to see if Microsoft already has some information about which Scaling type most users use.

MyIntegerVariableForScaling := Screen.PixelsPerInch;

Yeah this will work for as long as Windows report correct DPI resolution. But for this your application manifest file must contain proper entries to tel Windows that it does support High DPI scaling. Without that Windows will report wrong DPI resolution.

Any way I also don't have High DPI monitor so I don't have actual experience with this but I did read several questions and their respective answers about this topic on Stack Overflow.
Well technically I do have High DPI screen if I connect my computer to Smart TV that I got for free from my friend.

And no I don't have some rich friends. This is just about six or seven years old Smart TV whole back-light electronics has gone bad so now I can be happy if screen remains constantly lit for 10 minutes otherwise it keeps turning black after about one to two minutes and remains black for about half a minute each time. Replacing back-light electronics would cost about 120 EUR which is half of the price of some cheaper Smart TV-s out there. So now I'm kinda hoping that someone else might donate me similar or same model so I can try and use parts from both to make at leas one working

[Jonax]

Indeed I never bought any High DPI monitor. But it turned out I have at least one rich friend with such a gadget. Annoying when I wanted to proudly show my latest creation and it looked like crap on his advanced machine.

Seems to be complicated to handle the resolutions and I haven't even begun with the application manifest thingie. Anyway I got to try my best. No doubt I will encounter new problems. I assume there can be conflicts when I try to fix the appearance while windows also tries to fix the appearance in its way.

An other question is how much more high-res the monitors will be in the future. Right now windows supports max rescaling of 225%. There must be some limit of how much it's meaningful/possible to shrink the pixels/ dots.. will there one day be rescaling to ten thousand percent.. and not lousy 4K monitors but 4G monitors.. I think a 4G monitor is still science fiction but the tech improves relentlessly..

As for your high res TV it sounds like a good plan to wait for a similar wasted gadet to scrap parts from. I keep my fingers crossed for you. Them monitors can be expensive and I rather spend the dollars on the CPU and the Disks. Not that I buy anything fancy. I prefer the low power low end ones with integrated graphics. Still beats my first PC from last millenium. I started with a 20 MHz i386 with 1 MB ram and 40 MB disk drive. Even the most crappy modern PC is superior to that.

[SilverWarior]

Right now windows supports max rescaling of 225%. There must be some limit of how much it's meaningful/possible to shrink the pixels/ dots.. will there one day be rescaling to ten thousand percent.. and not lousy 4K monitors but 4G monitors..

With windows scaling you are not shrinking but instead stretching the pixels. The purpose of scaling is to make things look larger. Well technically you are not even stretching the pixels but instead telling Windows to draw standard UI components enlarged by the scale factor.

[Jonax]

With windows scaling you are not shrinking but instead stretching the pixels. The purpose of scaling is to make things look larger. Well technically you are not even stretching the pixels but instead telling Windows to draw standard UI components enlarged by the scale factor.

Sorry for unclear writing. What I tried to say is the physical light emitters making up the dots in modern flatscreen monitors ought to be made smaller or placed closer to each other if the screen makers want to fit more of them into each square inch. I assume Moores law doesn't apply here but either way there should be some limit of how small or densely place they can meaningfully be. CPU evolution - amazing. Monitor evolution -not bad but not as great as for monitors.

[SilverWarior]

What I tried to say is the physical light emitters making up the dots in modern flatscreen monitors ought to be made smaller or placed closer to each other if the screen makers want to fit more of them into each square inch. I assume Moores law doesn't apply here but either way there should be some limit of how small or densely place they can meaningfully be.

If you want to learn more about squeezing more pixels closely together and what limitations there are in this area I suggest reading about Nano Pixel Technology which was developed recently and represents not just a new step but a new leap in this area.
In fact with development of Nano Pixel Technology the ability to physically squeeze as many pixels in small area is no longer the limitation for screen resolution. Current limitation for how big screen resolution we can have is actually the ability to deliver enough data to the screen in order to display the finial picture properly. Of course the refresh rate also has a huge impact to all this.

Since you have been in computer world for some time I guess you probably still remember the time of CRT monitors and how you could have your CRT monitor displaying 800 x 600 resolution at 80 Hz but if you wanted to display 1024 x 768 resolution your the screen refresh rate would drop down to 60 Hz. Back then we were also limited by the signal bandwidth similar as we are today. So I'm guessing that before we se next big leap in screen resolution we would have to see a development of new technology for delivering the screen signal from graphics card to the monitor itself.

[Jonax]

Interesting. So the density can continue to increase, but hopefully (from my point of view) not too rapid. This complicates the coding but must be dealt with one way or another. Btw. I noticed Debian KDE goes further than Windows and offer 300% scaling. Not that I can meaningfully test that on my limited monitor.

And I do remember getting a 800x600 CRT monitor. Was a great improvement over the original VGA monitor I had. Not that I bothered with refresh rate back then. My system handled Delpi and Settlers 2 well enough and life was comparably simple.

Now I have begun some new scaling concept test coding. So far nothing to show. But I hope to be able to create something simple any month now.

The Grayout program will have to wait. The suggested extra features are interesting but they got to be postponed, mayhaps forever. Stil aiming to make an installer for debian and raspberry some day.