Difference between revisions of "Window Scale Guide"

Revision as of 22:17, 19 August 2008

Overview

This is a guide to the Window Scale slash command.

Slash Command

/window_scale window_name scale

The argument window_name is the name of the window to be scaled, such as Health or Chat. The argument scale is a decimal number between .64 and 1.99.

See also /window_scale.

Forum post

Rescaling the User Interface

Rescaling all of the Graphical User Interface (GUI or just UI) can be done with a slider found in Menu/Options/Graphics/User Interface/Window Scale. All the windows in the UI can be shrunk to 64% of their standard size or magnified to 199% of their standard size.

Changing the scale value rescales proportionally all the texts and graphics in the window and proportionately rescales the maximum and minimum sizes of windows that can be manually resized through clicking-and-dragging their borders.

Note that changing this value and then exiting the Options Window by the Save button will change every window to this value, even if they've already been individually rescaled to some other value (see below). If you do not change the value of the slider, and you have individually resized windows, and then choose Save, the value set on this universal slider is ignored -- the slider has to be changed and then saved in order to reset all windows to the new value.

Note that the scale of the Health window is attached to the value of the slider bar. If you change scaling of the Health window individually, then the value of this slider will change, and then the next time you choose Save to exit from Options, all the window will be reset to the new value. In other words, individually scaling Health will eventually lead to resetting all the windows to the same scale value. So, set your Health window scale first, and then save it under options, and then go rescale the rest of the windows to your preferences.

Rescaling Individual Windows

The problem with rescaling all the windows with the slider is that some windows don't scale well, e.g., if you shrink everything to 80%, then the text in the mission window will run off the window and disappear, or the pop-up 'color commentary' windows when you enter a mission are formatted horribly in that the 'OK' button hovers over the text.

Luckily, individual windows are scalable individually with this command:

/window_scale windowname scale

Where windowname is the name of a window, and scale is a number between .64 and 1.99 (64% and 199%).

The Scale Argument

Previously, the maximum scale size was 154% (1.54). It was changed sometime ago to 199% (1.99). Not sure when since the change wasn't documented on the official site.

Note that once you get to the extremes of the scale, you're basically either trying to make the window as large or as small as it can be. The command /windowscale can take an 'overshoot' argument. If you use .5 or .1, it will scale the window down to the minimum of 65%. And if you use 2 or 10 in the argument, it will scale up the window to the maximum size of 199%.

Bug: Did you catch that in the previous paragraph where it was claimed that the minimum window scale was 65% and not the expected 64%? While you can still get the windows down to 64% with the slider in the Menu/Options/Graphics window, the /windowscale command will only go down to 65%. In other words, there is no difference between the arguments of .65 and .64 as there had been before -- a very minor bug indeed.

The Windowname Argument

• Health
  • Options
• Target
  • Actions (related to Target)
• Nav
  • Map
  • Contact(s)
  • Mission
  • Clue(s)
  • Badge (no s)
• Chat
  • Team
  • Friend(s)
  • Super
  • Email
  • Chat1, Chat2, Chat3, Chat4 (these are the Tabs 1-4 windows)
• Tray, or Power(s)
  • Powerlist
  • Insp(iration(s))
  • Enhancements (always with an 's')
• Recipe
• Salvage
• Info
• Costume
• Pet
• Combatnumbers

Miscellaneous

Other Slash Commands That Take The Windowname Argument

• /window_hide (which is different than /hide)
• /window_show (or, /show)
• /window_toggle (or, /toggle)

Subwindows and Docking

Subwindows docked to a parent window will scale to the parent window (and not the other way around). If a subwindow is undocked (click the blue button) from its parent window, then the two can be rescaled independently of each other. Redocking an undocked subwindow forces it to take the scaling of the parent window.

Exceptions and Anomalies

The following windows cannot be scaled individually, instead they will take on the scaling of the Health window, even though they are not docked with it.

• Help (Menu/Help)

Can also toggle its display with the hide/show/toggle commands

• Consignment House

Cannot be made to show with any command, must click a Consignment agent.

• Support, Bug, Petition

Can only be made to display with the /support, /bug, or /petition commands or going through Menu/Support in the Health window.

• Menu

Can only be made to display with /menu command, the backslash shortcut, or clicking on the Menu item in the Health window.

• Arena

Cannot be made to show with any command, must click an Arena terminal.

Examples

So, to make the pet window at scale 75%:
/window_scale pet .75

Or to make the power tray 120%:
/windowscale tray 1.2

Text Size, Chat, and Font Size.

The text in rescaled windows scales proportionately with the window; that is, tiny windows give you tiny text and huge windows give you huge text... almost. Unfortunately, it's not exact and that can throw the text wrapping off and the placement of graphics within the windows. So, you might wind up missing a few letters or words of the text, or have a graphic hide some of the text. Usually, this isn't noticeable until you get beyond a 15% magnification or reduction.

The Chat windows are unique in that you can alter the size of the font in the Chat windows independently of scaling of the window. Now, keep in mind that scaling Chat windows up or down will proportionately scale the size of the font. But you have further scaling of the font with the Menu/Options/General/Chat/Font Size Slider. You can choose font sizes from 5 to 20.

So, let's say you want a small Chat window to keep track of your healing, but you don't want it to take up a lot of space. Do this:

1. Shrink chat to its minimum with /windowscale chat .64.
2. Open up a new Tab Chat Window, add a tab which keeps track of healing.
3. Undock the window, place it wherever you want.
4. Manually reduce the size of the window by dragging the borders. There, a tiny little window that keeps track of healing.

However, you will probably find that the text for all the chat windows is now too small to read... so, you go into Options and increase the font size to a size that's legible. You can also increase the size of your regular chat windows by dragging the borders so that they're much larger than the tiny healing-tracking window. Shrinking all of chat first, rather than just that one subChat window, gives you the ability to resize any chat windows to a smaller footprint that would be allowed at the normal scale level.

Luckily, no matter what scale your chat windows or font, the text wrapping in a chat window doesn't ever chop off any words or letters (OK, maybe just a tiny bit of a letter).

Scaling v.Resolution -- 3D v 2D

The 3D game graphics and the 2D GUI can not only be scaled separately from each other, but their resolution can also be resolved differently.

If you choose a high resolution setting under Options/Graphics/Screen/UI_Resolution, both the 3D graphics and the 2D GUI will take on that higher resolution. This will shrink the GUI, but with the information provided above, you now know how to rescale the GUI back to a larger size (although, the menu window never rescales, unfortunately). Higher resolutions provide more and crisper detail to both the 3D graphics and the 2D GUI... but what if that puts too much strain on your graphics card or CPU? Well, there is a slider in Options/Graphics/3D_Resolution_Scaling to lower the 3D resolution which does not lower the 2D GUI. This allows for crisp, high resolution 2D graphics while lowering the 3D graphics load on your computer.

See Also

/window_resetall This will reset all window options to their default scale, size, and color.

/chat Toggles the chat window. c

/tray Toggles the tray window (no default key, but backslash y will work)

/target Toggles the target window. t

/nav Toggles the navigation window. n

/map Toggles the map window. m

/menu Toggles the menu. backslash

/powers Toggles the power inventory. p