Forcing 640 x 480 resolution?

Hi!

Short version:

Is there a way to force a CC game to run in 640x480 resolution (without clicking "Fullscreen" option on Application properties -> Window properties)? I mean, change player's desktop resolution to 640 x 480 while he's playing.

Long version:

Years ago I've made a game and now I'm updating it.

The old version used to run in fullscreen (640x480 resolution). But it lags a lot.

I tought it was a limitation of Construct Classic (I even tried to port this game to C2) - but I see was wrong after trying TL22's alternative method. Now the control is precise, it feels like another game.

This is a "faux-retro" title. It runs in 240p - so it looks "pixel perfect" only in 480p and 720p (exactly 2 and 3 times bigger). The problem is: most people now plays in 1080p - and a retro game like this looks completely deformed in this resolution (1080p is 4.5 times bigger). Linear sampling is way too blurry (many complaints from players about this) so it must run using point sampling now.

I know that players can make the game run in 640x480 (using Windows' compatibility mode).

But I'd like to know if there's a way to set it automatically wihtout using this or "fullscreen" option in "Runtime properties". Even a command line will help.

Any help is welcome.

Thank you very much!

Try checking out my topic question about this, as there is a method that seems to put games in fullscreen with the proper aspect ratio:

The hiccup is that if you try to have things spawn from the edge of the screen while in the "fullscreen" mode, they won't function properly (as the edge of the screen is larger than the display window.

I'll take a look, thank you very much!

One alternative is to use a launcher that forces the resolution you want and then resets it to the users regular resolution when the game is closed. I know MadSpy experimented with a launcher and I tried it and it worked great. But I don't know if he still is working on it or not?

Thanks for your reply! I already updated "Tcheco in the Castle of Lucio" on Steam and the variable resolution is apparently not the tragedy that I tought it would be to players.

For TowerClimb we just set the fullscreen resolution to native, and scaled the game using a canvas on a top layer that captures the frame and is stretched using the distort map function on a canvas by altering the UVs to the proper size. This means we can get pixel perfect true scaling for whatever small resolution we want (we use 320x240) and not have to mess around much. Obviously this means you render more of the game underneath everything but it doesn't really impact performance. This seems to be the best way to get non-blurry point sampling and not rely on low fullscreen resolutions which are usually blurry because graphics cards today don't support point sampled fullscreen very well. It is a big work-around if u haven't thought of it from the beginning (you might need to do a lot of refactoring).