Request larger UI element option for high DPI screens

[Phaedrus]

So I have a 15" retina MacBook Pro with the nvidia 750 gpu. The screen resolution is 2880x1800, but by default you get what amounts to a 1440x900 resolution screen as all the pixels are doubled. You can choose other scaled resolutions as well, up to 1900x1200, but in game performance seems to suffer a bit due to the scaling overhead. With a third party app you can expose the full native resolution of the display, which solves the performance problem completely as far as I can tell, unfortunately the UI elements are then very tiny and the text is hard to read.

My request:

1. Expose the full native resolution of retina displays without resorting to a third party tool.
2. Have an option for high DPI displays which will double the size of UI elements to make them easier to see.

[enystrom8734]

Moved to suggestions. Supporting different display types is a feature request and not a bug.

[Rennex]

Seconded, though as a Windows user! I have a 4k monitor with 157 DPI, and the game runs perfectly at the native resolution but then the text is too small. I don't think I want double-sized text though; +50% would be perfect.

So the optimal solution would be to allow us to set the font size we want, and default to a value based on the OS setting (at least in Windows -- OSX might behave differently). And flag the .exe HiDPI aware.

And please, Tynan and possible other coders: become aware of this issue now, so that you don't end up building lots of UI that's hardcoded for 96 DPI and needs lots of work to fix (and possibly ends up never being fixed)! It already worries me that the UI fonts aren't antialiased...

[stefanstr]

I also have an MBP Retina. I got the GT 650M so I think I have an older version. And I haven’t noticed any performance issues, to be honest. Are you sure this has to do with the graphics? Macs sometimes perform poorly if they aren’t configured with enough RAM (mine has 16 GB).

[Olfan]

I second this, though quite late. I'm playing Rimworld on both a Retina iMac and a Windows 8.1 machine with a 4K2K screen. While performance is fine, UI elements and text are so tiny that the game becomes unplayable at native resolutions.

@Tynan: Game design is not only about the content but also very much about the way the user interacts with that content. An unfriendly UI can kill an otherwise great game. Not only do you know that, you're even teaching others about this, so it's rather surprising to find Rimworld treat a computer screen the same wrong way it has been treated for decades now. UI element size must not be measured in pixels but in Pica/Point or Centimeters/Millimeters (even inches if you must insist) or whatever your professional heritage suggests.

Rennex is right - it would be far better to address this issue as soon as possible rather than later as the required effort will rise with every new Feature. It's admirable that you are so considerate as to care for Players with only a 720p display, but it's not enough (and those players would be covered by a DPI-aware piece of software, too). High DPI displays are real today, they will be standard tomorrow. If OS X and Windows are too different or too unhelpful, allow the Players to configure the text/icon size manually. Don't make Rimworld unattractive for an ever growing player base - act now!

[fjw]

I just bought the game and I am quite shocked that there is no normal possibilty to play it on my Dell XPS 13 with Ubuntu. The fonts and UI is far too small.

Also I am really surprised that no one wrote here in the last months and it seems this feature request dosn't seem to get noticed. A loot of notebooks today have hidpi screens, not only all these macbook user, also on linux and windows it's getting more and more common.

I always have to scale down my resolution to play. Is there at least a possibility to set the ingame screen resolution per parameter? So I wouldn't have to change my global system settings all the time...

[fjw]

Damn, I am so stupid. I just found it in the options...

[homeydlux]

I'm playing windowed in Ubuntu on a 4K monitor.  Progress may have been made on this topic since it was originally posted, as the overall look and usability of the game seems fine to me; however I find that the text is still just a bit small when playing at 3840x2160.  For me, a simple check-box to select double-size fonts would do the trick nicely.

[Baughn]

Nth-ing this suggestion.

Please, there's a good game in here, but the way I'm squinting at my screen I can't play it. The resolution options don't even work, but if they did they wouldn't be a good solution; I don't want blurry imagery, either.

[fjw]

It's really crazy that this isn't included yet...

[Ron42na]

As a new player on a SurfacePro 4 (default resolution 2736x1824), thought I'd bump this one.  I can work around it by (fairly significantly) lowering the resolution, but it would be better if I just had an option to make the fonts about 50% larger.

By the way - great game!!

[Theodolus]

I'll throw in my hat on this one as well. (Although this seems to be the only thread for this suggestion as far as I could find.) I would love to be able to play this on my Surface Book (4k x 2k) without having to run it at a half resolution. The game looks gorgeous at full resolution but I hate having to lean within a foot of the screen to be able to read things.