The correct aspect ratio of the game is 4:3.

Then why does the game run at default res of 320x200 px, which is clearly 1,6 aspect ratio, not 1,333.

http://www.google.cz/search?q=ufo+enemy+unkno … wD4Pi4QSbjL3qDQ

Because it's a non-square pixel mode.

All PC monitors used to be 4:3. CRT monitors draw the picture by scanning horizontal lines from top to bottom and from left to right. Unless the monitor was badly calibrated, the first line started at the top left corner of the tube's visible area, and the last line ended at the bottom right corner, filling the whole 4:3 picture area. The "vertical resolution", 200 in this case, is the basically the number of scanlines*, and it is independent of the horizontal resolution, which is the number of "color transitions" within a line (320 here). You can use a CRT with some crazy video mode like 100x600 or 2000x600 and it can still be 4:3.

* There are more scanlines than visible lines because some lines are used for sync. Also, 320x200 is usually doublescanned to reduce gaps between the scanlines, so the CRT actually draws 400 visible lines.

rawalanche wrote:

If i set display settings to maintain original aspect ratio, mouse sensitivity becomes correct, but whole game gets stretched vertically and looks really ugly.

This is the correct "look". You just have to get used to it I guess...

I think i know the problem. What you wanna do is disable aspect ratio correction in dosbox. If you then get a widescreen image it means your display scaling options (in windows) are wrong.

For instance i'm using an nvidia card. The default scaling mode in my drivers produces exactly the problem your describing. What you wanna do is go to your "desktop size and position" options (in ATI it should be similar) and switch scaling to be done by the GPU instead of the monitor.

EDIT: I attached a screeni for easier reference. My options are german but you can see wich menu/options i mean.

EDIT2: Also in the game settings make sure these are set:
fullresolution=original
windowresolution=original
output=surface
Setting the renderer to ddraw or opengl will most likely distort or missplace the image.

EDIT3: The reason why the game runs in 320x200 is because it's supposed to have black bars even on a 4x3 screen. Check this screenshot for reference:
http://www.emuparadise.me/GameBase%20Amiga/Sc … %28AGA%29_2.png
This is the correct look. Add to that black sidebars if you got a widescreen monitor.

because it's supposed to have black bars even on a 4x3 screen.

I'm pretty sure this is wrong. Did you try it on a real system?

wd wrote:

because it's supposed to have black bars even on a 4x3 screen.

I'm pretty sure this is wrong. Did you try it on a real system?

I played it on my Amiga 500 and on PC back in the days. It always looked like that as far as i can recall.

That screenshot i linked to is actually from the amiga version.

I don't care much what you remember from x years ago but if you tried it before posting that.

wd wrote:

I don't care much what you remember from x years ago but if you tried it before posting that.

Relax. It's not my fault.

Take a look and decide what is right yourself.

Left is with aspect=false (black bars in fullscreen), Right is aspect=true (streched to 4x3).

If you like the egg-earth better, be my guest.

Take a look and decide what is right yourself.

I don't care which one looks better. I care about which has the correct visible aspect when played on an untweaked crt monitor.

Can't help you, i'm outa here.... windmills...

The earth is egg-shaped on real hardware.

Thanks hal.

Found the old thread I had in mind btw.
True aspect ratio of VGA mode 13h (320x200)?

What actually would be useful are the dimensions of a properly calibrated IBM EGA and VGA monitor for all the different modes. Visible tube size, raster and visible picture.

Everybody says its 4:3 - wonder if anybody ever checked 😀

Hehe.
(newer) monitors were quite flexible though so you could squish the image arbitrarily but the standard monitor should be quite close to real 4:3

h-a-l-9000 wrote:

What actually would be useful are the dimensions of a properly calibrated IBM EGA and VGA monitor for all the different modes. Visible tube size, raster and visible picture.

Everybody says its 4:3 - wonder if anybody ever checked 😀

wd wrote:

Thanks hal.

Found the old thread I had in mind btw.
True aspect ratio of VGA mode 13h (320x200)?

Ok you two obviously have alot more knowledge about this than i do. So you are probably right that the image for xcom was streched to 4x3 in the PC version. Therefore my line "The reason why the game runs in 320x200 is because it's supposed to have black bars even on a 4x3 screen." was ... unfortunate. Too general. Sorry.

However i believe i am not "wrong" for this particular game. In the older thread you can see that other games where designed with non-square AR in mind so their shapes would only become correct once the image is streched to 4x3. In XCom, this is not the case.

Maybe the programmers chose this for programming comfort, or because they where making the game for multiple platforms. Whatever the case, one might argue that the "correct" display for XCom is 320x200 with 1x1 pixel aspect, even though it wasn't displayed like this in the original PC version.

I would love to know how it was displayed on a real Amiga, because it's really too long ago for me to surely remember. And if the Amiga version uses 1x1, wich one was developed first.

In any case, the author of this thread asked about vertical mouse movement. And in that regard, using aspect=false will help. And it will correct streched shapes.