Why 640x480 is really important - how to use it

[Xzu]

Hi.
This not a joke.

Fisrt, STK is a great opensource game available on open system like GNU/linux.
This means a lot of people can benefit, specially poor ones, using cheap/old hardware.
When you play 3d games with cheap hardware, the best result is to down resolution to 640x480 and use better graphic effect, and/or anti-aliasing.
In addition to have better fps, the result is prettier than low or no effect and high resolution. Really.
It run fast and pretty with a radeonhd5450, on 640x480.

Secondly: some people still play games on cathodic TV.
That's my main argument.
Yeah, truly, I'm not the only one, but maybe the only one who claims it. Cathodique TV generally don't have more than 640x480.
I just love the result. For players used to it, it looks beautiful because on a cathodic TV, you don't see the pixels at 640x480.
HDMI is now very common and doing this is even more easy, a simple 10€ AV-adaptor do it perfectly to any cathodic TV.
And again you can get a very big and good quality one for free because people just give it.

Free hardware, free system, free 3d games. It's not the only logic in open source project, sure, but I think you shouldn't miss this point.
Yes, it's a social argument.
I wish developers will consider this point of view.

Someone have already tell me, here, "640x480" is not possible because you will not be albe to play, that will breack menus" etc..
I was afraid of that but in fact, sorry but that's absolutely false. I've finish all the games(s) like this, no problem. Ok, sometimes texts and icons deals in a strange way in menus, right, but it's trivial and don't deteriorate the game play.

Actually, you can't use this resolution from game menu.

Here the way I know to use 640x480 anyway: (for GNU/linux but maybe adapted for other os?)

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

:~$ supertuxkart --screensize=640x480

same as:

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

:~$ supertuxkart -s 640x400

Probably the safest way.
You can also choose full-screen or windowed with -w and -f options (check supertuxkar --help for more).
Make a launcher with your command, and done!

You can also edit the ~/.config/supertuxkart/config-0.10/config.xml file, and search for <Video section, but do it at your own risk.

[drummyfish]

STK doesn't support the god resolution? Jokes aside, if this is true then I agree with this post, libre games should care about accessibility. Sadly they mostly don't, many just want to minic consumerist ways of proprietary games and add features on the detriment of accessibility. I've seen many similar cases of this, e.g. the new versions of Blender completely stopped supporting older versions of OpenGL, killing support for older laptops (which are many times the only ones friendly to 100% free software). There are people who care about this, but they are a minority (spoiler: I may be running a whole wiki about this).

[dumaosen]

This game supports 640x480 and even 480x320. The way to adjust the resolution into anything you want is to open config.xml and find “width” and “height” in the graphics section. IIRC, The config.xml is in ~/.config/supertuxkart in Unix or ~/AppData/local/supertuxkart in Windows.
If there is something wrong with UI or else in 640x480, please open an issue in GitHub.

[Bird]

Can't second on CRT (cathode ray tube) monitors being limited to 640x480, because nearly all of them have higher resolutions as well.
But the games might run better on lower resolutions, so I'd like to see the 640x480 option being put into the ingame menus as well.

The menus on STK look perfect on 640x480 to be honest. Despite the soft font not being optimised perfectly for low resolutions, it can be read fine. A blocky, sharp font would be perfect, but well, that would look clunky on the high resolutions then...

[Alayan]

Supporting a resolution means testing UI changes against it, and committing to fix all issues that may happen. The two lowest supported resolutions for the 1.x versions are 1024x768 and 1280x720.

It is and will remain possible to tweak config files or launch parameters to use smaller resolutions. Or simply to resize the window (the minimum for resizing is 480x480). Patches improving UI below the supported resolutions without damaging higher resolutions or adding noticeable complexity could be accepted. But adding a new default resolution that can be selected independently of what the user's screen reports, I don't think that's a good idea.

[Bird]

Running STK 1.4 happily on a well aged Windows XP dual-core from 2006 in 640x480 targetting a maximum FPS of 30.

The Graphics Card is an ATI Radeon HD 3400 from late 2007 with only 256 MB graphics memory. It can handle the job at, let's say, 90% of all tracks to deliver 30 FPS consistently.

Setting the graphical settings all to the minimum (okay, maybe except some particles like drift sparkles...) + additionally tweaking config.xml like this made Supertuxkart playable on the old Windows machine:

render_driver="directx9"
real_width="640"
real_height="480"
width="640"
height="480"
max_fps="40"
force_legacy_device="true"
old_driver_popup="false"
anisotropic="0"

Overall, it's playable, if expectations are adequate for the time of the hardware in use. It just bothers me a bit that 640x480 is hidden in these config files... should be a standard option if it's working that well like it does!