Im trying to run build engine games ( Blood and Redneck Rampage) fullscreen, everything seems ok except there's these annoying black bars on the sides of the screen and I just can't get rid of them, tried messing around with the GOG graphic options but nothing, Dosbox just won't fit the entire screen.

It must be related to the dosbox configuration but there's so many graphic options I do not know where to look and what to change. I have my monitor set to 1360x768 res and the game is set to Direct3D as per gog graphic settings.

Anyone knows what's the correct combination of settings to get the game to fit the entire screen and get rid of those damn bars?

Thanks in advance.

There is an aspect ratio option in the DOSBox .conf file the game uses for settings, but honestly, you are supposed to play it like that. The game only supports 4:3 resolutions, so while you can make it fill a 16:9 display completely, everything will be stretched horizontally, which is going to look horrible.

Oh I really do not mind the stretching, I can get used to that. But those bars are just too annoying.

Thanks for the tips, it worked perfectly. I can finally play at peace.

Huh, to each his own I guess. Personally, I hate watching things stretched. Like when an old movie in 4:3 format gets stretched across my 16:9 TV, so everyone looks like they had a piano dropped on their head. I have to change the aspect ratio in those cases, I simply can't stand watching it.

But I'm glad you got your setup working the way you wanted :-)

Me too :\
(also badly cropped shows to fit 16:9).

Also: non-anamorphic DVDs which place subtitles in the lower black bar, so you can't adjust your TV to compensate, lest you end up obscuring them (especially subtitles that are an integral part of the movies in languages that I don't speak or which nobody is meant to understand, like Klingon).

If you also want, you could go to your graphics card control panel, find an option that says "scaling" or "aspect ratio" and change it to "full screen" or similar. That way the GPU will take care of it and you won't have to do it for every game.

But yes, personally I hate stretching and I'll take black bars over it any time. But to each their own.

There are ways to get rid of those annoying black bars without stretching the picture horizontally, you know:

- Buy an old 4:3 monitor and play the game with them. After all, those games were created at a time when people only had 4:3 monitors, not these modern fantsy-pantsy ultrawidescreen curved monitors with strobe lights blinking on the sides.

- Failing that, tape two white pieces of paper on the sides of your widescreen monitor, blocking those awful god damn abominations known as "black bars" (nothing to do with the restaurants playing soul and funk music, BTW).

Then you can fully enjoy the old 4:3 games without awful black bars on the sides, or the picture being stretched making everyone look fat, circles looking like ovals etc. The best of both worlds: the real world, and the underworld.

Back in the day, curved monitors were the norm; pretty much every monitor back then was curved, and flat-screen monitors, when they came out, were the new "modern" thing.

Yes, those games were made for curved screens, not the flat screens you see today.

Think Timppu was referring to the concave curvature of ultra widescreen TV and monitors. Not the convex curvature of a CRT screen heavy enough to kill someone if you ever managed to get it high enough to drop on them. I miss working on CRTs. So many fixable parts. new screens you replace the screen itself, the light bars, or the display board (or a few caps on the power supply board). That's it. No flyback transformers, no 35KV, no fun stuff like discharging the anode of the CRT only to have it zap the shit out of you.

EDIT: typos.

Technically, you are right of course.

Morally and ethically, you are dead wrong. You can't just enter a thread and destroy someone's joke with petty technicalities. Do you have any idea how long it took for me to come up with that message? Now it is all gone, forever.

I don't see any moral issue with what I did. My comment, in particular, did not detract from the joke you made at all. Besides, nitpicking is fun!

About the only thing that could possibly be immoral with respect to jokes would be jokes that are made at the expense of others, like the transphobic "joke" made on "The Breakfast Club" the other day. You don't joke about killing people, especially those of marginalized minorities. (Well, maybe also making a joke instead of answering the serious question being asked, but the question already had an answer anyway.)

One more thing: If you make a joke, be prepared for some people to treat it as serious; if that could cause significant issues, there's a good chance the "joke" is a bad one.

(For the record, I don't see any problem with the joke you made; I just find it fun to nitpick such things.)

Edit: One more thing; Someone reading the thread will see your joke before my nitpicking, so any harm that my comment would do (which isn't any, anyway) would not come before the person reads (and is therefore able to enjoy) the joke.

Whatever. You destroyed my joke, so you owe me one now.

Tell me a joke.

How times change and yet remain the same. 20 years ago curved monitors were state of the art, then flat crts before LCDs. Now they are curving LCDs, but in the other direction. Crazy...