Hi everyone.

I'm going to start by saying that I love GOG and my intention in this post is to offer constructive feedback to help to make it even better.

My home PC setup is widescreen, as are many (or even most?) modern PCs. Unfortunately, many retro games are reluctant to work in a widescreen mode.

The problem for me is that, with no official word from GOG on how each game performs on a wide screen, I am very cautious about buying titles from them and am therefore far less likely to make an impulse purchase.

I tend to check the forum to see what solutions other members have found, but often what I see are very variable results which leave me with little confidence in the end solution and therefore reluctant to spend my money.

I know that I could buy the game regardless and then contact support, but on the few occasions that I have, sadly they have been unable to help me.

Now in an ideal world, GOG would do whatever coding was required to ensure that every game worked in widescreen, but let's be honest - that almost certainly isn't practical.

What I do believe could be done however is for GOG to test how widescreen works on each game they offer for sale, and to provide this information alongside the information about o/s compatibility.

The various messages might be:
-works on widescreen
-doesn't work on widescreen
-3rd party solution required to make widescreen work

In the 3rd case, they could then provide a link to or précis of the widescreen patch or instructions and certify whether they got them to work.

I am fully aware that everybody has their own pet peeve or special interest, but it seems to me that:
-widescreens are becoming more and more common
-only a fool spends money on a product that they know probably won't work on their system.

Thoughts?

Have I missed something obvious? (Sincerest apologies if so!)

Tom.

I brought up a while ago that GOG should partner with www.widescreengamingforum.com for this reason. Their widescreen solutions could be posted as a stick on the forum, they could get a logo or checkmark on the store page that says "this game will work in widescreen." As a return, WSGF could link to GOG on their wiki entries and detailed reports for games that are on GOG.

It would be cool to see.

As a general rule, don't expect any of the games GOG sells to support widescreen off the bat. That's not to say that none of them do, but the ones that do support actual widescreen resolutions are the exception, not the rule.

As for the testing you suggest, I think you will find that the community already does that as most game forums already have threads with widescreen solutions. Additionally, there is an entire website dedicated to testing/configuring/hacking games to work on widescreens: http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/

We could also add widescreen compatibility information/fixes in the GOG Wiki for each game.

While this is certainly true, a game not being widescreen hardly constitutes 'not working'.

I see a game being able to run in widescreen as a bonus. I can understand that it might be more important to you than it is to me, but not being in widescreen doesn't mean the game won't work on a widescreen system.

EDIT: It should be noted that it's literally impossible to run some games in widescreen. Things like adventure games are strictly fixed resolution (and therefore aspect ratio).

Interesting thoughts

This.

This.
4:3 games WILL work on widescreen monitors, always - I have yet to encounter one that wouldn't strictly because of the aspect ratio.
Most of them will be stretched and letterboxed, while still displaying the original content. We can hardly expect games to work better than they optimally could at release, can we ? That's why being a fan of the classics can be demanding, since you have to forego some of the luxuries of the modern times, but in the end - you either grow accustomed and willing to forgive the shortcomings based on what the game has to offer otherwise... or you figure that the interface and presentation is unbearable and play something else. The games here are cheap enough not to be mad at making a wrong choice some of the time, to be frank.
Oh, and there ARE, at times, widescreen mods. But I'm pretty sure that you if you like the game with them, you'd enjoy the game without them anyway. It's just an added bonus... which GOG can't blatantly advertise due to licensing reasons.

It's important to note that nVidia's latest drivers vastly improved fixed-aspect-ration scaling. Before it did not work at all on HDMI and barely worked at all sometimes but since their latest WHQL driver release it has worked perfectly over HDMI for me.

4:3 images could be a pain before but are now utterly painless on nVidia.

All,

Firstly, thank you for sharing your thoughts - that was very kind of you.

StingingVelvet and cogadh - widescreengamingforum.com was exactly what I had in mind when I referred to third party solutions, but I wanted to be general.

GoJays2025 - that is an excellent idea.

Dragobr, SirPrimalform & AlexY - Apologies - I did not mean to imply that. Some will run, some will not. Some, whilst running will be unplayable or sufficiently difficult to interact with that the fun is gone. In each case, it will be useful to determine the likely user experience prior to choosing whether to spend money on it.

stoicsentry - Thank you. My intention here was to make a constructive suggestion and spark discussion, which seems to have been successful.

Vestin - Sadly, I suspect we are unlikely to agree. Within my country, the law is that any product sold must be fit for its stated purpose. Whilst many games will be, some could be unappealling on a widescreen and as such, could be considered unsuitable for a sizeable portion of the population. I am taking a slightly extreme line here to illustrate a point, rather than to suggest any wrongdoing, so please don't think that I am trying to make accusations or to attack. Rather, I'm trying to show that failure to share information which in some cases will be critical to the user experience could create future problems.

StingingVelvet - that is excellent news. I will have to try those out.

Thank you all again for sharing your time and ideas. This may be wildly optimistic or naive, but it would be lovely to hear from a moderator or from GOG themselves on this idea.

(edit to make some of my wording clearer and to add a response to StingingVelvet)

Tom.

Are you talking about the drivers just released this month? I have the most recent driver before that one and fixed aspect ratio scaling over DVI is still a pain for me.

I think it was the latest ones, yes. It has scaling improvements listed in the notes.

Which doesn't make them unfit, for one. Besides - your law is meaningless here.
I strongly agree with what you're saying as a suggestion. I strongly disagree with it as a demand.
Yeah, it would be nice to have. No, you're not entitled to it.

Like I said - GOG can't apply fan-made patches on a whim. They sticky relevant posts and make editorials on such mods from time to time - I think it's the best they can do. Adding a "widescreen" section with "native", "none", "see forums" would be nice but I'm not entirely sure if that's something they can really advertise (by putting on the gamecard)...
So far - you can either search the relevant forum or try our new wiki - doesn't sound too bothersome...
And I do strongly encourage you to give some 4:3 games a whirl. If only for the relief of playing something else and getting SO much more space ;P.

That should be "stretched or letterboxed" depending upon user preference (at least when dealing with square pixels).