I use a laptop with an AMD card to play DOS games and the like. Even messing with settings and config files I can't seem to fix the aspect ratios of games. I'm currently playing through Duke3D and it's either fullscreen on my normally 1600x900 screen or it's windowed. Does anyone know how I can add those good old black bars to the sides and get the aspect ratio back to normal? I've tried tinkering with the video settings on my GPU but it won't let me toggle certain things.

Thanks.

Why not use eduke32?

I'm just using Duke3D as an example.

I can only assume that you need to look at the driversettings and see what sort of gpu scaling is being used and try "keep aspect ratio" or something.
Thing is that on my AMD machine Dosbox games are always okay, regardless of what gpu scaling I use, unless I choose surface video output which is always a small screen for some reason.

Yea it won't let me toggle gpu scaling in my settings. It's grayed out and won't even let me select anything. I've heard it's because I'm using a laptop.

Are you under an "Admin" account on your laptop? This is exactly what I came in here to suggest (the "Preserve Aspect Ratio" option that's usually a rightclick on the desktop and a few tabs away).

Maybe you're under a "User" type account that can't adjust those sorts of settings? I'm surprised the computer won't let you... or maybe it's just a function of the onboard laptop GPU - but then I don't understand why it's even there.

Can anyone think of a technical reason why driver settings wouldn't allow aspect ratio to be fudged on a 1600X900 resolution screen?

I have an APU from AMD I believe, could that be a reason? I'm still learning about PC gaming.

It shouldn't (I use nvidia myself but I'd think that would be a pretty standard set of driver options). I actually just noticed you were TRYING to get the bars LOL - and not have the game stretch out of them.

I think the odd thing is that you can't alter the settings (greyed out) - that makes me think there's either some sort of technical limitation with screen resolution OR you're using a User Account that for some reason doesn't have permission to alter those settings. But I'm just guessing.

Are you on Windows? Have you tried changing your laptop screen resolution and THEN seeing if you can adjust the GPU settings? Maybe it's a problem with 1600X900 (I'm not familiar with running games on laptops and / or TVs so I don't really understand how those resolutions translate to stuff, especially older games).

I've come across that problem sometimes. Try temporarily changing your desktop resolution to one that would get stretched, then open the GPU settings program and see if it's still greyed out.

If that doesn't work, luckily there is at least a solution for DOSBox. If you open the .conf file for Duke 3D and then change the full screen resolution to 0x0, it'll use your desktop resolution. So DOSBox will be adding the black bars and the GPU won't be able to stretch it to the wrong shape because it's already at your screen's resolution.

Other settings I suggest you change from the defaults are 'output' (I suggest ddraw or opengl, see which works better for you), aspect=true (this corrects non-square pixel modes like 320x200) and scaler (I tend to use normal3x, but you can try various others if you don't like large pixels as much as me).

Awesome post! Guessing that should take care of the OP's issues. ... and THIS is a really neat trick. Not sure how much of my stuff is running DOSBox, but next time I find an old one that does I'll be sure to mess around with this a bit and see if I can squeeze a few extra lines out of a some games!

Interesting, I will give these a shot. Out of curiosity, how do you guys play your older games? Do you guys use older PCs/hardware and monitors? Or do you just go with the flow and use your newer equipment? I'm new to PC gaming in general so I'm still figuring out the best ways to play these older games. I'm not dead set on being a "purist" or whatever when it comes to aspect ratios, but I'd kind of like to play them as close to the original way as I can.

I *generally* go with what looks good / playable to me, and I use my modern hardware / monitor (nothing bleeding edge but has done a good job of playing everything I've wanted as I want it to, so lucky that!).

I DO keep around an XP computer, but I haven't used it in ages. I think the last thing I ran on it was XCOM (installed off 3.5s!) on Dosbox a few years back. I've been lucky so far - everything I've wanted to run I've gotten up and going on my "gaming desktop."

Fallout 2 was a pretty good example for what I mean by "what looks good / playable" - I fired it up ~ a year ago? I played it in its original state (sans restoration mod) and found that if I kept it in its highest "native" resolution but forced the aspect ratio it filled out my screen and looked good. My monitor has a "magic button" that can force stuff also - I found that when I used that the figures and environments were much larger but at the same time not as crisp, a bit washed out and just not how I thought the game should look.

I also find that old shooters (Dark Forces 2 for example) can look very good with the resolution bumped up higher than any monitor in the day could do. But sometimes there are certain widescreen ratios that make the figures look more "blocky" or "fatter" than they should.

Generally when I fire up an older game, I'll spend a few moments just tweaking the visual settings until I get it where I want it to be. When I'm happy with that, I'll settle in and enjoy the ride ;)

Modern Hardware.

http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Home <--- your new best friend.

Have you tinkered with the DOSBox config files? Setting the video output to ddraw and setting aspect to true tends to do the trick for me without any external settings.

I have an integrated graphics card on a laptop, and I'm beginning to think that has something to do with me not being able to properly utilize GPU scaling. It's not really a big deal, I have an older XP computer I play games on.