My Menu Screens are Truncated!

[Geezer57]

My hardware:
Dual-core AMD cpu, 2 gb of RAM, Radeon 850xt PCIe video card, running Omega 2.6.53 drivers. This combination has run MTW-VI and many mods happily for years.

Sometime in the last few months, the game menu screens started having the lower 1/3 truncated, hiding numerous game choices, with no option to scroll to the lower portion. This hasn't bothered me much so far, as I've been playing out existing campaigns and all I need to do is load the top saved game.

But now I'm wanting to start a new campaign, and the faction choices are hidden. Saving games is another example, after hitting ESC and navigating to the load/save screen, the "save game" option is hidden just below the bottom of the screen. I can usually get it in a couple of tries by positioning the cursor at the bottom and then moving the mouse down slightly. Neverthelss, it still aggravating. But choosing factions is almost impossible, taking twenty minutes of trial and error guessing where the faction choices are hiding below the visible screen.

Anyone encountered anything like this before? Changing screen resolutions, either in game or on the desktop, makes absolutely no difference in the menu screen.

[drone]

Just to clarify, is the bottom third missing/blacked out on the screen itself, or does it look like the overall scene is bigger and the missing options are off the monitor?

[Geezer57]

Just to clarify, is the bottom third missing/blacked out on the screen itself, or does it look like the overall scene is bigger and the missing options are off the monitor?

The menu screen is larger than what the monitor will display, with the missing options off the lower edge of the monitor.

By the way, I'm running Windows XP Pro w/ SP3, if that helps.

[drone]

Weird. Are you running with an LCD or CRT monitor? If LCD, what's the native resolution and what game resolutions are you running? And do you have other programs running at the same time (browser, email client, etc.)?

[Geezer57]

It's a big CRT, capable of 1800 x 1440 pixels resolution. I have the game settings at 1600 x 1200, so well within the capabilities of the monitor. Once I get into the game, the resolutions work fine as they're set.

The menu screens, which are no where near that high of a resolution, are the ones overflowing the bottom of the monitor screen.

I have a 24" LCD I've been meaning to hook up, but it's resolution is only 1920 x 1200, so the vertical screen size is slightly smaller than the CRT I'm using.

[drone]

It might be a problem with either your monitor or video card. Have you tried changing your desktop resolution to whatever the menu screens use (640x480?)?

[Plato]

I haven't been rid of my CRT long, but I dimly recall that the settings were resolution dependant. That is, being analogue, the first time you used any resolution (or refresh rate) you had to tweak the horizontal and vertical settings on the monitor; they'd be remembered after that.

When on the MTW menu screen, see if you can't adjust the V-size settings, or similar.

[DEB8]

I had something similar a long time ago with "Campaigns on the Danube 1809 & 1809" ( Matrix Games ).
That was caused by me not resetting my monitor resolution to the required game resolution level.

Although you say you have tried resetting various resolutions without any success, I believe that this is indeed a resolution problem.

The last post suggusted adjusting the Horizontal / Vertical monitor settings and that may be the best solution available in the circumstances.

However, I wonder if your monitor is setting the resolution incorrectly ( as you appear to suggest it sets it automatically ).
Can it be manually set ( perhaps via the PC ) ?

You could, I think, also simply reduce the in game resolution settings until it works....?

Just some thought's. Hope they may help.

P.S. Extra thought. As it worked correctly in the past, perchance another program has reset your PC / Monitor resolution, and you have not noticed any difference except with MTW. Worth rechecking the settings ??

[LordK9]

I believe that can be changed using the video card software by unchecking "allow monitor to set resolution" (or something similar).

[Geezer57]

OK, the desktop won't go below 800x600 resolution, unless I go into safe mode. Haven't tried playing the game that way. Looked at all the monitor/graphics card advanced options - nothing gives a positive result.

I'm toying with reinstalling the game from scratch to a different directory, and seeing what results from that.

Thanks everyone for all the tips!