Rose

More work on The Medium

Added 2021-03-12 20:35:48 +0000 UTC

On March 10, The Medium was updated to support ultrawide and superwide resolutions. Many seemed happy, but as a modder I was skeptical about the implementation and feared that it would break my solution, leaving 48:9 and wider users in the wind. That happened to be true.

Previously, a 48:9 user would at least have a third-party way to play the game at their resolution and now it was impossible. One of my supporters is a 48:9 user and I know there are others like them, so I thought it was important to help out again.

As I looked further into the update, I also found that the game did not properly calculate the FOV at 21:9 and 32:9, resulting in vertical discrepancies compared to 16:9.

Unfortunately, looking at the new game code, I found no way to just replace a few variables or relative offsets and have my old solution work again. Even downloading the old version from GOG - meaning that I had two GOG copies and a Game Pass copy on my hard drive - to recollect and guide me through the code was not fruitful.

As I spent hours upon hours digging through the new code, I found new commands and new functions mainly aimed at limiting the allowed aspect ratio to 33:9, calculating the FOV for ultrawide, and the new panini projection feature found at the bottom of display settings.

After over 20 hours of pure digging through the code with the only distractions being making food and sleeping (just 5 hours of sleep last night - it's tough with so much on your mind), I had my solutions laid out and prepared. You can check out the outcome for yourself now!

It's a brand new script at the core, tapping into entirely new functions of the game and sharing absolutely nothing with the old.

From the user perspective, its main benefit compared to playing the previous game version with the old trainer is its real-time functionality, allowing to see the effects of its changes without reloading.

It has been a tremendous amount of work on both versions of this game, comparable only to my 100+ hours on Zombie Army 4 a year ago, and I do hope there are still people who are yet to play the game. Feel free to have a look at the official implementation and compare it to mine!