Rose
patreon
Revisiting Earthlock & Unity UI
🕑 Added 2021-10-22 21:09:44 +0000 UTCOne of my first solutions uploaded to PCGamingWiki was an ultrawide mod for Earthlock in 2019. The founder ended up featuring it, which has resulted in over 1000 downloads.
A few days ago a comment appeared, stating that it was not compatible with the latest Steam version. I was not surprised, considering that the solution was more like a regular mod made up of modified files rather than a patcher - a game update involving those files would easily lead to issues, as reported.
So I downloaded the game again to revisit it, research from scratch, and bring it to parity with my latest solutions, which are meant to last across updates and work for various display configurations. Patching to unlock all resolutions and remove the black bars was not a problem, as I had done it for this very game before.
However, the user also reported that a button prompt was out of view. Normally I would just ignore most UI issues, as I've come to learn how tough they can be to fix, so my first idea was to just have it as a known issue, but I decided to keep tinkering for any luck.
I kept it up over the course of two days and many hours, first finding a way to manipulate the placement of a single button, then the whole thing via the aspect ratio, then getting to the function responsible, and finally spending many more hours to implement it in a way that would be wildcard-based and more likely to last. I could just have a patcher search for the exact code I want to target and replace it with the specific code I want to be read, but that would have been too easy and potentially unreliable!
The whole experience also got me to wonder whether the 1000 downloads have been of a solution that has all of the interaction prompts out of view. I'd rather not check and enjoy the outcome of today, which might help me do more of this in other Unity games!
Comments
Rose
Yeah, it's the kind of issue that is easy to miss unless you know the way it is at 16:9. Even with the prompts, there are 16:9 users on the Steam forums for Earthlock asking how to save in the vanilla game! I do want to believe it wasn't as bad in my first iteration, but who knows! I watched a video of someone play a Quantic Dream game with my solution and immediately figure out what to press without the prompt, so it is also something that can vary from game to game. Feedback is always crucial though :)
Eleriam
Some things just require a lot of hard work. Well done for persevering. It's pretty wild that only now a report of a missing button gets brought up. I remember having some UI issues with Flawless Widescreen and the game "Remember Me" that just rendered it unplayable with the app. Fortunately the game is already playable in 3440x1440 "as is", so maybe the FW version was outdated or something. In a week where Valve fixed Half-Life 2 to work with 21:9 aspect ratios, I'd like to quote Alexander Battaglia (from Digital Foundry), who said on Twitter: 'After sleepng on it for a night - my 2 Cents about that Halo PC video is that I wish they emphasised things that were not VRR or 21:9. I feel like those "features" should be Standard for mulitibillion € franchises. I wish they went the cyberpunk route of "PC version is special"'. Neither Variable Refresh Rate nor 21:9 should be considered anything special, but an absolute standard. And yet here we are, dependent on heroes like you Rose.
