resolution posts

Choose a gaming laptop to play all these E3 games

by Samuel Axon Jul 17th 2008 @ 3:30PM

Fallout 3, Far Cry 2, Crysis Warhead, Red Alert 3, Diablo 3, StarCraft 2 -- oh my! Folks declaring the death of PC gaming are clearly smoking something, as all those games and more have been making waves at E3 this week. You're going to need a computer to run those, right? Thing is, these days notebooks are outselling desktops by quite a large margin. And for good reason -- who wants a giant, bulky brick uglying up their space?

Hence the rise of gaming laptops. To help you make the call on which one to get and how to configure it, GameDaily has a guide to buying a gaming notebook. It's mostly beginner stuff -- and some of it we kinda wonder about; it asserts that a 1280x800 screen resolution is too low for serious gaming, for example, which we're not sure everyone cares about quite so much. In fact, wouldn't you want a lower screen resolution to ensure that your notebook will be able to handle newer games at the native resolution for a longer time? But all around it's a good intro to what you need to look out for. Give it a read if you're in the market.

Filed under: Hardware

Resolution mod makes classic Black Isle RPGs beautiful

by Samuel Axon May 30th 2008 @ 8:30PM

There's a mod out in the wilds of the internet that scales classic Black Isle RPGs like Planescape Torment, Baldur's Gate, and Icewind Dale to any resolution you want to play them at. Previously, these games were only playable at extremely low resolutions such as 640x480. If you haven't played them at all before, this is the perfect opportunity. Black Isle was the successor to BioWare, and its titles paved the way for games like and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect.

The "widescreen mod" (a deceptive name, as it will also scale to resolutions in any aspect ratio) is developed by modder the_bigg, in association with the Gibberlings Three group. It doesn't just stretch the graphics; it expands the viewing area dramatically, so players can experience these classic RPGs in panoramic, true high resolutions.

We discovered this mod through an article at Rock, Paper, Shotgun and were so impressed we decided to host it at Big Download. If you're an old fan of Black Isle's RPGs, download the mod and revisit them!

Download the Black Isle Widescreen Mod from Big Download.

Filed under: Downloads, Mods, RPG