--display-scale command line option still available and broken

[NermNermNerm]

New to the game here... err, rather, coming back to it after 25 years! Awesome stuff! When I started it up on a 4k monitor, it wasn't a good time. I did some searching and found this page:

https://github.com/bvschaik/julius/wiki/Configuration

Which could be better if it made clear that it's not the "Options" when you're actually in-game, but rather the "Options" available at the title screen. I searched around some more and saw a recommendation to use the command-line argument, and that definitely didn't go well - it started the game halfway off the screen... I'm struggling to describe it, but trust me, it's bad wrong. Third try searching it got me to the title-options screen and now I'm rocking 1.5 zoom with no complaints.

Two things I'd suggest are:

1. Delete the --display-scale command-line argument... For style points you could make it print out a message that it's deprecated and you should use the title-screen options. Making it actually work seems like a waste of effort.
2. Change the wiki page to be precise about which Options screen it's talking about.

Mousewheel zoom would be awesome, but I bet I'm not the first guy to think of that.

I'm happy to make a pull request for one or both of the suggestions I made.

[bvschaik]

Of course the command-line option is still available, because it apparently works for most people... Without knowing anything about your operating system, version of Julius, and monitor setup, I'm unable to help debug what's going on here. What should happen: the game is scaled to the desired scale, and the resulting window should appear in the center of whatever SDL thinks is your main monitor, if in windowed mode.

The configuration page says this at the top:

You can access the configuration through the "Options" button on the main menu.

How can I word that better? It's not a title screen, the title is on the screen before the main menu...

Mouse wheel zoom has been considered but since Julius only supports scaling the whole UI (rather than just the city map), we didn't implement it.

[ralphcook]

Perhaps

You can access the configuration through the "Options" button on the main menu screen (after the title screen).

I've been caught by this before -- I was thinking of "main menu" as something on the game screen, and of course you mean the one I would see before that but after the title screen (or "intro"?). Since I rarely spent more time there than it took to click "Load Saved Game" and find my latest, I didn't remember it well.

Calling it a "main menu screen" (instead of just "main menu") gives a clue that it is a menu that occupies a screen, instead of being a menu bar across the top of a screen; some less precise descriptions (in other programs) don't make that distinction clear. And then you could also give a clue that it's (just) after the first screen if you've turned off all the animation you can get at the beginning.

[crudelios]

@bvschaik should we add a "Julius Options" to the "Options" top menu?

[NermNermNerm]

Updating the suggestion to make it clear that the in-game is not the place to go:

You can access the configuration through the "Options" button on the main menu screen after the title screen, not the "Options" available once a game is loaded.

I'll get a screenshot of the bad behavior I saw with the command line option in a bit. I'm all of a sudden a bit underwater with other projects right now.

[ralphcook]

@crudelios I would not like to see a "julius options" on the game menu bar; I think of those as options that most users will never use, and in fact some users should NOT use, it makes sense to me to have them a little bit harder to access. Just IMO.

@NermNermNerm I don't think that's the best wording; other alternatives:

You can access the configuration through the "Options" button on the main menu screen (after the title screen, before a game is loaded)

or even:

You can access the configuration through the "Options" button, on the main menu screen with the "Load saved game" and "Start new career" buttons.

Looking at the alternatives, I think this last one is the clearest; it tells anyone who uses the game just where that button is, and doesn't depend on them appreciating the difference among the title screen, splash screen, intro screen, intro videos, main menu, game screen, etc., etc. And it gives them the correct name for that screen...

[bvschaik]

Good suggestions on the wording, I'll have a look at rephrasing the page later this week.

@crudelios I'm afraid we might open a whole can of worms if we add the Julius options to the top menu bar. Changing options might mean loading a different language, or changing in-game behaviour. I'm not sure whether everything is handled correctly. I can have a try though.

[crudelios]

I've done it on augustus, the biggest issue was reloading the proper climate files when changing language on the map editor (the game wasn't loading the editor files, causing all sorts of visual issues). It was an easy fix though.