This guide is in 3 sections, and will show you:
* how to work out what resolution settings you should be selecting in Madden to best suit the shape of your display;
* how to make sure it is not then stretched out in-game after that (i.e. how to preserve the correct aspect ratio);
* how to get the best out of a lower-performance PC that needs many Madden settings lowered.
I'm going to start with the second point first, as it actually makes more sense that way!
SECTION 1: The "panel-fit" setting
You may not realize it, but your PC may be stretching the Madden screen to completely fill your display, either horizontally or vertically! Everything then appears a bit taller or wider than it should; more specifically, the Steelers logo would appear egg-shaped instead of a perfect circle. Also, everything won't look quite as sharp if it's being stretched, so the overall quality of everything in Madden will suffer too!
Here's what you need to do:
1) First, right-click on an empty part of your desktop (i.e. the wallpaper), and then left-click on "Screen Resolution".
[In XP, go to Control Panel, Display, Settings tab, Screen Resolution]
2) Click in the "Resolution" drop-down menu, and select any size that is NOT the maximum setting.
3) When prompted, click "Keep changes".
4) Notice that everything may not look as sharp at this lower resolution.
5) Now, right-click again on an empty part of your desktop (the wallpaper), and then this time mouse down to "Graphics Options".
If you don't see this, one of two things may be happening:
* If you have a separate graphics card installed, look for that name instead (such as "Catalyst Control Center"), or alternatively look in Control Panel for same.
* If you don't have a separate graphics card installed, change your Windows user account type to "Administrator" to make that option visible.
6) Moving right from "Graphics Options", you should see another option called "Panel Fit". Moving right again, click on "Maintain aspect ratio".
Black bars will now be added to the edges of the display, ensuring the screen contents are no longer stretched. Therefore:
* everything will now have the correct proportions,
* AND everything should now look sharper.
If you don't like the look of the screen with bars added, don't change it back just yet! We need to leave it like this for SECTION 2!
7) Now go back to step 1 above and bring up the "Screen Resolution" settings again.
8) Write down on a piece of paper ALL the different resolution options that are available for your display (such as 1440x900, 1024x768, 800x600 etc). You'll need this info for later.
9) Put your "Resolution" setting back to maximum and click OK.
Now go fire up Madden and you should immediately notice a huge difference in the sharpness of the menu part, as Madden always displays the non-game stuff as 800x600. What you're seeing is it being displayed as it was intended without any stretching (i.e. correct aspect ratio).
SECTION 2: Madden's REGULAR v WIDESCREEN outputs
[Please note this has nothing to do with the in-game "camera mode," which lists "widescreen" as one option. Not relevant here!]
Madden has the ability to display 3 totally different types of screen output, and the resolution settings you select in Madden determine how much of the field you actually see. The best way to illustrate this is on the kickoff:
PRESS CTRL AND MINUS (-) TO ZOOM OUT TO SEE FULL IMAGE
- regular, wide 1, wide 2.gif (706.37 KiB) Viewed 3708 times
Image 1 shows Madden's regular output; note that the players are not stretched, plus everything in the score bar is correct and un-stretched too.
Image 2 shows Madden's "wide 1" output; players still not stretched, but score bar now is stretched.
Image 3 shows Madden's "wide 2" output; players still not stretched, but score bar is now even more stretched.
The Steelers are always the best team to use when testing for stretching because of the shape of their logo. However, even though it may look correct to you, ALWAYS turn your head 90 degrees to one side for a second look: I guarantee that at some point you'll be surprised to notice it actually IS being stretched after all! (Don't use preview mode for testing though as the Steelers midfield logo may appear egg-shaped in preview, yet circular in-game!)
Go back to your list of resolutions that you wrote down; start at the top and go through them one by one. Open calculator and divide the larger number by the smaller one. Write down the answer next to each resolution, like I did like this:
my own desktop resolutions:
1920 x 1080 . . . gives . . . 1.777 . . . WIDE 2
1280 x 1024 . . gives . . . 1.25
1280 x 960 . . . gives . . . 1.333 . . . REGULAR
1280 x 800 . . . gives . . . 1.60 . . . . WIDE 1
1280 x 768 . . . gives . . . 1.666
1280 x 720 . . . gives . . . 1.777 . . . WIDE 2
1152 x 864 . . . gives . . . 1.333 . . . REGULAR
1024 x 768 . . . gives . . . 1.333 . . . REGULAR
800 x 600 . . . . gives . . . 1.333 . . . REGULAR
my laptop resolutions:
1440 x 900 . . . gives . . . 1.60 . . . . WIDE 1
1024 x 768 . . . gives . . . 1.333 . . . REGULAR
800 x 600 . . . . gives . . . 1.333 . . . REGULAR
640 x 480 . . . . gives . . . 1.333 . . . REGULAR
(You'll probably have other resolutions not listed above!)
* If your calculations give you any answers of 1.60 (but not 1.666!), then mark those resolutions on your paper as "WIDE 1".
* If your calculations give you any answers of 1.777, then mark those resolutions on your paper as "WIDE 2".
* Mark any answers of 1.333 as "REGULAR". (This is the 4:3 aspect ratio that will give regular output, with no stretching in the score bar.)
* DISREGARD ALL OTHER RESULTS! The score bar may appear ok, but the PLAYERS will be stretched or squashed!!
Q: I can get two (or three!) outputs on my display; which one should I select?
For folks who just want to play, then the "WIDE 1" or "WIDE 2" output is probably best.
For folks who mod graphics and artwork, the "REGULAR" output is also useful to see all artwork correctly. I actually use both; the regular output is my favored output, but I sometimes change to a wide output when I play games.
Q: I have a older laptop but when I select the "WIDE 1" or "WIDE 2" options, my computer slows down too much. What now?
Then you're like me; you've no choice but to select the highest 1.333 answer and go with the "REGULAR" output on your laptop (see Section 3). When used along with the panel-fit option above though, it actually looks pretty good (and much better than when stretched to fill the whole display!).
To adjust your display settings within Madden, click on Menu, then Settings, then System Settings, and then the "Video" tab.
Change the "Video Resolution" to your desired choice, and take the option ending in ...x32 instead of ...x16 (e.g. 1280x960x32).
IMPORTANT: ALWAYS MANUALLY SET THE "REFRESH FREQUENCY"!!
Madden will sometimes offer you refresh rates that are NOT compatible with all resolutions!
Therefore, every time you select a different resolution in Madden, ALWAYS make sure you manually set Madden's refresh frequency to 60Hz (which is the most common).
- refresh frequency.jpg (37.38 KiB) Viewed 3708 times
If an incompatible refresh rate is selected, the screen may go completely blank. If that happens, trying waiting 15 seconds; it may come out of it on its own. If not, try pressing ESC, or CTRL-SHIFT-ESC. Failing that, try pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL (which may force a restart). Failing THAT, you may have to hold down the power button to force a shutdown, and then boot it up again. If Windows does have to restart, you'll need to manually change the refresh frequency settings in the madden.ini file before starting Madden again or the same thing will happen again! More info on that in Section 3.
You can test all those key combinations quite safely right now, so that you're familiar with them.
Finally, it's worth bearing in mind that when you save a screenshot (by pressing F1), the screenshots will always be un-stretched. If your panel-fit option is NOT set to "Maintain aspect ratio", your screenshots may not always look like what you actually see in-game. (The screenshots are saved in your "My Documents\Madden NFL 08\Scrnshots" folder.)
SECTION 3: Best Madden settings for a lower-performance PC
OK, we all should know by now that you can adjust your settings within Madden by clicking on Menu, then Settings, then System Settings (and then "Video" or "Detail" tabs).
Many folks here will also know that you can edit settings more precisely by clicking on the madden.ini file that's found in "My Documents\Madden NFL 08".
Either way, I'm guessing the tendency here is to set the Video Resolution to as high as possible. HOWEVER, for a lower-performance PC, I've found you can get smoother gameplay PLUS higher "Detail" settings, when you set your Video Resolution to 800x600.
"WHAT?? NO WAY!!" I hear you cry, but please read on!
First bear in mind that all of the menu and team selection part of Madden is ALWAYS displayed at 800x600 anyway, so you're actually used to seeing a lot of Madden at this resolution already! Once the panel-fit option is set correctly and everything isn't stretched, it's quite likely it will appear better than you expected.
Next, it's important to realize that many of the settings within the madden.ini file can be lowered or turned off whilst still retaining similar ones. For instance, you can leave the "Chain Gang Detail" at Low while turning everything else in that Sideline Detail Option Group to Off. (If you were to try to do that within Madden, one setting would control all the sideline options.)
So what's most important? I put "Field Detail" to Highest since it's visible all of the time, and lower "Player Detail" to Medium, since you don't see that as much. I also turn off all the shadows and unnecessary bits such as Ball Boy etc.
I've found that "Hardware Shaders" seem to make a difference set to Off too.
You can download my own madden.ini and try it out for yourself, but first, backup your current madden.ini by creating a copy called "madden (MY).ini" or similar.
Then download my madden.ini from here: pick6's madden.ini
Bear in mind that you won't be able to use it "as-is" unless you rename it to "madden.ini"!
Instead, I recommend you open it and scroll down until you find the section that starts with
// Option Group: System Settings
Copy everything from there onwards and paste that into your own madden.ini, overwriting those sections. Leave all the earlier stuff untouched, as those are your own preferences for quarter length, and difficulty etc.
If you feel the need to tweak anything, do so by editing the madden.ini directly; DON'T go into the Settings within Madden itself, or you may find that similarly grouped settings are altered at the same time.
Please note that this is not going to look great on a big-screen tv, but with improved field detail and unnecessary stuff lowered, I get much smoother game-play, and decent playable visuals.
BACKGROUND PROGRAMS:
You'll get the best out of your Madden when other programs are not running in the background, taking up valuable CPU cycles and memory. You can kill unwanted programs by pressing CTRL-SHIFT-ESC to start Task Manager (or CTRL-ALT-DEL to get there indirectly), but my favorite program to do this is Process Explorer which you can download HERE.
In the left-hand panel, look for explorer.exe, and kill everything below that (right-click on a program name, and then "Kill Process"). Anything above explorer.exe may be needed by Windows, but it's probably safe to kill anything there that is non-Microsoft. You can actually kill quite a lot of Microsoft stuff here too, but if you run into any problems, just reboot and all's well!
Do stop unnecessary services such as Windows Search ("SearchIndexer.exe") by looking for them ABOVE explorer.exe and selecting "Kill Process Tree" (which will kill their descendants too).
Don't forget to disable your anti-virus scanner and updates too for max performance (but leave your firewall on!)
Enjoy!
