qbism wrote:1. Pad the sides, equivalent to 360x200. Correct HUD aspect, but big gaps on the sides. Menus look good.
This is what Makaqu does in the classic HUD (sbar 1 to sbar 3), but it only corrects the aspect partially (due to the integer-based scaling).
qbism wrote:2. Chop to 320x180. Correct HUD aspect, but a bit large. Text will get chopped off bottom of menus and help.
That wouldn't work, chopping content isn't an option for this case.
qbism wrote:3. Just stretch out the hud, 320x200. Looks OK (until you see a HUD at correct aspect

)
If you wanna see how bad this could go, run Makaqu 1.5.1 (not 1.6), set vid_config_x to the width of your desktop and vid_config_y to 200, and then set vid_mode 2.
qbism wrote:With the Makaqu hud, or other side-mounted hud, padding could be placed in the middle.
To be more precise, what Makaqu does in this case is alignment. In Makaqu, alignment and padding are different things, and its 2D renderer basically aligns the 320x200 virtual screen area of the core 2D image drawing function (of which, besides the function for drawing the console background, there's only one - I've merged all the others into it). Alignment can be done independently on the horizontal (left, center, right) and vertical (top, middle, bottom) axes, and can be changed prior to every 2D drawing call, thus allowing each and every 2D element in the screen to be aligned independently. So, Makaqu isn't really able to do any padding in the middle of the screen - it just uses different alignment settings for the virtual screen of each group of elements.
In Makaqu, padding is usually very subtle, and it defines:
- how far from the left edge of the window/screen a left-aligned virtual screen will be,
- how far from the right edge of the window/screen a right-aligned virtual screen will be,
- how far from the top edge of the window/screen a top-aligned virtual screen will be,
- how far from the bottom of the window/screen a bottom-aligned virtual screen will be,
- how far from each side of the window/screen a center-aligned virtual screen will be,
- and how far from the top and the bottom of the window/screen a middle-aligned virtual screen will be.
The purpose of the padding in Makaqu is to ensure that nothing on the screen will be drawn outside of the visible area of CRT TVs and problematic CRT monitors. It is the equivalent of the "set screen size and position" option of some console games, but I've implemented it in a way that is simpler and easier for the users to set (as featured in the "Adjust screen" menu).
In LCD monitors, screen padding is unnecessary, so I've disabled it in Makaqu 1.6 when the "Pixel aspect" option is set to "square (LCD)".
Sorry for hijacking the thread, leilei.