Non-standard screen size on CDO

[JasonMel]

I play online at CDO. I also watch others play occasionally. I always see a few people playing with large, non-standard screen sizes like 100x30, rather than 80x24, and it looks much better. I would like to use such a size myself, but when I try to modify my online options file, the game simply starts with the message

Warning: Bad view_max_width: 100 > 81 (~/.crawlrc:152)

...and defaults to the standard 80x24. How can I force CDO to run with a comfortably large screen size?

[galehar]

You should first resize your terminal. Then you can increase view_max_width and view_max_height

[JasonMel]

Was this feature removed? I used to be able to follow the above instructions and get a larger viewport, but it no longer seems to work for width (though it still seems to work for height). Even people I watch play online, people who specify a large width, are playing in only 80 columns now.

[JasonMel]

I got help on this in the IRC channel. For posterity, the critical thing to realize is that the options file has options, view_max_width and _height, which control the viewport, meaning the portion of the map you can see while playing. By default, this is 33 wide by 17 high. The terminal program used to play online at CDO has options which control the total screen size, which by default should be 80 by 24, the traditional size of a console-mode screen. The total screen size has to accommodate the viewport plus the rest of the game display (stats, gameplay messages, etc.). When the game displays a warning on game start that the view_max_<whatever> option is set too high (81 is the hard maximum for width; 71 for height), it's referring only to the viewport, not the whole screen.

It's also important to realize that a vocal crowd of players apparently really hate it when people like me increase the viewport while playing online. They even have a name for this practice: hugeterm. From what I gather, these players will only be spectators in games with the standard 80-by-24 screen (not viewport) size. For example, the guy who was kind enough to help me let me know that his reason for viewing only standard-sized games is that he views multiple games at once on his screen.

On the other hand, when I spectate, I gravitate toward viewing games in larger than standard dimensions, for the same reason that I like playing them. To compromise, I've set my viewport to 66x36, for a screen size of 113x43. But I would be open to other suggestions for a good compromise.