SafeZone

Safezone and Absolute proportions (16:10 / Normal)

In Arma: Cold War Assault, user interface Displays were drawn always in 4:3 aspect ratio. Since then, many other aspect ratios became common and interface has to be compatible with them. Currently, interface is base on following variables:

Aspect Ratio - change screen width to fit user's monitor
Interface Size - resize size of interface Controls, like menus, hints, cursors, etc. Introduced in Arma 2.

Coordinate Systems

Games now contains following two coordinate systems, both of them starting in their top left corner and going bottom right (see picture on right).

Absolute (red frame) - based on CWA system. Its always 4:3 and changes together with Interface Size.
- As absolute area is always centered, [0.5,0.5] is always center a of screen.
Safezone (black frame) - actual monitor size. Uses following commands:
- safeZoneX, safeZoneY, safeZoneW and safeZoneH, with additional safeZoneXAbs and safeZoneWAbs to work with multi-screen size.
- In case game is running only on one monitor, safeZoneXAbs equals to safezoneX and safezoneWAbs is same as safezoneW.
- Safezones serves only as references to absolute positions. Result of safezoneX can for example be -0.452381, which means it is left from absolute area.

Sample configs

Control with following size will cover whole screen (middle screen in case of TripleHead):

x = safeZoneX;
y = safeZoneY;
w = safeZoneW;
h = safeZoneH;

Following proportions will cover all screens in TripleHead:

x = safeZoneXAbs;
y = safeZoneY;
w = safeZoneWAbs;
h = safeZoneH;

Creates centered control with 80% width and height:

x = safeZoneX + 0.1 * safeZoneW;
y = safeZoneY + 0.1 * safeZoneH;
w = safeZoneW * 0.8;
h = safeZoneH * 0.8;

Creates control with absolute width and height, moved 10% from top left screen corner:

x = safeZoneX + 0.1 * safeZoneW;
y = safeZoneY + 0.1 * safeZoneH;
w = 0.2;
h = 0.3;

Creates the same as above, but aligned to bottom right corner:

x = safeZoneX + safeZoneW - 0.2;
y = safeZoneY + safeZoneH - 0.3;
w = 0.2;
h = 0.3;

Creates a control that spans the horizontal and is centered on the vertical according to the control's aspect ratio (useful for fullscreen images that shouldn't be stretched but letterboxed). 2 is the aspect ratio:

x = safeZoneX;
y = safeZoneY + ((safeZoneH - (safeZoneW / 2 * (4/3))) / 2);
w = safeZoneW;
h = safeZoneH / 2 * (4/3);

User Interface Editor

User Interface Editor helps with display creation, enabling designer to place controls in simple WYSIWYG editor and export it afterwards to config format.