Worms Armageddon: How To Scale/Zoom W:A for 4k and other high resolution displays

While Worms Armageddon is very fun and probably the best Worms game in terms of multiplayer, unfortunately there is no zoom function in the game. What you set the resolution at is basically how big your view port is, and that was fine for most people. However as screen resolutions have gotten bigger and the future standard resolution moves over to 1440p and 4k, the game is too tiny for most people to see comfortably, regardless of what you set the game’s resolution to.

For example, this is what the game looks like in Fullscreen (Borderless-Windowed) on a 4k display:

Way too tiny. And if you play on any map that’s enclosed, where the game adds black boarders past the map’s resolution, it’s even more awkward.

Luckily, there is a solution to this problem that does not involve lowering your monitor’s resolution. Update 3.8 added resolution scaling to the game, though it’s hidden behind Regedit settings. This guide will show you how to scale the game using this feature.

NOTE: This will not scale the game’s menus (as in the menus before getting into a game, not to be confused with the in-game UI.) Read the next section to learn how to increase the menu resolution.

NOTE 2: This does not work with OpenGL. Use Direct3D 9. DirectDraw has some support too, but doesn’t look that good.

1. Open Regedit by pressing Winkey+R, type in regedit, and hit enter. You can also open Regedit through the start menu search (if it actually does and not open a webpage instead. This is why I use Openshell.)
   
2. Navigate to this address:
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Team17SoftwareLTD\WormsArmageddon\Options

   You can either copy the address from here and paste it into Regedit’s address bar, or manually search through the folders on the left of the window.
   

3. Once in the options folder, create two new DWORD values by right clicking on a blank area where all the registry keys are. Don’t accidentally right click where the folders are located or right click on a registry key, you’ll get different options.
   
4. Name the registry keys as
   WindowXSize

   and

   WindowYSize

   These are case sensitive. (Right click on the registry keys to rename them.)
   

5. Double click or right click and click modify to edit the newly created registry keys (Start with WindowXSize first). Set the Base to Decimal first, then type the horizontal resolution you wish the game to display at on your monitor. Repeat for WindowYSize, but with the value being your vertical resolution instead. This is the resolution the game will upscale/stretch to. If you wish to play in fullscreen (borderless-windowed), set the resolution to your monitor’s/desktop’s resolution. For standard windowed mode, set the resolution to anything you want.

   (If you don’t know your monitor’s resolution, you can check by going to Windows settings > System > Display, and it should be listed under Display Resolution. The first number is the horizontal resolution [X], and the second number is the vertical resolution [Y].)
   

6. There are two ways to set the game’s internal resolution. You can either change the DisplayXSize and DisplayYSize in the same registry folder to the internal resolution you wish, or you can open the game, head over to the options menu, and choose a resolution from there. This is the resolution the game will run at, and then upscale to the resolution you specified in the WindowXSize and WindowYSize registry keys.

Let’s show some examples. Here is the game running at a 4k resolution (3840×2160) window, but with the internal resolution set to 1920×1080 (1080p, Full HD):

And here it is at the same 4k window res, but with the internal resolution set to 1280×720 (720p):

Much more zoomed in and easier to see.

The registry keys don’t change the menu resolution or scale it to the window resolution you specified. Worms Armageddon out of the box doesn’t have any settings or features allowing you to change the resolution of the menus. However there is a mod that will let you: SuperFrontendHD. This changes the menu frontend of W:A to allow it to display at any resolution, and it features 1.5x and 2x upscaled icons.

You can download it from the Worms 2D Wiki[worms2d.info] or from The Ultimate Site Forum Post[www.tus-wa.com]. You can also get it in from Worms Armageddon Plus[github.com], an installer that also includes additonal maps from Worms World Party, removed content from W:A’s Steam release, and WormNAT2, which allows you to host games without having to port forward.

To install SuperFrontendHD, download the full package, open up the 7z file, and extract everything to W:A’s root folder. For most, it’s

You can also open Steam Library, right click on the game on the list to the left, then click Browse Local Game Files to go directly to the root folder. If you’re installing using W:A Plus, just use installer it comes with and SuperFrontendHD should install just fine. (If you can’t open the 7z file, you need use a zip file program such as WinRAR or 7-Zip, or update Windows 11 which should have a new feature of allowing you to view and extract 7z archives.)

If you launch the game and the menus still display at 640×480, Go to options > Advanced, and enable Load WormKit modules. Then restart the game. If it still doesn’t work, you messed up when installing the mod.

By default, SuperFrontendHD will display at the internal resolution you set the game at. To change it, open wkSuperFrontend.ini in the W:A root folder, scroll all the way down, and under Resolution, change Auto to Desktop for Borderless Windowed, or Custom and edit CustomWidth and CustomHeight to the resolution you wish for standard Windowed mode.

Do note that not all menu elements are scaled with SuperFrontendHD, and it only has menu assets for 960p. You can tell it to automatically create scaled elements for the ones it’s missing by editing wkSuperFrontend.ini and setting AutoScaleMissingGraphics to 1. Even with this setting on though, not everything will be scaled, most notably the map preview.

Here is what the main menu looks like with SuperFrontendHD enabled and with Resolution set to Desktop in the ini file with a resolution of 4k:

If you don’t like how spaced out the icons can be, consider editing InternalResolution settings in wkSuperFrontend.ini

A: If you don’t care about how the game looks, any resolution you find comfortable with is fine. However if you do care about how the game looks, consider the following:

• The game will stretch to the aspect ratio you set your window resolution to if the internal resolution doesn’t match. This means if you set the internal resolution to one with a ratio like 4:3, and tell it to display on your window resolution that’s 16:9, it will stretch the game horizontally to fit the screen.
• The upscaling method for W:A is Nearest Neighbor, meaning that you will get artifacts if your window resolution doesn’t evenly divide to a whole number with the internal resolution. Here are some examples:
  1080p to 4k: 3840 ÷ 1920 = 2 | 2160 ÷ 1080 = 2
  720p to 4k: 3840 ÷ 1280 = 3 | 2160 ÷ 720 = 3
  720p to 1440p: 2560 ÷ 1280 = 2 | 1440 ÷ 720 = 2
  1080p to 1440p: 2560 ÷ 1920 = 1.333 | 1440 ÷ 1080 = 1.333

  Notice how the last one is not a whole number. That means when upscaling, some pixels will be doubled, while others won’t. This can make the game look messy, cause flicking artifacts when moving the camera, and some text might be harder to read if the font size is small enough (such as the weapon UI screen.)

  Worth noting though that resolutions that divide to 1.25, 1.5 and 1.75 don’t look that bad since which pixels that get doubled and which don’t is very consistent, so you might be fine with scaling resolutions like 960p to 1440p.

Yes, but when doing so, you’ll have the reverse issue as stated above and some pixels will skip being drawn. Small resolution bumps might be fine, but anything more drastic might be too much and cause too many pixels to be skipped, thus making a “blurry” image.

Simply reply to this guide, and I’ll try to get back to ya to help out. Just make sure to try and troubleshoot the issue your self before commenting.