There's an update below

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Instead of staring at a small window of pixel-perfect 800x600 on a modern monitor, I wanted to scale it up. I only have a 1080p monitor so 1600x1200 wasn't an option. DxWnd only seemed to have the one bad scaling algorithm that meant resolutions in-between had some distortion. And I couldn't find an alternative to DxWnd for the task.

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I ended up getting decent results with OBS on top of DxWnd. OBS provides a few options for scaling that mean you can get very close to something that looks like integer-scaling. This method requires at least two monitors.

DxWnd settings for 800x600 (mirror). I'm still using DxWnd v2.05.60, in case there's an issue importing the settings. Make sure you set the window to appear at a static location, i.e. DxWnd > right-click game profile > Modify > Main tab > select X, Y coordinates option > set Window initial position & size. I suggest choosing a location that avoids other things overlapping such as Windows notifications, media overlays, and window previews triggered by hovering over taskbar icons.

In OBS you want a new scene, add a Display Capture source for the DxWnd window's monitor, crop the source down to just the Aranock window, fit to screen, scale filtering set to Area, optional but I'd suggest adding a filter of very slight sharpening, fullscreen projector to another monitor. Always-on-top for the game window is probably a good idea but I'm yet to sus that out.

screenshots of DxWnd and OBS

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Bonus: You can of course use OBS to record gameplay at the same time, for yourself or Youtube, and for the latter case I'd recommend using VB-Cable. With it you can send the game audio off to a separate device and set OBS to record only that device, ignoring music and other sounds going through your default device. To assign Aranock to use VB-Cable, in Windows 10 at least, go to Settings > System > Sound > App volume and device preferences, and when the game is running (and has made at least some sound, to register it) change its output device to VB-Cable. An annoying Windows bug though is even while the menu implies it remembers this change of output device, every time you run the game you need to change it to another device and back to VB-Cable again. One way to automate this process is to make a batch file fire off SoundVolumeView to do this when you run the game (e.g. "SoundVolumeView /SetAppDefault "2- VB-Audio Virtual Cable\Device\VB-Cable output\Render" 1 "AranockTRIAL2.06.exe" /WaitForItem 180" kind of thing). A great way to do this, I recommend, is to use the Playnite launcher.



Update: I've been told of the param.dat file in the base game directory. There you can switch the game's resolution between the original 800x600 and either widescreen 1024x768 or 960x540. And of course 960x540 makes for an integer-scale up to 1920x1080. After a very tedious amount of stuffing around with DxWnd settings, I'm not entirely sure how at this point but I've managed to get it to put out borderless fullscreen 1920x1080. Here are the DxWnd settings (mirror).

If only we had a wiki for the huge amount of hidden and obfuscated information about Aranock... maybe one day I'll get one going.

And a correction, in OBS use a Window Capture source and not a Display Capture. The former means anything overlapping the game window, whether they be other windows or overlays, won't be captured by OBS. I went with Display Capture out of habit having often had issues with Window Capture in the past. If it fails for you, you can fall back to Display Capture.

Also, if for some reason you wanted Aranock in a smaller window than normal, the previous method can be used with OBS' windowed projector. The benefit of using OBS here again is a superior scaling algorithm.