BTS at 4k resolution?

[Mr_V]

Hi all.

I just got a new fancy 4k monitor, I'm not 100% happy how Civ V looks at 4k, but at least it can run.

However, is it possible in any way to run Beyond The Sword at 4k? First time I ran it, the game curiously said "Your graphics card is too low for Civ 4 (chuckling - Nvidia GTX 970), settings have been reverted to lowest". OK, after that I set the graphics to highest, and it works fine, but max resolution I can run the game at is 1920x1080.

It does not detect 3830x2160, obviously because at the time of Civ4 this was not even possible, but is there a mod for it or an alternative solution?

Cheers

 

[rschissler]

In terms of 4K, I think you are thinking in terms of apples and oranges, and it really doesn't apply to games. A 4K monitor needs a 4K source to really take advantage of it. With video, to show 4K at it's best, you need 4K content. A piece of equipment that can upsource to 4K, doesn't really make it 4K. How many movies are available on 4K, even if you had a 4K player and 4K monitor? Answer: basically none.

With games, what you see on the screen is very pixel oriented. You don't say how big your new monitor is, but with Civ, at a resolution of 3830x2160, do you realize how small the units would be? It isn't a matter of them having much finer detail, which I suspect is what you are hoping for.

 

[rbj2001]

I have a 25" QHD monitor and it plays fine at 2560x1440 (with a not-very-powerful graphics card), but text etc is just a bit too small for my taste, so I play at a slightly lower resolution.

You can ignore that message about the graphics card not being powerful enough. It probably won't appear again after you've made your settings.

I don't know why it's not giving you the option to run at your native resolution. I assume you're fully patched to version 3.19?

Anyway, all the text would be too small. I don't know of a mod for scaling the text. I would suggest playing at a lower resolution. It's not quite as sharp as native resolution, but you can consider it "hardware antialiasing" if you want to look on the bright side.

 

[zeebo1]

I play at 1440p on a 25" monitor. I used the blue marble program to increase the text size. You can also manually edit the font sizes. The fonts are located at the location

\Steam\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization IV Beyond the Sword\Beyond the Sword\Resource\Themes\Civ4\Civ4Theme_Common.thm

The font setting is around line 370, you can bump those up 1-2 sizes. Much better now. These are my settings:

with .Font
{
// Anti-aliased font requires the Text combine
// to be BlendSource instead of Source, which means
// there must be an ALPHA channel in all fonts

// To save memory (both system and video) unused fonts are currently commented out.
// Civ really only uses the following font sizes and styles:
// 1 - normal
// 2 - normal, 2 - bold, 2 - italic
// 3 - normal, 3 - bold
// 4 - normal, 4 - bold
// -Moose

with SF_CtrlTheme_Civ4_Control_Font
{
// GFont .Size0_Normal = GFont("Sylfaen", "Regular", 13, GFlags(GFontFeature, GFC_FONT_ALPHA));
// GFont .Size0_Bold = GFont("Sylfaen", "Bold", 13, GFlags(GFontFeature, GFC_FONT_BOLD, GFC_FONT_ALPHA));
// GFont .Size0_Italic = GFont("Sylfaen", "Italic", 13, GFlags(GFontFeature, GFC_FONT_ITALIC, GFC_FONT_ALPHA), 0, GRectMargin(1));
// GFont .Size0_BoldItalic = GFont("Sylfaen", "Bold Italic", 13, GFlags(GFontFeature, GFC_FONT_BOLD, GFC_FONT_ITALIC, GFC_FONT_ALPHA), 0, GRectMargin(1));

GFont .Size1_Normal = GFont("Sylfaen", "Regular", 15, GFlags(GFontFeature, GFC_FONT_ALPHA));
// GFont .Size1_Bold = GFont("Sylfaen", "Bold", 15, GFlags(GFontFeature, GFC_FONT_BOLD, GFC_FONT_ALPHA));
// GFont .Size1_Italic = GFont("Sylfaen", "Italic", 15, GFlags(GFontFeature, GFC_FONT_ITALIC, GFC_FONT_ALPHA), 0, GRectMargin(1));
// GFont .Size1_BoldItalic = GFont("Sylfaen", "Bold Italic", 15, GFlags(GFontFeature, GFC_FONT_BOLD, GFC_FONT_ITALIC, GFC_FONT_ALPHA), 0, GRectMargin(1));

GFont .Size2_Normal = GFont("Sylfaen", "Regular", 17, GFlags(GFontFeature, GFC_FONT_ALPHA));
GFont .Size2_Bold = GFont("Sylfaen", "Bold", 17, GFlags(GFontFeature, GFC_FONT_BOLD, GFC_FONT_ALPHA));
GFont .Size2_Italic = GFont("Sylfaen", "Italic", 17, GFlags(GFontFeature, GFC_FONT_ITALIC, GFC_FONT_ALPHA), 0, GRectMargin(1));
// GFont .Size2_BoldItalic = GFont("Sylfaen", "Bold Italic", 17, GFlags(GFontFeature, GFC_FONT_BOLD, GFC_FONT_ITALIC, GFC_FONT_ALPHA), 0, GRectMargin(1));

GFont .Size3_Normal = GFont("Sylfaen", "Regular", 17, GFlags(GFontFeature, GFC_FONT_ALPHA));
GFont .Size3_Bold = GFont("Sylfaen", "Bold", 17, GFlags(GFontFeature, GFC_FONT_BOLD, GFC_FONT_ALPHA));
// GFont .Size3_Italic = GFont("Sylfaen", "Italic", 17, GFlags(GFontFeature, GFC_FONT_ITALIC, GFC_FONT_ALPHA), 0, GRectMargin(1));
// GFont .Size3_BoldItalic = GFont("Sylfaen", "Bold Italic", 17, GFlags(GFontFeature, GFC_FONT_BOLD, GFC_FONT_ITALIC, GFC_FONT_ALPHA), 0, GRectMargin(1));

GFont .Size4_Normal = GFont("Sylfaen", "Regular", 22, GFlags(GFontFeature, GFC_FONT_ALPHA));
GFont .Size4_Bold = GFont("Sylfaen", "Bold", 22, GFlags(GFontFeature, GFC_FONT_BOLD, GFC_FONT_ALPHA));
// GFont .Size4_Italic = GFont("Sylfaen", "Italic", 22, GFlags(GFontFeature, GFC_FONT_ITALIC, GFC_FONT_ALPHA), 0, GRectMargin(1));
// GFont .Size4_BoldItalic = GFont("Sylfaen", "Bold Italic", 22, GFlags(GFontFeature, GFC_FONT_BOLD, GFC_FONT_ITALIC, GFC_FONT_ALPHA), 0, GRectMargin(1));
}

 

[vincentz]

Just curious. Have anyone seen or made a 4K GUI for Civ4?
Its tedious work, but not complicated work, and the units does look better in 4K than 1080p