Formatting for long screen

[Czartoryski]

I just installed Civ III and Conquests on a laptop computer. The laptop has a 15 inch screen making the proportion between the horizontal and vertical dimensions of the screen different; it is a rather long screen. When I run Civ, everything works fine, but the images are formatted in a way that makes them seem a bit contracted vertically. I think I like the proportions on my desktop screen more, but I can not find a way to change the way things are displayed on my laptop. If I could just get the machine not to use the rightmost and leftmost inch of the display, or some such, it would look fine. Can anyone suggest a solution?

 

[Duantalus]

All the screen resolutions supported by Civ III are 4:3 which means that the widescrean that you have will display 'funny'. You could try a couple of different things to solve the problem:

First, look to see if your display driver has a non-widescreen option. You may be able to easilly set that up so that it doesn't use the edge's of the screen.

Second, If the first doesn't work, or you simple dont like it, I know that some people have had success using the

KeepRes=1

and,

VideoMode=X

commands to run Civ III in a window, while I have never actually seen it work myself, enough others have claimed that they have it working that I belive there is a chance.

 

[Mercade]

In addition to Duantalus' remark, the KeepRes=1 is a line you have to add to the Conquests.INI file. If your laptop screen is capable of displaying more than 1024 pixels width, then it will make your map bigger (using perfect resolution) and centre the city screen (and similar screens) on your laptop monitor.

Let us know if this works.

 

[Seff]

Thanks Czartoryski for your question and Duantalus and Mercade for your replies. I've just purchased a Dell laptop with the new style 15" wide screen; installed Civ III yesterday and had the same resolution problems you describe.

Following your suggestions, I added the KeepRes=1 line to my civilization3.ini file 5 minutes ago and now have perfect resolution.

At 1920 x 1200 pixels I feel I can see the whole world on one screen!

Thanks Guys, I'm now one happy little CivIII player.

Now to install PTW. But maybe that should be once I get away from work today!

Thanks again.

Seff