Full Screen?

[WeirdoJoker]

I just installed C3C on my 17" laptop. Upon launching, the game does not fill the whole screen, just the center part of it. How can I get it to fill the screen?

 

[tjs282]

You can edit your conquests.ini file to amend (or add) the line "KeepRes=1". This tells the game to use your monitor's native resolution, so will display as much of the map as is needed to fill the entire monitor screen, on a 1:1 pixel basis.

Downsides:
If you have a significantly higher-definition monitor than the game was originally designed for (1024*768, i.e. the size of the 'fixed' city/advisor screens), then everything -- the units, the onscreen text, everything -- will look a lot 'smaller'.
Since more memory will be required to display more tiles of the map simultaneously (with more unit-animations, etc.), processing times may be noticeably increased (the game will run slower).

 

[WeirdoJoker]

You can edit your conquests.ini file to amend (or add) the line "KeepRes=1". This tells the game to use your monitor's native resolution, so will display as much of the map as is needed to fill the entire monitor screen, on a 1:1 pixel basis.

Downsides:
If you have a significantly higher-definition monitor than the game was originally designed for (1024*768, i.e. the size of the 'fixed' city/advisor screens), then everything -- the units, the onscreen text, everything -- will look a lot 'smaller'.
Since more memory will be required to display more tiles of the map simultaneously (with more unit-animations, etc.), processing times may be noticeably increased (the game will run slower).

I had already tried that, but it hasn't worked. Would it matter that my laptop's screen resolution is 1600x900? Switching to another resolution does not seem to help, unless I just haven't tried enough of them.

 

[tjs282]

Would it matter that my laptop's screen resolution is 1600x900?

I don't think so.

For comparison, when travelling*, I play Civ3 using KeepRes=1 on a (WinXP) laptop which has a native 1280 x 800 screen resolution (i.e. 8:5 ratio, rather than the 4:3 ratio the game was 'intended' to be played at), and it works fine: widescreen map, and no distortion of the advisor/trade screens**.

Spoiler * :

Or when our attic/ study/ store-room/ man-cave/ guest-room is occupied by someone other than me!

Spoiler ** :

I didn't know about the .ini file settings when I first bought Vanilla Civ3, and so I played it on this laptop for 6(?) months with (what hindsight now tells me was) significant horizontal picture-distortion. After I added KeepRes=1, for the next couple of months, it looked/felt like the units, Advisors, and AI-Leaders had all decided simultaneously to go on crash-diets!

The only thing I can think of -- if you've already been editing your .ini file -- did you by any chance also add/amend a 'VideoMode=???' line?

Because if you did, then (IIRC) that can interfere with/ over-ride the KeepRes switch -- so deleting any VideoMode line you've added might solve this problem.

Switching to another resolution does not seem to help, unless I just haven't tried enough of them.

If you're not talking about a 'VideoMode' line, then I can only assume you're talking about your laptop's potential monitor-outputs here?

If so, then because Civ3 demands at least 768 vertical pixels, you would need a 'virtual' output of 1365 x 768 to play Civ3 at your current widescreen (16:9) ratio. Problem is, that represents dividing your monitor's actual resolution by a factor of 1.17, i.e. every 5th-6th pixel-row/-column would have to be 'doubled'. So even if the Windows-setting was successfully applied to the game (which it might not be, if Civ3's demands over-ride Windows-settings), I strongly suspect that you would end up with serious picture-distortion.

Spoiler :

And the only way to avoid that, would be to set a virtual resolution which divided your maximum resolution by an integer-factor, e.g. dividing 1600*900 by 2, with 4 'real' pixels of your display acting as a single 'virtual' pixel, would give you a virtual output-image of 800*450. However, because this virtual display would have insufficient virtual/vertical pixels as far as Civ3 was concerned, you wouldn't be able to play (easily/ at all).

Conversely (and assuming I recall the available VideoMode settings correctly), it is possible to set "VideoMode=1600", but that's a bad idea on a widescreen laptop with only 900 vertical pixels, because the VideoMode switch assumes a 4:3 ratio, i.e. a total screen area of 1600 x 1200 pixels -- so (the upper?) 1/4 of the picture would 'spill' off the (top of the?) screen.

 

[WeirdoJoker]

The only thing I can think of -- if you've already been editing your .ini file -- did you by any chance also add/amend a 'VideoMode=???' line?

No. The only time I touch any of these files is with explicit instructions, because I don't really understand how they work. The file does not have a "VideoMode" line.