Game not taking up the full screen

[choxorn]

So, I opened Civ 3 Conquests. I quickly noticed that the game wasn't being displayed on all of my screen- the left and right edges of my monitor were totally dark, and I couldn't actually move my cursor into them, so the screen resolution is, for some reason I can't understand, not taking up the full screen.

It's done this for other games I've played recently, too, and some experimentation has showed that it also does that outside of games if I set my computer's screen resolution to dimensions that are too low or too square (my monitor is pretty wide). I could fix the problem with some of the games by changing the screen resolution, but I can't figure out how to actually do that in Civ 3.

Although that works as a fix, I'm more annoyed that I have no idea what's causing this- it's never done this before, and I don't think I've changed any of my computer's graphics settings recently.

Help?

 

[Verarde]

I just got a computer with Windows 7, and I had this issue when I installed C3C. What I had to do was find the .ini file and add KeepRes=1 to the bottom of it. So far, it works. Also try right clicking on the .exe file and by hitting the "compatibility" tab, making to compatible with Windows XP. Let me know if this doesn't work.

 

[choxorn]

This computer has Windows Vista, but I guess I could try those.

 

[choxorn]

KeepRes=1 Simultaneously makes the problem worse and better. Better, because the window now takes up the full screen, and I can now move my mouse through all of it. Worse, because more of the window is now black and the actual game screen is smaller.

I can't actually find any "Compatability" Tab.

And anyway, like I said, this has happened for virtually every game I've tried to play recently, not just Civ 3.

 

[Verarde]

Ew. Sorry about that. You might want to just delete that line, if it is making the problem worse.

Are there any changes that you've made recently to your computer?

 

[choxorn]

Yeah, I already did delete it.

Not as far as I know. Someone else might have done something, in which case they also don't know, but I'm pretty sure I haven't done anything.

 

[Quintillus]

It sounds like you may have had your video card's scaling settings turned on. That would cause this effect when you were running any full-screen program that didn't use your monitor's native resolution, and would also cause your display to not take up the full screen when you manually set the resolution lower. For instance, I just turned it on and set my resolution to 1024x768, and I now have nice, useless black borders around my usable display.

I've attached a photo of how to get to this setting with nVIDIA graphics cards (I took this screenshot before turning it on and changing my resolution). To get to this screen, I right-clicked on the desktop and clicked on nVIDIA Control Panel (there probably will also be a link to this off of the regular control panel). You might also have to click on the Advanced Settings box and choose Advanced View so the Adjust Desktop Size and Position option shows up. Then you would want to choose "Use nVIDIA Scaling". "Use nVIDIA scaling with fixed aspect ratio" would leave you with bars on the left and right when you chose too square of a resolution, and "Do not scale" is probably what you have right now.

If you have an ATI or Intel video card, there's probably the equivalent setting somewhere, but I don't know where it would be - Google probably does. It's also possible that nVIDIA redesigned there control panel, and it doesn't look this way any more (my drivers are more than a year and a half old), in which case hopefully Google can tell where the setting moved.

 

[choxorn]

Got it! I have an Intel Video Card and found a few similar menus with options in them. I messed around with a couple of them, to see if it would do anything. I'm not exactly sure how I fixed the problem, but it's fixed now.

Thank you very much, Quintillus.