[C3C] Increased fontsize for better readability?

[Kirejara]

My eyesight has by now deterioted to a level, that makes computer gaming problematic.

Action games were allready impossible for some time, but by now I am also more or less unable to play Civ3.

I have bought a new larger monitor and have set the Civ3conquest.ini to "KeepRes=0" to increased the size of the graphics, but I am still unable to read the text in the game

Is there a way to exchange the tiny fonts to larger, bolder and better readable fonts?

Thanks a lot!

 

[Civinator]

I don´t know if this can be helpful for you.

In the Civ 3 Vanilla readme of Civ 3 Complete stands the following:

* Ini file tweaks: The first time Civilization III is run, it will create a file called 'civilization3.ini'. The following lines can be added and allow you to tweak the game:

*KeepRes=1 - When set to 1, your desktop resolution will be what the game uses. 1024x768 screens will be centered, but you will be able to see much more of the map on one screen.

*NoSound=1 - Disables all sound in-game.

*Video Mode=1792 / Video Mode=1600 / Video Mode=1280 / Video Mode=1152 - Force screen resolution to one of these settings.

You can also change the size of the text and the resolution of the monitor in Windows.

What definitely could be helpful: Use a much bigger screen for playing or modding Civ 3. I use a TV with a 100 cm screen and 4 K as my pc monitor and for me at present this is working very well.

 

[Quintillus]

I don't know of a way to make the official size of the fonts larger (e.g. if Civ renders 10-point font, it will always render 10-point font), but there are a couple ways to change which font it uses, which can result in a somewhat bolder font, or one that is slightly larger in the nominal 10-point size than the original.

The resources I have on it are:

• taube87 uploaded a few font packs for Civ III. Between them, they offer 7 fonts that can be used in Civ3, and by my estimation, at least one of them (Impact) is more bold than the default
• taube87 also has a post giving the outlines of how he created the font packs, which could probably be followed to create more of them.
• The topic came up a couple years ago, and I made a post noting how I switched Civ3 from Western Europe to Cyrllic alphabets. I'm about 99% sure that this also works for swapping the font, like "Lucida Sans,0"="Courier New, 0". A restart of Windows is required to see the effect with that method. I just confirmed that this works, by changing my font to Arial Black, which is bolder, though not necessarily larger.

I don't know if those will add up to enough of a difference, but it should be possible to achieve at least a little bolder, if not outright larger.

 

[Kirejara]

Thank you so far!

I had previously the "keepRes=1" to keep my Windows resolution in CIV3, but had removed it to have CIV3 in its original resolution (1024x768 pixels) to make thinks bigger together with a much larger monitor.

Currently I am experimenting with Quintillus idea with different fonts from the Window folder.

Unfortunatly most of Taube87 fonts are worse than the original fonts.

So far, "Deja Vu Serif" nearly works good enough. I can nearly read the city names again.

Regardless of the selected font the event messages from the cities (disorder, bombardement, starvation usw.) are far to tiny to be read. But since I could not read them for quite a while (a year give or take), I can live with that.

 

[Kirejara]

I have tried several different fonts by now, but it is not enought.

Because it is hard to play without being able to read things like city names, income or treasure, I will have to retire from CIV3.

Thank You all for the good times!

 

[tjs282]

Because it is hard to play without being able to read things like city names, income or treasure, I will have to retire from CIV3.

That would be a real shame.

Before you give up all hope, I have a vague recollection of reading somewhere on CFC that a 'Fontsize' switch could also be added in the .ini file.

Unfortunately, I can't remember if/how it works, and I haven't been able to find this info again (which is why I didn't post this earlier) — but that doesn't necessarily mean the information isn't there, it might just be that my google-fu isn't good enough.

 

[Civinator]

Kirejara, if nothing other is helping, you can try to use a zoom-mouse (Maus mit Vergrößerungsfunktion) for playing Civ 3. In this post I made some screenshots while playing with a zoom-mouse: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/ccm-epic-mod-preview-thread.291104/page-12#post-8193810

Edit: Written in bigger letters

 

[tjs282]

Unfortunately, I can't remember if/how it works, and I haven't been able to find this info again (which is why I didn't post this earlier) — but that doesn't necessarily mean the information isn't there, it might just be that my google-fu isn't good enough.

These were my results using an 'Advanced search' for the key words "Font; size" in the Civ3 directory:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/characters-font-size-significantly-reduced.504897/
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/font-size.94761/
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/font-size-in-ptw.40600/

Not much help there, though...

 

[Kirejara]

Edit: Written in bigger letters

No need to shout...

And I have my browser adjusted for easy reading.

Zoom-Mouse works and I can read the text in CIV3 with it again, but takes some time to get used to it.

I will have to train using it.

But it is a solution!

Thank you, Guys!

 

[Nathiri]

Yay! I expect to see an interesting screenshot soon.