Screen Resolution for Civ3

[ThERat]

I recently bought a 21.5 '' widescreen monitor with a recommended resolution of 1900 * 1280 (or sth like this).

Now, if I use that format, Civ3 gets messed up. The start screen and the city view (+diplomacy etc) are in their old format and resolution. However, the normal view gets huge and a bit too confusing. Basically is like a zoomed out version, but a bit too zoomed.

I reduced the screen resolution to something less crazy like 1400 * 1000 or so, the start/diplo.city view screens still in the old format, but at least the view of the battlefield is not so crazy anymore.

Has anyone had any experience with this kind of issues? How can I get the city view to a higher resolution (or to fill the whole screen for that matter)

 

[Bartleby]

I think the start/diplo/city screens are fixed at 1024*768.

 

[Lord Katana]

I use a 21 inch wide screen monitor myself. In C3C if you add the line "keepres=1" to the conquests.ini file then the game runs in your destop setting. For me this works well, no distortion of the grafics (like city screen, start screen and such) and a lot op worldtiles since he "fills up" the entire screen.

 

[ThERat]

thanks, I will try this out...

 

[vmxa]

I use 1440x900 and the keepres. That keep most of my games fine. I found that much higher and I end up with too many games with issues. I am expecting a 24.6 today or tomorrow, so that could change.

Both the lcd's want 1440x900. I forget if they 19 and 21 or both 19.

 

[Gamemaster77]

For vista go to your civ3 folder (in C:\Users\Vincent\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\---\----) then click conquests.ini . Then type in on a new line KeepRes=1. For Xp do the same thing but it is in (C:\programfiles\------\------\).

 

[ThERat]

ok guys, I did that last night with the insane 1900*1080 setting. But it didn't work really as the starting screen got even smaller (the normal view was huge though)

 

[Padma]

IIRC, the movies are actually 800x600. The starting screen, and the advisor screens (and a few others) are fixed at 1024x768. Only the game itself is affected by the "KeepRes=1" statement. Which means that at very high resolutions, the fixed-size screens are going to seem pretty tiny.

 

[vmxa]

I just hooked up my 24.6 LCD and it looks great at 1440x900. The mini map look huge now. The desktop gets so small at 1900 that it is of no use to me.

 

[Lord Katana]

ok guys, I did that last night with the insane 1900*1080 setting. But it didn't work really as the starting screen got even smaller (the normal view was huge though)

Yes the game doenst resize those types of screens... I know there is a modded cityscreen for widescreen monitors. Don't know about startup screen/diplo and such...

so if you have too high res then those screens will be very small. I guess that's the price of progress The mods section of this forum might have some nice stuff for you, but there are others who know that better then i do...

 

[ThERat]

thanks for all the input...i tried 1400* 900 and it's quite ok, if a little too small

 

[vmxa]

Here is what happened to me and you probably experienced something like it. All was fine at 1440. I did not reboot after replacing the monitor. This morning the desktop was toss back to 1280. I was not able to set it to 1440, so I went with 1600. I am not so happy with that as the icons are too small for me.

Then I tried to bring up C3C, but it never came up. I removed the KeepRes and added Video=1280 and it worked. I then changed it to 1600 and then 1792. It works there, but is not as cool as it was yesterday. I in fact now use the zoom in to make it better and can see a lot more of the map.

The desktop background is not suitable for 1600, so it does not cover all the screen and you get the dark blue around the edge. I may look for a better pix for the background, I guess it is about time.

So that is what I ran into. The Video setting only mentions up to 1792. XP would no longer offer 1440, it went from 1280 to 1920. I used my graphics tool and it offered more choices, but not 1440. It went from 1280 to 1600 and higher. Just FYI.

 

[vmxa]

Final test with Video Mode=xxxx, any value over 1280 caused the desktop to revert to 1280 after exit. I put Video mode=1600 and KeepRes=1 and then I could run the game and exit with no impact on desktop settings.

I knew that would work when I loaded the game and the main screen came up with no change to the screen. IOW the other setting saw the desktop switch temporarily and then load the game.