Screen Resolution

[creative4U]

Hey everyone.
I just bought Civ 3 from steam and so wanted to play it.
But the screen resolution was messed uo so I did some research and added the KeepRes=1 to the conquest.ini file. But whenever I run the game, a big part is still cut off.
Any suggestions?

(Info: 3840x2160 monitor)

 

[tjs282]

Hey everyone.
I just bought Civ 3 from steam and so wanted to play it.
But the screen resolution was messed uo so I did some research and added the KeepRes=1 to the conquest.ini file. But whenever I run the game, a big part is still cut off.
Any suggestions?

I'm not intending to take the mickey here, but are you sure you modified the 'right' conquest.ini file?

I ask because AFAIK, the Steam-client installs your games in its own ...\SteamApps\... subdirectory, which (AFAIK) is usually a subfolder somewhere in C:\ProgramFiles\..., i.e. a privileged location, which 'recent' Windows versions (from Vista onwards) won't let 'foreign' apps (possibly including Notepad ) write to. Anything that a non-permitted app tries to do here, such as writing and editing (game)files, is actually done in your Virtual-Store instead, rather than being recorded in the 'original' location. Modern (post-Vista) games are usually programmed to look for things like savegames and configuration files in the VS accordingly, but Civ3 is (to state the bleedin' obvious) not a modern game. It was originally released in 2001, when WindowsME was state-of-the-art (and most people were still running Win95 or '98!); it therefore doesn't 'know' about VS, and only consults files within its actual installation location. So unless you have various permissions set appropriately, the changes you (think you) made to your conquests.ini, may actually still be invisible to the game-engine.

You may need to do a Windows-search with all hidden files visible (and ideally, all file-extensions shown) to find the right file to edit (or to find your already edited file, and copy it from VirtualStore back to the Civ3 location).

(Info: 3840x2160 monitor)

Wow, that's a big screen. Even if you can get KeepRes=1 to work (see above), it will make everything on screen very small (Civ3 was originally programmed for 1024*768, so e.g. your advisor-screens -- which don't scale -- will only take up ~10% of your total screen-space). Having so much of the map visible at once may even affect the game's interturn/graphical processing time (even if you have multiple cores: Civ3 was written before that was a general thing, too, so it may only use one of them).

 

[Nathiri]

Actually I have never had what you are saying tjs with the Steam version. Steam always keeps all the files in the actual folder and permissions are not usually an issue.

You may want to try VideoMode for that large of a screen. Perhaps in addition to KeepRes.

 

[tjs282]

Actually I have never had what you are saying tjs with the Steam version. Steam always keeps all the files in the actual folder and permissions are not usually an issue.

Fair enough, was just a thought. Though I have seen people complain of similar issues with .ini file settings not 'taking', or savegames not findable with the Steam version -- such as the posts which prompted this reply -- but maybe those issues have now been fixed?

@creative4U It would maybe help to know which Win-version you're using?

You may want to try VideoMode for that large of a screen. Perhaps in addition to KeepRes.

Not sure that will help. The VideoMode switch-options are limited to only 5 different choices, from 1024 up to 1792 pixels (horizontal, 4:3 aspect ratio assumed). Ainwood reposts all the .ini file settings here based on Firaxis' MikeB's (now disappeared) post at the Apolyton site. And I vaguely recall (reading) that there's no point setting both VideoMode and KeepRes, but I can't remember why: it's something like, either one overrides the other, or setting both will cause the UI to get distorted (i.e. horizontally, in this case).

 

[jereellison]

Wanted to follow-up here and say I'm having the same issues with resolution.

My native resolution is 1920x1080, so when I set KeepRes=1, I get stuff that looks like these screenshots (did thumbnails, so they wouldn't be enormous).


As you can see, there's plenty of black around the screen, and the UI is kind of tiny.

I've tried setting Video Mode to all sorts of different things, and still no luck getting things straightened out.

Honestly, I'm fine with black on the sides, if I could just get it "zoomed in" enough that it eliminated the extra space at the top and bottom of the screen.

If anyone has advice, I'd really appreciate it. If not, that's fine. I nabbed the game for free, but I'd sure still like to play it. Worst case, I go back to it's native resolution, and just deal with it being stretched out to the sides.

Thanks,
Jere

 

[Nathiri]

Wanted to follow-up here and say I'm having the same issues with resolution.

My native resolution is 1920x1080, so when I set KeepRes=1, I get stuff that looks like these screenshots (did thumbnails, so they wouldn't be enormous).
View attachment 480519 View attachment 480520

As you can see, there's plenty of black around the screen, and the UI is kind of tiny.

I've tried setting Video Mode to all sorts of different things, and still no luck getting things straightened out.

Honestly, I'm fine with black on the sides, if I could just get it "zoomed in" enough that it eliminated the extra space at the top and bottom of the screen.

If anyone has advice, I'd really appreciate it. If not, that's fine. I nabbed the game for free, but I'd sure still like to play it. Worst case, I go back to it's native resolution, and just deal with it being stretched out to the sides.

Thanks,
Jere

The 2nd ss is the game screen, and that appears fine for your resolution. Unfortunately there are not many customizable options to increase the size of things. The interface options just adapt as they can to different resolutions.

The first is the main menu. As that is pcx based, it does not conform to other resolutions. You have to create your own graphics to fit that resolution, or use one of the wide-screen graphics made on the forums to at least fill it more.

 

[jereellison]

Thanks for the quick response.

Do you have a link or specifics on searching to get to the forum posts about the wide-screen graphics you mentioned? I may take a look at that and see what options are available.

 

[Nathiri]

https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/categories/civ3-interface-graphics.20/?page=3
https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/widescreen-histograph-and-victory-conditions.16194/
https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/widescreen-city-screen.10188/

 

[jereellison]

Thanks!

And after lunch I was able to see what you meant about the resolution in the game, and how that wasn't actually black bars around the outside there, uncovered map. O_O