Windowed Mode HOWTO

[WildWeazel]

First of all, welcome to CFC!!!

That is a graphics problem, it's nothing to do with windowed mode. It's been a common problem with ATI graphics cards. Firaxis released a utility that lets you unpack the file art0.fpk in the Assets folder. That should fix the problem. You can find the utility and more info in Civ4 General Discussion. There is a stickied thread about ATI graphics cards and the utility.

edit: have you patched the game? I think that was also supposed to fix it.

 

[Deepthought360]

Hi,
I just got my hands on this fantastic game and was really looking forward to start playing it on my new LCD HDTV but unfortunately the game doesn't support 1280x720 (my LCDs native resolution) and I hate playing games with the graphics scaled up or down.

I thought I could use the custom resolution tags in the .ini file but nothing happens.

Then I read this thread and figured that maybe they only worked when used with the game running in windowed mode. But NOTHING happens.

The game always start in 1024x768 no matter what i set the parameters in the .ini file to.

The in-game resolution options work like they are supposed to but I really would like to play this game with proper pixel proportions and not 1280x768 scaled to 720.

Please can somebody tell me what I'm doing wrong here?

 

[Deepthought360]

Nevermind, I think I've figured it out now. The game just doesn't support resolutions below 1024 on the X-axis and 768 on the Y-axis.

Guess I'll just have to live with a slight scaling of the image.

 

[thetank]

Hey, good stuff, windowed mode, love it.

 

[chris.]

It appears to take less memory, and if you hit the dreaded windows key, you won't spend the next 10 mins. regretting it.

 

[abj9562]

If you have Warlords it already runs windowed mode. It is selectable in the options; both maximized and windowed with no minimizing to the taskbar. Still must move screen by arrow keys or left click on the screen. I haven't run vanilla Civ4 lately but it is probably the same.

 

[mailhunter]

thank you very much for this hint! thats what i was looking for a LONG time... Civ4 in winMode!

 

[Gerikes]

Wow, quite an old thread. I'm glad someone brought it from the dead though, 'cuz I never knew about that shiftwindow utility!

 

[ExecuteDisaster]

Nevermind, I think I've figured it out now. The game just doesn't support resolutions below 1024 on the X-axis and 768 on the Y-axis.

Guess I'll just have to live with a slight scaling of the image.

Actualy the game does support higher resolutions, I am running it at 1900x1200, however I have an NVIDIA card, which ***Might make a difference, although I suspect that it has more to do with your monitor. What I suggest doing is finding the configuration tool for your video card and checkign if it allows for the creation of a custom resoultion. I know that the NVIDIA control panel allows you to do this, because I have had to do it in the past to get windows to work with 1400x900. Once you set windows to work with that resolution you should then add the resolution to the config file.

I can't guarantee this will work, but I feel that it will.

 

[Llewen]

I realize this is an old thread, but the information here is still helpful. I just thought I'd add a couple of things I learnt. You still set the screen resolution in the in game options for Beyond the Sword. However, the problem is that the playing surface will be the same as the resolution, which means the windw will be slightly larger than your screen due to the borders and the window title bar.

However, if you change the screen size in your config file you can compensate for this. The wording of the comments makes it sound as though those settings in the config file determine your screen resolution, they don't. What that does is determine the size of the window, so it is possible to change the window size so that it will match your resolution. (Note that this is only true for Beyond the Sword and I'm guessing Colonization as well, for Warlords those numbers correspond to screen resolution so the only way to fix this issue in Warlords, and I'm guessing vanilla Civ 4, is to run the game at a smaller screen resolution than your desktop resolution.)

Below you will find the lines you need to look for in your config file. The values I have there are for the resolution I play at, which is 1152 X 864.

; Custom Screen Height, minimum: 768 - Normal resolutions can be set in-game and will be used when set to 0
ScreenHeight = 838

; Custom Screen Width, minimum: 1024 - Normal resolutions can be set in-game and will be used when set to 0
ScreenWidth = 1148

Also if you happen to have a game controller, you can bind the arrow keys to your joystick which makes scrolling a breeze. I have a Logitech G13 and this works a treat.

 

[bittin]

Thanks this helped me now just got Civ 4 from a friend

 

[Llewen]

I think Civ 4 BtS is the best of the series so far—mostly because of the mods available for it. Civ V is a terrific game, but it just doesn't have the amazing mods that Civ 4 has. If you are interested in running Civ 4 in a borderless window I've just started using this app and it seems to do the job nicely.

If you use that app you can set ScreenHeight and ScreenWidth to 0 and just enter the resolution into the app's configuration for Civ 4. This forum on the Steam forums gives you instructions on how to set it up. I found I had to enter the screen resolution into the game configuration for the app before it worked.

 

[SmallBrain]

Thanks for this Rayanth, now I will be able to spend less time waiting for the game to load (having saved & quit to e.g., check my mail, consult the internet)

SmallBrain
9.April.2016