SimCity 3000 Unlimited Resolution Fix

[Lanak]

Anyone still play this?

The game limits the resolution to a few small 4:3 sizes. With this fix, most resolutions reported by the graphics driver should be usable. It requires an unencrypted (NoCD) version of the game. I've tested up to 2560x1440.

Edit SC3U.exe with a hex editor,
search for the the byte sequence:
8b 4c 24 04 8b 44 24 08 53
and overwrite the first four bytes with:
c2 08 00 90
then search for the the byte sequence:
8b 4c 24 04 8b 54 24 08 81 f9
and overwrite the first four bytes with:
c2 08 00 90

Have fun!

Before fix

1before.jpg (130.85 KiB) Viewed 24577 times

After fix

2after.jpg (193.57 KiB) Viewed 24600 times

After fix

3game.jpg (1.08 MiB) Viewed 24793 times

[Gabriel88]

Hello,

Yes, it is working, I can set all the resolutions,
BUT, it is crushing when I will move the map.

I am using Windows 7 SP 1 64 bits, up to date.
Intel HD Graphics 4000

The first sequence is at the address: 0x7684
And the second sequence is at the address: 0x7756

I have found that the resolution is saved in the SC3.cfg file at:
0x5040 00 04 00 00 00 03 00 00
04 00 => 0x0400 => 1024
03 00 => 0x0300 => 768

I have tried to change the resolution to 1600x900, my resolution, but the game will come back to the default 800x600.

Best regards,

[Lanak]

The first sequence is at the address: 0x7684
And the second sequence is at the address: 0x7756

Those are the correct offsets for the USA version. Other languages have a different position.

but the game will come back to the default 800x600

The game might reset the cfg file to default resolution if there is an issue when setting it.

BUT, it is crushing when I will move the map.

I did some more testing and I can confirm this issue with 1600x900. Sometimes it crashes when loading a map or after it is loaded during scrolling. Some other resolutions like 1440x900 have the same issue.

I'm not sure how to fix this atm. The crashes are due to the program accessing invalid memory. This fix really only disables the resolution limits, so it is fortunate that any higher resolutions work at all. But since they were probably not originally tested it isn't surprising that some don't work.

Has anyone else tried this fix?

[Garrett]

I've successfully tested this with the original release of SimCity 3000 (I don't have Unlimited). Steps are the same apart from the executable name being different. I've posted a detailed report including your steps.

I also experienced the 1600x900 crash; 1920x1080 seems to run fine (despite being even larger).