Caesar, Settlers the best strategy games without wide?

[Broken]

edit: found a solution: changing the configs file is enough, because it edits the gfxengine.dll anyways... now what did the trick is setting screen mode to "4", because mode 1-3 seems to override your custom width (1440) and height(900) settings...

note: only worked for my PC (win7x64, ATI graphics, 1440x900), also tried with compatibility XPsp2,admin,visual design off, deact high dpi

doesnt work on my laptop... :(

[peolo]

Hello!

It doesn't work for me. My native resolution is 1440 x 900, but when I change to that I can only see the cruisor changing between the resolutions over a black background untill i terminate the game. The only widescreen resolution working is 1280 x 720, and that's to narrow for my screen. I've tried with other resolutions at that ratio (1440 x 810) but that doesn't work either.

I have a GeForce 9600M GT card and Vista 32 bit, and compablilty modes doesn't resolve the issue. Could it perhaps be related to the black box problem?

It would be really nice if someone could give me some tips!
/Gösta

Hello!

I have the same problem! My native resolution is 1280x800. Anyone has ideas?

Thank you in advance.

Ps. Nice forum BTW.

[BooTx]

Alright I'll look into this over the weekend.

[BooTx]

Well I found a couple things, but I doubt they'll help solve your problems.

I've tested on a system with an ATI card (5670 with an old CRT) and a system with an nVIDIA card (GTX 260 with a 1440x900 LCD) and on the nVIDIA system I initially had a problem using 1280x800. Attempting to change to that custom resolution just had the screen flicker and default back to 800x600. That doesn't really sound like what you two are describing, though.

In any case, I was able to get it to switch to 1280x800 by adding a custom resolution (1280x800) in the nVIDIA control panel. But seeing as how your native resolution is already 1280x800, I doubt that's your problem. If you want to look into it though you can follow the instructions in the third post of this thread. I'm sure it has to already be a recognized resolution though, since I assume you've been using it.

I do not know off the top of my head how to add custom resolutions with ATI cards. I don't have the catalyst control panel installed on here at the moment, but it's probably somewhere in there.

Oh and the second thing I found is that hardware object rendering sometimes switched the resolution back to 800x600, so I guess make sure object rendering is set to software mode.

Besides that, I don't have too many ideas. 1280x720, 1280x800, and 1440x900 all seem to be working fine here.

Can you tell me what video card and game version you're using? I've been testing on the demo since I don't own the game, so if you'd like, you can download the demo and try the fix with that version just to rule out the possibility that it's an issue with a specific game version.

I'd say perhaps it's a problem with Vista/7 (I know this game has a few problems with those OSes), but it would really be strange if it caused the custom resolutions to malfunction but not the originals.

[cpasmoi]

thanks you very much for that settlers 4 hack, it work well on my 22" @ 1680x1050.

Win 7 x64.

[tofiasz]

What to do to play Settlers III on widescreen comfortably? Because this is sooo classic game...

[tofiasz]

What to do to play Settlers III on widescreen comfortably? Because this is sooo classic game...

[VBobier]

I have the Original Settlers III by Blue Byte running under Win7 x64(I know 14 year old program), works great, except the colored cursor does not work, the only thing I can't do besides go out and buy the Gold version is change the resolution like so:

640x480 ---> 1024x768
800x600 ---> 1280x1024
1024x768 ---> 1600x900 (1440x900 is partly native)

If one needs one of the Patches and the s3old160 file I've got links for them, apply the s3old160 file, then the patch one wants, that's as far as I've gotten.

Settlers III Technical Help (Routers, XP/Vista/7 64bit, Ports, QOTA, aLobby)
the 160 patch and complete install instructions are Here:
The Settlers III 1.60 at WineHQ(it's a Linux site, but the files are for Windows as are the instructions)

Oh and I could go and buy the Gold version online, I just don't have the cash at the moment, I'm broke, plus the evaporative cooler needs a new v belt. So My old pair of CD's will just have to do until someone can help here or I get some money next month.

Oh forgot to mention this is being run on an i5 750 cpu with an EVGA GTX590 Classified, the PC has 8GB ram on the Asus P7P55D Pro motherboard.

[linkphil]

Hey, in case anyone wants to try out the widescreen fix for Settlers 4 posted previously by BooTx, do the following:

- open Settlers IV / Exe / GfxEngine.dll with an hex editor.
- find the sequence 00 04 00 00 bb 00 03
- change it to 80 07 00 00 bb 38 04
(for 1080 x 1920 resolution)


For this to work you have to set the in-game resolution to 1024x764.
If the option is not available in-game, do the following:

open Settlers IV / Config / GameSettings.cfg with Editor or WordPad.
make sure you have the options set as follows:
Screenmode = 2
WindowHeight = 786
WindowWidth = 1024


Finally, if you run into stuttering or lag, try the following:

open Settlers IV / Config / Video.cfg with Editor or WordPad.
enable the "ForceBlit-option" by writing:
ForceBlit = 1
You can also disable all videos if you want by writing:
ShowVideos = 0

I don't know what the "ForceBlit" option is doing, but it makes my game run smoothly
Hope this helps somebody.

[piotrsowa]

I like very much Settlers IV and I want to play this game on my MacBook Pro 13'' in 1280x800 resolution. To emulate I am using WS9Wine1.7.39 engine for Wineskin. Game works but not in 1280x800 resolution, so I patched it.

I changed with hex editor 2 sequences in gfxengine.dll file from Exe folder from installed game.

1st change ():
OLD: 81 F9 00 04 00 00 7F 08 81 FA 00 03
NEW: 81 F9 00 05 00 00 7F 08 81 FA 20 03

2nd change (this exists 2 times - I changed only first one sequence):
OLD: F9 00 05 00 00 75 1D 81 78 08 00 04
NEW: F9 00 05 00 00 75 1D 81 78 08 20 03

3rd change:
OLD: BD 00 05 00 00 BB 00 04
NEW: BD 00 05 00 00 BB 20 03

With above 3 changes I can use option 1280x1024 but it works almost as 1280x800.

Unfortunately it is not perfect solution because in HUD the icons where I want to choose kind of buildings or kind of properties is black. When I switch to windowed mode it looks like in picture below:
http://codingbytodesign.net/wp-content/ ... _Issue.png

Can you help me with this? Do you know what I should change to change position of this properties HUD part with resolution 1280x800?

[ReaperS3]

Salut WSG Community.

Are there any news for Settlers III? Did someone figure out how to play it comfortably in WS-resolutions? If not. Uhm. May someone maybe take another look into it? It such a great game and it would be a joy to play it in higher resolutions.

And by the way. I´m missing the S4 Hex Code for 1600x900. Can someone give it to me pls?

Regards!

[didi86]

I believe I made some progress with The Settlers III:

I am able to change the height of the game window, but any height bigger then 864px causes the game to crash. Before I go into details about the crash, here is how to change the height of the game window:

1. Open s3.exe with a Hex-Editor of your choice
2. Increase the 1024x768 resolution of the game as described earlier in this thread
3. find the first occurence of B8 00 03 00 00 (starting at address 0x000C6EBF) Don't touch the B8, but the 00 03 00 00 can be set to any value (within limits).
4. Change to one of the values below for increased height:

• 768px: B800030000
• 800px: B820030000
• 864px: B860030000

A value of 880px or more results in a crash with one of the following error mesages:

Structured Exception c0000005 occured at 0x005225F9. Write to 728d00e failed.

Structured Exception c0000005 occured at 0x004288BF. Read from 14270f08 failed.

Further notes:

• The second error only occurs if you increase the height just a little bit too much (e.g. to B8 80 03 00 00)
• I only tried increasing the height in multiples of 16: A height of 864px works, while 880px crash the game. I have not tried the values in between, so it might be possible to get a few more px without crashing the game.
• Is it possible that the game does not allocate enough memory to display a bigger game window? It would explain the exceptions if the game tries to access memory it didn't allocate first...
• The white bar at the top of the screen appears even in an unmodified game, since I upgraded to Windows 10. It seems that starting with Windows 8, Windows tries to paint some kind of window around the game, even in fullscreen mode.

[Garrett]

The Settlers III fullscreen border fix should resolve the white border issue. You can make fixes for affected games using the Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit (make a fix that includes ForceSimpleWindow, then save and install the fix package). Several pre-made fixes are available on PCGamingWiki.

[didi86]

I figured out how to change the width of the game! I don't have enough time to write a detailed post right now, but I will post the details later.

[didi86]

Thank you Garrett, your border-fix works!

Sorry it took so long, but here is the post I promised. Before I go into details, here is a list of what is possible at the moment:

• It is possible to change the screen resolution the game runs with, while the size of the game-area stays the same (as described by balver)
• It is possible to change the height and width of the game-area, within the following limits:
  
  • The width of the game-area must be smaller than 1310px (0x51E in Hex)
  • The height of the game-area can only be increased above ~864px by decreasing the width
  • The width can only be increased above ~920px by decreasing the height (making some menus unaccessable)

By "game-area" I mean the area the game itself is played in, without the menu on the left side of the screen. When the game is running at 1024x768, it's default width is 808px (0x328 in Hex).

Before it is possible to increase the game-width, it is necessary to adjust two values:

• Find 81 FF 00 04 00 00 at address 0x0002CEA0 and change the last four bytes to the width of your screen resolution (e.g. for 1680x1050 change to 81 FF 90 06 00 00)
• Find C7 05 0C 0F 73 00 00 04 00 00 at address 0x000C6EDD and change the last four bytes to the width of your screen resolution (e.g. for 1680x1050 change to C7 05 0C 0F 73 00 90 06 00 00)

Now we can change the width of the game-window:

• Find C7 05 18 0F 73 00 28 03 00 00 at address 0x000C6EF2 and change the last four bytes to your desired value (e.g. for the maximum width of 920px change to C7 05 18 0F 73 00 98 03 00 00)

By increasing the width too much, I got the following errors:

Structured Exception c0000005 occured at 0x0052243A. Write to 1488a580 failed.

Structured Exception c0000005 occured at 0x005FC4F2. Write to 593ef2a failed.

Further notes:

• I'm not sure why the width-limit of 1310px is there, but if you search s3.exe for 1E 05 00 00, you will find the value more than 30 times. Also some of these occurences are near the addresses that are listed in the crash-error-messages
• I won't try to fix the 1310px-limitation, until there is a way to increase the width that far, without decreasing the height.
• I still believe that the game does not allocate enough memory to display a bigger game window. I will keep digging, but to be honest, I don't even know where to look at the moment...

[marcinx89]

I'd like to change resolution for 1366x768 but I don't see the values in gfxengine,dll 00 03 ?? only 00 04 visible ?

[Guest]

I have exactly the same problem, only 00 04 visible.

[Opa114]

Thank you Garrett, your border-fix works!

Sorry it took so long, but here is the post I promised. Before I go into details, here is a list of what is possible at the moment:

• It is possible to change the screen resolution the game runs with, while the size of the game-area stays the same (as described by balver)
• It is possible to change the height and width of the game-area, within the following limits:
  
  • The width of the game-area must be smaller than 1310px (0x51E in Hex)
  • The height of the game-area can only be increased above ~864px by decreasing the width
  • The width can only be increased above ~920px by decreasing the height (making some menus unaccessable)

By "game-area" I mean the area the game itself is played in, without the menu on the left side of the screen. When the game is running at 1024x768, it's default width is 808px (0x328 in Hex).

Before it is possible to increase the game-width, it is necessary to adjust two values:

• Find 81 FF 00 04 00 00 at address 0x0002CEA0 and change the last four bytes to the width of your screen resolution (e.g. for 1680x1050 change to 81 FF 90 06 00 00)
• Find C7 05 0C 0F 73 00 00 04 00 00 at address 0x000C6EDD and change the last four bytes to the width of your screen resolution (e.g. for 1680x1050 change to C7 05 0C 0F 73 00 90 06 00 00)

Now we can change the width of the game-window:

• Find C7 05 18 0F 73 00 28 03 00 00 at address 0x000C6EF2 and change the last four bytes to your desired value (e.g. for the maximum width of 920px change to C7 05 18 0F 73 00 98 03 00 00)

By increasing the width too much, I got the following errors:

Structured Exception c0000005 occured at 0x0052243A. Write to 1488a580 failed.

Structured Exception c0000005 occured at 0x005FC4F2. Write to 593ef2a failed.

Further notes:

• I'm not sure why the width-limit of 1310px is there, but if you search s3.exe for 1E 05 00 00, you will find the value more than 30 times. Also some of these occurences are near the addresses that are listed in the crash-error-messages
• I won't try to fix the 1310px-limitation, until there is a way to increase the width that far, without decreasing the height.
• I still believe that the game does not allocate enough memory to display a bigger game window. I will keep digging, but to be honest, I don't even know where to look at the moment...

interesting what you found out, but there any new news about chaning the screen / ingame resolution? On Settlers 4 there are working widescreen fixes to play the game in high resolutions and on 16:9 display with corect aspect ratio. I like settlers 3 and want to play it on my modern PC in a higher resolution or even with right 16:9 aspect ratio and not in old 4:3 ratio. so any fixes now out?

[Nicholas Steel]

I am using the suggested Be.HexEditor program to modify The Settlers IV and none of the suggested strings to search for in gfxengine.dll can be found. I tried a Text search and a Hex search. I am copy/pasting the suggested strings in to the Search box.

I have the latest GOG version of the game for Windows.

Edit: It seems that the suggested strings should be provided without spaces between the numbers, to best facilitate copy/pasting. For example, copy/pasting 00 05 00 00 bb 00 04 00 00 results in no search results since the empty spaces are parsed as data. Instead you should copy/paste 00050000bb00040000 in to the bottom box in the Search UI.

[Nicholas Steel]

00 04 and 00 03 represent the resolution 1024x768. Change it to whatever resolution you need.

1024x600 - Replace 00 04 with 00 04 and replace 00 03 with 58 02
1280x720 - Replace 00 04 with 00 05 and replace 00 03 with D0 02
1280x800 - Replace 00 04 with 00 05 and replace 00 03 with 20 03
1366x768 - Replace 00 04 with 56 05 and replace 00 03 with 00 03
1440x900 - Replace 00 04 with A0 05 and replace 00 03 with 84 03
1680x1050 - Replace 00 04 with 90 06 and replace 00 03 with 1A 04
1920x1080 - Replace 00 04 with 80 07 and replace 00 03 with 38 04
1920x1200 - Replace 00 04 with 80 07 and replace 00 03 with B0 04

There is no 00 03 in the highlighted code. Where am I supposed to input B0 04 for 1920x1080? Why is there no hex editing examples for changing the 1280x768 resolution mode so that we can have all the UI features?