Hi boekabart,
Some years ago I discovered this thread, applied the fix and have ever since been able to fully play AOE 2 on a nice 1920*1080 monitor.
I'd like to say thanks for that!
Times change, though.
Months ago while doing upgrades to my PC, setup etc I bought 2 extra Full HD monitors and set them up with the AMD Eyefinity technology which enables Windows to recognize my 3 screens as one big whole screen.
That means my screen resolution is now 5936*1080 (three 1920*1080 monitors with some bezel correction).
Since then I've been trying now and then to get AOE2 working with the widescreen patch. Unfortunately, it's still not working. Sorry to dissappoint the people who are jumping to see Eyefinity screenshots!
After not seeing any solution anywhere in this thread, I've decided to make an account and post exactly what happened.
Before recording everything that happened below, I've already installed the latest version of the patch like 5 times already because I was out of options (had no clue what else I could try).
That means we're absolutely sure I have everything up to date. I'm even using the age2_x1.exe from your site (http://www.boekabart.net/aoe2wide/age2_x1.exe).
I've also deleted all files and batch files that were generated before, leaving just the age2_x1.exe file (and the other standard AOE2 files of course :P).
Here are my other system specs: Windows 7 x64 bit, Intel Core i7-2600, AMD Radeon HD 6770, 3 Full HD monitors. Not saying those are extremely important because it worked well before on 1 monitor.
First I launched the generated batch file under completely normal circumstances. I just double clicked the batch file; no compatibility mode, no administrator, nothing special.
This showed up:
The triple menu might confuse you, but I can assure you that's really normal for games. The menu will always be in 800*600 resolution, and it's NOT uncommon for games to duplicate their image multiple times so it fills the other area's (screens in this case).
This does not mean that Eyefinity is not working correctly. Windows and all programs still recognize it as a whole single screen, but games usually fill up other space with the same image when your set resolution is way too 'stretched' in comparison to the aspect ratio (I mean, 5936*1080, it's almost 6:1).
I might be wrong here for some cases, but you know what I mean. ;)
The same happens when I'm in this menu. Still nothing wrong.
Things changed when I finally clicked the Start Game button (yes I didn't take a PrintScreen, live with it :P).
I restarted the game, again using the batch file and nothing else that's special.
When going into the map editor it
still has the menu resolution and looks like this:
But the game still crashes when testing the map.
So I relaunched the batch file
with Compatibility Mode set on Windows XP (Service Pack 2) on all files.
When trying to play a match, the game doesn't crash anymore, but is still unplayable as it shows really weird graphically glitched results like this:
Another thing I tried is launching the game
directly from the executable file, NOT the batch file. In this case the Compatibility Mode really doesn't make a difference, apart from the intro video.
The game is now a little bit playable, but of course still heavily glitched. It fills the '1280*1024 part' of my screens but the actual game seems to have place in the upperleft 800*600 area.
When going in the map editor, it also uses the 1280*1024 resolution instead of standard menu resolution (800*600 which only happened when launching from the batch file).
Obviously it also has glitched colours, but I'll only care about them when I finally fixed this whole issue. :/
I hope this thread isn't too old/inactive.. Any advice/help is welcome!