Patched: Age of Empires 2 Conquerers

[skipclarke]

Has anyone been able to test this on a triple setup like a TripleHead2Go or an Eyefinity? I have the hardware, but not the game.

[scavvenjahh]

Been frantically looking for my CD to test just this, but all I can find is Age of Mytho & AOE3 :cry:
The screenshot 3 posts above is a good omen anyway. Excellent stuff !

[boekabart]

@FatJacky: I have the feeling that it shouldn't be very much harder than patching another version of the executable for the expansion pack. I'll let you know when I've had a chance to do this analysis.
@Ibrin: That should work as long as your windows is in Hor/Ver span mode, which Vista and 7 don't support anymore. DualView (TripleView) won't work as each of those screens has their own resolution and AoE just handles 1 (the primary) of them,
@Cornettes: Run the new (age2_x1_1680x1050.exe) executable. I dont' know where it has to be, but it could be that it has to be in either the main folder or age2_x1 (that's the 2 locations I know that work).
@everyone wanting to donate: My paypal account is [email protected] . As much as I appreciate all the positive reactions here, tangible support is welcome, obviously (might help me explain to my better half why I spend so much time on this :P )

AND ONCE AGAIN: ALWAYS GO TO OPTIONS AND SET THE RIGHT RESOLUTION!! (1280x1024 for anything 960 or higher, 1024x768 for other)

[skipclarke]

The Matrox TripleHead2Go and the ATI Eyefinity present Windows with one large single display, so this should work in Surround or Eyefinity.

Posted this one the home page, and posted your PayPal link.

[Paranoid]

Has this been tested for 2560x1600? I'm about to test it myself over the weekend, as work permits.

Congratulations to Boekabart though!

[boekabart]

Has this been tested for 2560x1600?

Vertical resolutions larger than 1536 are not supported yet because of the way the vertical stretching works, by the way!

Working on it...

[boekabart]

Update!
[list]* Support for 1.0c and 1.0e executables. No support for version without expansion pack (yet).[/list:u]
[list]* Support for vertical resolutions higher than 1536 (I think unlimited). Proof below in the form of a 1680x2100 screenshot[/list:u]
[list]* Fixed vertical position of top-left text[/list:u]
[list]* AoE2Wide creates a batch file in the game folder and the desktop that allows you to easily start a widescreen version of the game, without having to check the resolution in the options screen all the time. Also, on Vista an win7, this will try to kill explorer.exe before the game, and start it again afterwards, in order to fix the palette issue (which is not a patch issue, by the way).[/list:u]
[list]* Created an MSI installer. http://boekabart.dyndns.org/aoe2wide/latestpatcher/AoE2WideSetup.msi[/list:u]
[list]* UAC: AoE2Wide.exe now requests elevation, and is therefore able to write directly to the game folder. Note that it will not overwrite any original files, nor abuse the elevation for something else.[/list:u]

Little note about the support for different versions: If you have multiple versions alongside each other, AoE2Wide will find them all (all supported, that is) and create multiple patched exes, one for each version. Also, the batchfiles will be duplicate. If you name the executables, for example, age2_x1_1.0e.exe and age2_x1_1.0c.exe, the 'suffix' will appear back in the patched-exe and shortcut names.

Known issues:
[list]* Only expasion pack (conquerors) works at the moment[/list:u]
[list]* The vertical position during recorded game playback seems incorrect[/list:u]
[list]* The background and especially the Load/Save dialogs don't look good yet due to the way the images are stretched now[/list:u]

If you want to support the past and future development of this patch, please visit http://boekabart.dyndns.org/aoe2wide/donate.html where you can find a PayPal donate button. Thank you very much!

[popposoft]

Thanks man

Works very well!

Now I enjoy my full res 1920x1200!

[cool_recep]

As I promised at AOK Heaven, here is the FullHD gaming @ 46" Samsung LED :rockout :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock:




Thanks for the patch. You can use the photos for promoting the patch, thus getting more donations :)

Edit: It would be better if you add pskill.exe to the patch.

Thanks

[boekabart]

It would be better if you add pskill.exe to the patch.

I don't MS allows me to redist their programs just like that....

[cool_recep]

[quote]It would be better if you add pskill.exe to the patch.

I don't MS allows me to redist their programs just like that....

If you don't mind, I will, giving the credit of the patch to you ;)

[skipclarke]

[quote][quote]It would be better if you add pskill.exe to the patch.

I don't MS allows me to redist their programs just like that....

If you don't mind, I will, giving the credit of the patch to you ;)

It would be best to just link people back to his download site, as he updates versions of the patch.

Boekabart, it might be good to write up a quick tutorial and include a link and info about pskill.exe. I had never heard of it and had to Google. I could you that write-up for the Wiki entry here as we add you to the download section.

[Nelson VDV]

Hi everyone. I just made my account here, because i'm also playing AOE 2 and i'm trying the high resolution files!

At first it worked, but the colors were a bit wrong :doh . I found out that it was because i'm working with Windows 7 64-bit. Strangely you need to block the explorer.exe while playing. Then it works great :bowdown ! But i had to do it manual with "pskill", so if you would please add it to the files.

Then I had an other problem, apparently i had to change the .bat file because there was "ECHO off". So for future people who use this, I think it would be very good if you had a normal widescreen setup file and a second one for Vista/Windows 7 users. You get what i mean?

This is one of the most helpfull forums ever! :D

[Beremat]

Thanks for the patch! It works perfectly fine on 1920x1080.
However, there is, in my opinion, no need of pskill.exe. Since I was so lazy, I just edited the batch file your patch created with this code:
taskkill /F /IM Explorer.exe
This will kill all instances of explorer.exe, and there's no need for external utilities.

[boekabart]

@Nelson DVD: I do not get what you mean. PSKill just has to be in your path, put it OR in the aoe folder OR in windows, system32, or add the folder to your path.
What is the problem with echo off?
If you are on XP, it will not write the pskill and start explorer lines to the batch files, only when you run on vista/7 it does.

http://live.sysinternals.com/pskill.exe

[Sonickid101]

Hi new member here I just tried this hack using my Triplehead2go setup using 3 19" monitors with a resolution of 4320x900 (3x1440x900) which failed with an error.
However I have confirmed 2880x900 using 2 19" monitors which worked fine. Screen-shots to follow.

[Nelson VDV]

@Nelson DVD: I do not get what you mean. PSKill just has to be in your path, put it OR in the aoe folder OR in windows, system32, or add the folder to your path.
What is the problem with echo off?
If you are on XP, it will not write the pskill and start explorer lines to the batch files, only when you run on vista/7 it does.

http://live.sysinternals.com/pskill.exe

Never mind. I reinstalled the game and the patch and everything is working great! I don't know why it failled yesterday...

[Paranoid]

I have not managed to get the game to run on 2560 x 1600. The installer .msi seems to do its work correctly, creating the expected files, for the 1.0c version that I downloaded... but no gameplay (menus work correctly).

Any help would be appreciated!

Update: the game ran once, with elements placed all over the screen (ie minimap at wrong locations, button shadows in different places than the buttons, view usable but smaller than viewport) and pink covering bottom and right part of screen.

Any help?

[skipclarke]

I have not managed to get the game to run on 2560 x 1600. The installer .msi seems to do its work correctly, creating the expected files, for the 1.0c version that I downloaded... but no gameplay (menus work correctly).

Any help would be appreciated!

Update: the game ran once, with elements placed all over the screen (ie minimap at wrong locations, button shadows in different places than the buttons, view usable but smaller than viewport) and pink covering bottom and right part of screen.

Any help?

Read further up in the thread. You have to kill explorer (or some such thing). Some pretty extensive discussion about it.

[Tanuki]

Is this pixel-based?