Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hi there. I got myself a WUXGA display with my new laptop, but i'm having some trouble playing my favorite game: starcraft! so when some tries did nothing to improve grafics (i get an error-message which says that ma display should not be used in other than optimal resolution) i dug out dune 2000, but there i had the same problem (well, actually, dune 2000 was even worse, since it wouldn't let me do save-games... :-) would be nice if i ould rejoin the battle against zerg ans protoss!

greetz
Eisbaer

Can you give some more info on the graphics card etc? If it's ATI, it shouldn't be giving any 'non-optimal res' messages, but I don't know about nVidia.

I tried Starcraft on mine, and while it ran, it was pretty badly stretched... and the res is fixed at 640x480.

I'm using a NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5650.

The only thing I can suggest is trying the Omega nVidia drivers (http://www.omegacorner.com).

As to the saving problems with Dune 2000... it might be that it doesn't like NTFS. I presume you are using Win XP?

You are right, I'm using Win XP Professional. Could be that Dune is having trouble with the partition of the hd, but if i'm not completely wrong, win 98se was also capable of running NTFS partitions. I'll go have a look on NVIDIAs page. But i don't understand why a new grafics card with new drivers should have problems with a game so old.. i mean, shouldn't the drivers be able to work with older versions?!?

Er... Win98 never had NTFS support. Ever. That was a File System specifically for Win NT. Which is OK, because until NT5.1, it was slow, but stable. Designed for businesses, rather than home users.

And as for an old game having trouble with new drivers: it's having trouble purely because it's old. Newer games have proper up to date DirectX calls built in, the older games, even the ones that used DirectX, didn't always do the hardware calls correctly. Generally, old games don't like new hardware. 'Backwards Compatibility' is a pipe dream...

If I'm not mistaken, didn't NT5 and NT5.1 (Win2K and WinXP respectively) both use the same implementation of NTFS? In that case it wasn't NT5.1 that changed anything.

If I'm not mistaken, didn't NT5 and NT5.1 (Win2K and WinXP respectively) both use the same implementation of NTFS? In that case it wasn't NT5.1 that changed anything.

The NTFS file system was updated slightly for WinXP. One of the later Service Packs for Win 2k brought it's filesystem in line with WinXP's variant, as far as I know...

It's a shame that Starcraft never supported beyond 800x600 resolution. Boy, wouldn't it be cool at 16x12 or 19x12 for those 256x256 maps.

It's a shame that Starcraft never supported beyond 800x600 resolution.

I thought Starcraft maxed out at 640x480. Does it actually support 800x600? Everything I've seen indicates that it doesn't run in anything (higher OR lower) than 640x480. If I could run it at even a higher 4:3 A.R., that'd be great! Anyone know of a tweak to run it even at higher 4:3 resolutions?

Starcraft never supported anything other than 640x480. The only 2D Blizzard game to support 800x600 was Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction.

The only 2D Blizzard game to support 800x600 was Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction.

Was that not a mix of 2D and 3D?

The only 2D Blizzard game to support 800x600 was Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction.

Was that not a mix of 2D and 3D?

Psuedo-3d, the 2d sprites were animated and drawn to appear 3d.

And guess what - you're all wrong! See my signature :lol:

Hey nmi576, is there any way to use that technique in Windows XP, or only Vista?

Works on XP as well of course.

Okay, wait...if I understand the instructions correctly...the D3DWindower program will allow you to run Starcraft (and Diablo II) at custom resolutions...in a window. But is there a way to use this program/technique to run Starcraft with custom resolution, in fullscreen?

Okay, wait...if I understand the instructions correctly...the D3DWindower program will allow you to run Starcraft (and Diablo II) at custom resolutions...in a window. But is there a way to use this program/technique to run Starcraft with custom resolution, in fullscreen?

Depending on what you mean by 'custom resolution'.
If you speak about the normal 4:3 scale resolutions, just run StarCraft as it is. Though it will just stretch the image because the engine doesn't support 3D and is fixed at 640 pixels per width. So running it at 1280x960 will make all the pixels twice that wide and long.
If you mean widescreen resolutions, no you can't, because of the fixed res again. The only way to get around is using the VGA's Control Panel options to fix scaling (so you'll get two black bars and no stretching) or the D3DWindower to prevent distortion.

Btw you can turn window mode off in D3DWindower but that won't make it prettier, see the first point.