Widescreen Gaming Forum

Does someone know some widescreen solution for pharaoh and Zeus Sierra's games? I can't put them in a 16/10 resolution :(
Those games are really great but with a widescreen resolution... :w00t



Please help, and sorry for my poor english...

Something to do? :roll:

Continuing from the IRC... ;)

If we don't have the games, we can't be of help. Sorry. :(

Ok.

However, those games are similar to Caesar III, this is more famous. I think that someone could have it.

byez

I do believe those are DX7 correct? They are pretty old.

They came out in 1999-2000. DirectX 6.1 would be more likely. They were strictly 2D games, so calling them "DirectX 6" games wouldn't mean the same thing as calling Half-Life a "DirectX 6" game.

In any event, the year of their release is a better indicator of how old they are than which version of DirectX they used.

I used to have both of these games, but I know I don't have Zeus any more, and I doubt I have Pharaoh any more. I doubt a widescreen solution is likely. If you want to try to find one yourself, you could start by locating the file the resolution is stored in. Try this:

Set the game to the lowest resolution. Save settings, and quit.
Copy the game directory to another drive (or another directory).
Launch the game, and set it to the highest resolution. Save settings, and quit.
Move the copy of the game directory back to the original location.
Launch the game.

If the resolution is at the highest setting, then it isn't stored in a file in the game directory. Look somewhere else. It's most likely either in another directory, or in the registry. But if the resolution is at the lowest, then it's stored in a file in the game directory. Repeat the above five steps, but on the fourth step, move *some* of the files back, not all. Keep doing this until you isolate the settings to the right bunch of files, then repeat the steps again until you find the one file that holds it.

"Deleted"

That would take hours..

I've used this method before, and it usually takes me all of 20 minutes to find "the file" on a game with a 600-700MB installation size. Pharaoh and Zeus are much smaller than that.

Hi ! I also have the same problem with these games and I tried cranky hermint's method and found the file ! although there's a problem I can't understand the language it is written in, the file is .INF extension. and it has the following content :
. d d Osorkon 2 d P d d B

that's it ! don't know whitch letters shoud I change to set a different resolution ! If someone knows this stuff pls answer ! many thX :?

Sorry for necroposting but..just had to bump this one. Anyone found any solutions to this yet? This game is simply one of the best city building games based on greek mythology out there. The building graphics in this game especially sanctuaries/temples look so realistic and beautiful that they make even the best looking ones from other 2D RTS like Age of Empires 2 look like shacks and unlike AOE2 this game doesn't suffer from palette corruption in Windows 7 with aero enabled and in terms of gameplay, well its the pinnacle of Sierra's city building series. C'mon guys, doesn't anyone play this game anymore to find a widescreen fix? This game definitely deserves one. :(

I made very small progress: If you analyse Zeus.inf (which is the .inf mentioned above) in a Hex editor, you can see that at 0x10 is a value telling the game which of the resolutions was used last time, i.e. your settings. 02 for 800x600, 03 for 1024x768. (I'm guessing it will be 01 for window mode). This shows that the .inf is actually not useful in customizing a resolution. The actual resolution values are stored somewhere else, maybe in Zeus.exe itself.

EDIT: I made somewhat of a progress... I managed to change the fullscreen resolution from 800x600 to 1280x720 by editing Zeus.exe, but the game itself won't scale accordingly. It looks totally messed up:


(German version, incl. Poseidon add-on in case you are wondering)

If it is helpful for anyone: I searched for 58 02 and checked if there was a 20 03 nearby (800 and 600). Everytime I found something, I changed it to d0 02 and 00 05 for 1280 x 720, saved and started the game to see if anything had changed. The resolution could be changed at 0x17ccb1 and 0x17ccbb. (20 03 00 00 c7 05 e8 68 fc 00 58 02 00 00). Any suggestions what I could try?

Excellent hanfmeier..finally some progress. Yes you are correct, the actual resolution values are stored in the main executable itself just like Age of Empires II so if a widescreen solution for Zeus is to be found it needs to be in the lines of what boekabart did here;
http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=18102&start=0
But I guess its a lot more complicated than it sounds..

A couple of things though, that should make the development of a widescreen patch/fix for Zeus easier are i) Unlike AOE 2 Zeus has an option for running it windowed and ii) Zeus does not suffer from any pixel corruption like AOE2 on Windows 7 Aero enabled.

Just a thought. :hide

no progress?

Found this awesome Zeus gameplay vid in HD on Youtube;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pt9vDI8kOY

My initial thought was this guy somehow found a widescreen fix but no, he says he just increased the vid rez to make it HD. Looks cool though. :cry:

It seems to me that the method I used to patch AoE2 would be possible on this game too.. You'd have to find a way to fix the graphics files too, though.

For patching the exe, you'd be able to use the aoe2 patcher code pretty much literally, you'd just have to find all the relevant resolution/coordinate related locations in the executable which, trust me, is a hell of a job....

I won't be helping doing that, don't know the game and don't have time for it anyways. But I'm always here to support if any questions arise!

Although this thread is very old, I'd still be interested in seeing some sort of solution for these particular games.
The image linked to earlier by hanfmeier (showing Zeus running with a modified .exe) will apparently be taken down soon so I've mirrored it on imgur instead. I hope it comes in useful for anyone who will see this thread in the future.
Zeus on imgur

I also really want to get these games to run in widescreen.. Caesar 3 and Pharaoh mostly! If its all in the .exe then I guess using a program like TSearch to see what values change when you adjust the resolution in-game and then trying to manipulate those values in hex editor could work.. It has been a long time since I did such a thing though so I will leave it to someone else..

wow 2007 until 2012 :)
the truth is.. i want to play this in widescreen too...

but why not make pharaoh 2, emperor 2, but just don't like caesar III to caesar IV. caesar IV is addict to me... but i wanna play pharaoh old style, emperor old style... in better grafic of course...

its too long for waiting, i think "pharaoh widescreen patch" will never existed :(

gl guys, hope you can make 1 :)))

Fix for Pharaoh v.1.2
Resolution of 1024x768 changed to widescreen.
Know bug: game crashes if you are too high scrolled map of the world. Do not scroll the map of the world above, Syria. It is better to use the arrow keys to scroll the map of the world, to avoid game crash.

Files available from https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files (search there)

Fix for Pharaoh v.1.2

Awesome, thanks jackfuste, a Detailed Report was created. :twothumb