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Pharaoh, Zeus...on widescreen
http://www.wsgf.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=14149
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Author:  romainx2 [ 04 Aug 2018, 07:55 ]
Post subject:  Re: Pharaoh, Zeus...on widescreen

If anyone has the same problem as me, you need to change the Scale and layout in the display settings. The scale was 125%, that is why the last quarter of the screen could not be seen. Select 100 % for the scale and it should work.

Author:  Pecunia [ 06 Aug 2018, 20:59 ]
Post subject:  Re: Pharaoh, Zeus...on widescreen

Jackfuste has supplied me with a patcher to patch his widescreen versions with my fixes. I've tested it and have uploaded it to HeavenGames.

XJDHDR wrote:
I've managed to patch the various widescreen patches to integrate your animation fixes as stated above. Thanks for fixing that long standing issue. I am curious though: I have no idea what you did to fix this problem; my skill is knowing how to use a hex editor and writing scripts in AutoHotkey. I saw that there are 69 instances where you replaced the byte 0x64 with 0x00. Would you be able to explain what exactly these edits accomplish? Thanks!

Some animation basics:
- Real-time animations are based on (a multiple of) a 20-millisecond update cycle
- Every 20ms, a flag is set for that render-cycle, indicating that the animation can be advanced
- Some figures in the game, notably gods and urchin collectors, use these (real-time) animations to advance their (game-time) actions

This worked well in 2000 when there was one render-cycle per 20ms, such that an animation update coincided with a "game time" advance. With modern hardware, we have multiple render cycles per 20ms interval, causing the game ticks to 'miss' their animation update and thus act incredibly slow.

The 0x64 (100) is the parameter that tells the game: "advance this figure ONLY if the animation should advance as well". Since that no longer works properly with today's hardware, I changed it to "0", meaning: "always advance". Somehow this worked perfectly well gameplay-wise, so it was an easy patch to make. Finding this bug, however, took me about half a year of reading assembly, plus a year of trying to get GOG to incorporate my fixes in the official distribution ("our techs will look at it soon", "really, it'll be soon"), before giving up and releasing it myself.

Author:  czr [ 09 Aug 2018, 10:49 ]
Post subject:  Re: Pharaoh, Zeus...on widescreen

I'm trying to achieve ultrawide 2560x1080 for caesar, the scale would look amazing.

Dropped JackFuste a pm but didn't hear back :(

Author:  Katsuni [ 10 Aug 2018, 16:20 ]
Post subject:  Re: Pharaoh, Zeus...on widescreen

I already have the 2560x1440 exe file and finished the game in both military and peacefull campaigns. Looks amazing indeed , I am waiting for the 4k one , 3840x2160 if that is even possible to play with. Here it is the one I use if you wanna give it a try , https://ufile.io/87ogl

Author:  Han Solo [ 11 Aug 2018, 00:08 ]
Post subject:  Re: Pharaoh, Zeus...on widescreen

Hi guys,
This morning I thought back to Zeus telling me that I had to replay it, I already had a version with HD resolutions, but I always had a problem of animation with the monsters and the gods.
I also remembered that among my hundreds of bookmarks, I had this forum.
So I went to this forum for the first time in years, and there, miraculously, on the last page, a message from a few days ago that offers a fix for the animations! unbelievable..

Thank you very much for your work XJDHDR ! You make immortal the most memorable PC game of my childhood !
For information it seems to work with the game in French.

Now that I have great resolutions and this animation problem is gone, I still have a problem.
In the French language, there are many accents (especially é, è, à), and these do not display well.
From memory I always had this problem with the resolutions in HD but not 16 years ago ( :crazy: ) with the original game.

Here are some examples :

Image
Here, on the first button the "î" becomes a "Ì" which in addition is shifted upwards.
The "à" becomes a "Ó" (The most serious problem because the letter is not even the good one and the "à" is very used in french, it's like "to" in english)
And all "é" are good but again they are higher than the other letters.

I note that in the game the problem is identical in the messages received by the player, and in the left menu some accents are good, some are not ...

Any ideas ? it looks like a problem of encoding but it seems complicated to fix ...

By the way, sorry for my English, as you noticed i'm french. :mrgreen:

Author:  Amun Nefer [ 14 Aug 2018, 18:43 ]
Post subject:  Re: Pharaoh, Zeus...on widescreen

I'm having a CTD whenever I try to access the World View in the 1920 x 1080 version. Doesn't happen in base resolution. Bothersome, that. :/

Edit: I should note that's with the resurrected links on the prior page. Going to try XJDHDR's fixes!

Second edit: No more CTD with XJDHDR's patch, just the map stays the same size and most of Anatolia is missing! Looks hilarious, but manageable now!

Author:  mario [ 04 Sep 2018, 20:32 ]
Post subject:  Re: Pharaoh, Zeus...on widescreen

For anyone looking to play Zeus in widescreen (1920x1080p) or ultrawide (2560x1080p) you should be using my version based on Jackfuste work.
It fixes the top menu and the right sidebar with photoshop elements, and it works because the game doesn't refresh those areas.
I've also added the notes that I've found while trying to make ultrawide possible. With these notes you should be able to do any other resolution (hopefully).
Took me one month to finish the game and the expansion, and the experience was phenomenal. Great 2D art never gets old. Enjoy!
:Download:
Zeus_1920x1080_2560x1080_gog_en.zip
https://www68.zippyshare.com/v/cJETu4qQ/file.html

Attachments:
File comment: Zeus Ultrawide
zeus_preview.jpg
zeus_preview.jpg [ 1.59 MiB | Viewed 11709 times ]

Author:  czr [ 07 Sep 2018, 10:11 ]
Post subject:  Re: Pharaoh, Zeus...on widescreen

Hi Mario - is there any way you could apply your fix to Caesar 3, or describe the process / edit required to achieve ultrawide?

I'm very keen to play @ 2560x1080

Thanks

Author:  mario [ 12 Sep 2018, 00:39 ]
Post subject:  Re: Pharaoh, Zeus...on widescreen

After Zeus I decided to try Emperor next.
A week later and I'm finally done: ultrawide fix, notes to make other resolutions and new title screen.
For the other two building games I don't have the time no more, but if I could do it (only by using Total Commander's "Compare by content" command to check for differences in the fixes done by Jackfuste) than anyone could do it.
Especially now with these notes and the games having the same engine. The addresses will be different but at least you will have an idea about what needs to be changed.

[!] Forgot to add this to Zeus notes: The game crashes if the viewport is bigger than the resolution. Check that first!!!

:Download:
Emperor_2560x1080_en.zip
https://www120.zippyshare.com/v/pPUq2Qyd/file.html

Attachments:
File comment: Emperor Ultrawide
emperor_preview.jpg
emperor_preview.jpg [ 1.53 MiB | Viewed 11277 times ]

Author:  czr [ 14 Sep 2018, 15:52 ]
Post subject:  Re: Pharaoh, Zeus...on widescreen

Hats off to you sir, keep up the good work!

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