Widescreen Gaming Forum

I have found ways to get the cameras on these 2 games to zoom out so that wide screen resolutions can be used with these games with no Vert- impact. I have not tested (and have no way of testing) whether or not these work with online games, but I can confirm that at least the LOTR solution works on a network.

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Battle for Middle Earth II (NOT Rise of the Witch King)
(Note: This only works for the original maps. If you have any maps that you've added to the game, see the ROTWK solution below)

Go here to set your desired resolution: http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/node/]
(Note that this is for the demo. You will need to go the the correct directories for the retail version and the expansion.)

Go here and download the maps.big fixer and follow the instructions in the readme:
[url]http://www.gamereplays.org/community/index.php?s=b49398e5dab57bf5a2bdd5d856d59c81&showtopic=174033&st=0

Rise of the Witch King

This one is a pain, but possible.
Go here to set your desired resolution:
http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/node/]
(Note that this is for the demo. You will need to go the the correct directories for the retail version and the expansion.)

Go here and download FinalBig:
[url]http://mevault.ign.com/View.php?view=Utilities.Detail&id=3

Run FinalBig and navigate to the "data" directory in the Rise of the Witch King game directory. Open ini.big in that directory. The file you are looking for in here is gamedata.ini. Navigate to that file withing ini.big and search (Ctrl-F) for "DefaultCameraMaxHeight" without the quotes. Change that line from this:

DefaultCameraMaxHeight = 300.0

to this:

DefaultCameraMaxHeight = 600.0

Save and close.

Now for the painful part.
Use FinalBig to open the maps.big file in the same directory as above.

Select Extract All from the Edit menu and save the files in an easy to find directory.

Open up Worldbuilder (it comes with ROTWK) and open the first map.
In the file menu, there is an option to edit the map properties (I think. I'm at work and don't have world builder in front of me to look at). Change the Max Height in the window that pops up to 600 (it should be 300, but may be something different).

Save the map.

Repeat the above steps for all the maps you want the new max height on.

Once you have finished that, save your original maps.big file to a safe place and recompile all of the edited maps into a new maps.big file using FinalBig in the ROTWK game directory. I haven't actually done this, so I'm not sure what is involved, but it should be fairly straightforward.

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Dawn of War: Dark Crusade

Go here, download the file and follow the instructions in the readme:
http://dawnofwar.filefront.com/file/Camera_Zoom;34682

This works for base Dawn of War, Winter Assault and Dark Crusade. Dark Crusade allows you to set your resolution to any valid, native resolution for your monitor, but it is Vert- in widescreen resolutions. This takes care of that by allowing you to zoom out further. Base Dawn of War and Winter Assault do not support wide screen, but you can use this to increase the zoom height.

I picked up the set and was looking to do some detailed reports.

I cannot get any noticable difference with the camera hack. The files are changed but there is no difference in game.

I have the latest patch versions. Was this disabled by a later patch?

Edit - LOTR set. Warhammer is pointless. :D

T-minus when I feel like getting the reports done. 8)

You guys need to broaden your gaming horizons. Sample the buffet people!

Sorry I haven't replied to this sooner. :)

I was messing around with this again last night and it does not work for most of the maps, and I have no idea why. Changing the DefaultCameraMinHeight allows you to zoom in further if you set it lower, but changing the MaxHeight does nothing most of the time. I will continue trying to find a way around this. In the mean time, if someone with better hex editing skills than me could find where the MaxHeight is hard coded into the game or into the maps, that would be great. Here's a starting place:

The 2 player Argonath map in skirmish mode allows the camera hack. I can successfully zoom out to the height defined in the ini.big file. I cannot, however, find this map anywhere on my system. It's not anywhere in the game directory or the "Documents and Settings" directory.

The 4 player Caldoran (sic?) map does not allow a height greater than default. It has multiple versions in the maps.big file.

Thanks for the reply.

The reason why certain maps do not work is because the value can be overridden in the map files themselves. There is a map unpacker floating around online that can give you access to the values.

I left it out of the DR because a few of us confirmed that changing the camera height does not give a true Hor + but distorts the original perspective.

Thanks again.

Well, I finally found a solution on another board for base BFMEII. I've edited my first post to reflect that. I've also added instructions for ROTWK, but it's a royal pain in the patoot.

I left it out of the DR because a few of us confirmed that changing the camera height does not give a true Hor + but distorts the original perspective.

Where can I find those statements?