Posted December 06, 2023
The game is quite particular when it comes to resolutions in that only 4:3 seems to be supported. I wanted to play it on a 4k monitor and here is what I am happy with.
First of all, download dgVoodoo. i am using 2.81.1, but the exact version should not be that important. If you like old games, do get familiar with this wonderful tool, I use it basically for every second game, it is really great. So I won't explain it here, just give the key configuration.
The main trick is, that I want to cut the letterboxes a bit. Not too much, since then the menus don't work anymore and also some ingame status messages are shown above the black bars.
In the "General" tab, set the full screen scaling mode to "centered, keep aspect". Set the resolution in-game to some 4:3 resolution (I use 800x600) and then set in the DirectX tab of dgVoodoo the resolution to 4x. Also enable the dgVoodoo watermark, to see if it is being use. If it shows up correctly, you can disable it again.
What happens is the following: The game thinks, everything is in 800x600. It is actually rendered at a resolution of 3200x2400, so everything is super sharp. The fullscreen mode than clips this, since 2400 is larger than 2160 (which is the height of the 4k resolution), the image is centered and a part on the top and bottom is cropped. The vertical resolution is just 3200, which is lower than 3880, so I have black bars on the left and right and thus the proper 4x3 aspect ration.
If you are using different resolutions, adjust the settings accordingly.
It might be possible to combine this with the widescreen patch. But what was important for me is that everything is rendered in the correct aspect ratio and that I get rid of most of the bars at the top and the bottom. Adjusting the values differently, you can zoom in more, but than the menus and part of the GUI might be outside the screen.
First of all, download dgVoodoo. i am using 2.81.1, but the exact version should not be that important. If you like old games, do get familiar with this wonderful tool, I use it basically for every second game, it is really great. So I won't explain it here, just give the key configuration.
The main trick is, that I want to cut the letterboxes a bit. Not too much, since then the menus don't work anymore and also some ingame status messages are shown above the black bars.
In the "General" tab, set the full screen scaling mode to "centered, keep aspect". Set the resolution in-game to some 4:3 resolution (I use 800x600) and then set in the DirectX tab of dgVoodoo the resolution to 4x. Also enable the dgVoodoo watermark, to see if it is being use. If it shows up correctly, you can disable it again.
What happens is the following: The game thinks, everything is in 800x600. It is actually rendered at a resolution of 3200x2400, so everything is super sharp. The fullscreen mode than clips this, since 2400 is larger than 2160 (which is the height of the 4k resolution), the image is centered and a part on the top and bottom is cropped. The vertical resolution is just 3200, which is lower than 3880, so I have black bars on the left and right and thus the proper 4x3 aspect ration.
If you are using different resolutions, adjust the settings accordingly.
It might be possible to combine this with the widescreen patch. But what was important for me is that everything is rendered in the correct aspect ratio and that I get rid of most of the bars at the top and the bottom. Adjusting the values differently, you can zoom in more, but than the menus and part of the GUI might be outside the screen.