Mask of Eternity Widescreen mode?

[Baggins]

Has anyone figured a way to force Mask of Eternity into non-native resolutions including widescreen?

If it could be done, I'm guessing it would improve the visuals somewhat on modern machines.

[dark-daventry]

I didn't know you could force applications into resolutions they weren't meant to go into... Hmm. Unhappily, I know not.

[Baggins]

Oh there is a whole community that does it check out 'wide screen gaming' website for example! It's been progressively needed because the rise of wide screens and native monitor resolutions in lcd screens. Games run better and look better when they are running at computer's native resolution.

I don't know if you play thief games but those are some that really improve with use of widescreen mod!

[MusicallyInspired]

To my knowledge, this hasn't ever been done with Mask of Eternity.

[Baggins]

Doing some research, some have done it for some it the other games based on the 3Space engine, it's apparently a simple matter of editing a few .cs files.

The only problem Mask uses a highly modified version of the engine to a point it arguably could be called a new engine. Many if the files have completely different names. There are a lot of .kq files for example. Also it already had an extremely restricted set of resolutions when it was first released.

I've looked through the files in notepad to see if there are any that might have resolution settings, but most do not. The most promising is the 'main.kq' which has x and y listings. These are set to 0 in the files though, and modifying them doesn't seem to have any effect, other than the game becomes unstable, and doesn't seem to load properly. Basically I got music of the main menu, but the game looked to be minimized onto the desktop

Here is the Main.KQ file text;

[Window]
classType=KQMainWindow
x=0
y=0
numRasters=3000
background=0
aviPlayed=1
shutDownOK=1

Ok, another file, 'Console.cs' appears to manage the resolutions as well. Again appears to be set resolutions;

KQSound::setSpeechVol 0.93
KQSound::setSfxVol    0.87
KQSound::setMusicVol  0.87
setShadowMask 15
useDynamicLighting 1
set Options::Captions true
notStartingHelp 1
assignGModeName Glide
setBrightness 47
set800mode 1

The 'set800mode' appears to be related to the resolution. However, as far as I know I don't think there are only a couple of in game modes, 640x480, if you are running with glide it can be pushed up to 800x600 mode.

This link would seem to show that some versions of the game (Russian) have a 1024x768 mode in the graphics menu (though no such option appears on either of my laptops or other computers I have access to in the house, so I doubt it appears in the English version of the game);
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ru&u=http://www.old-games.ru/forum/showthread.php%3Ft%3D23163%26page%3D4&ei=hQFbTquzNszWiALB47zHCQ&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CB4Q7gEwAA&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dset800mode%2Bmask%2Bof%2Beternity%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26biw%3D1366%26bih%3D622%26prmd%3Divns

Now the question what files is the console.cs making calls to? Would it be possible to modify those files somehow (hexediting, etc) to add in extra 'modes'?

More possibly important files found;
Another 'Main.kq'  under the folder KQ8/GAME/Kq folder. This one lists width and height!

[Window]
classType=KQMainWindow
x=0
y=0
width=640
height=480
background=81
resMode=HiResDirectDraw
;resMode=HiResWindow
HiResWindow=0
LoResWindow=0
HiResDirectDraw=1
LoResDirectDraw=1
HiResDirect3D=0
LoResDirect3D=0

[dark-daventry]

It would be nice to see what the difference is... I'm actually kind of feeling like replaying MoE now... I never thought I'd want to

[Baggins]

Ya, if we could figure out how to patch the game into more modes, it would really improve the game I think.

There are games form that era Thief: The Dark Project, Thief Gold, and Thief II: The Metal Age, that actually has slightly worse graphics (polygon and texture wise). But it looks a whole alot better on native resolution and widescreen!

Here is a screenshot of widescreen patch applied to Thief II;

[Arkillian]

If you can patch it to a higher res I may consider playing it sooner. I don't know much about screen res issues though and playing games in window box mode sucks big time

[Baggins]

The problem is I'm not a programmer... If I was, I would definitely try to take the time to find a way to patch the game.

I've tried modifying these various files by changing the resolutions in them, but it doesn't seem to do anything, some cases made the game unstable, or it wouldn't load. My guess is that they are related still other files, that need to be modified as well to add in new resolutions.

We need someone to look at it, that has some programming background, and might figure out what these files are controlling!

playing games in window box mode sucks big time

I don't think the game plays in a windowed box, at least I have never seen that occur. It should just stretch the non-native resolution across your monitor. This just causes the game to have a 'stretched appearance', and textures tend to look a bit more blurry (its not that bad actually). If we could patch the game to have higher resolution/wide screen it'll look more sharp, and the stretching will be gone.

On my Alienware M11x R3 (it has Win 7) it glitches on the 800x600 mode with black bars on left and right, and top and bottom stuck in 4:3 mode. I don't know why (other games seem to stretch fine in that resolution).

Note: I'm testing the game using a Glide Wrapper (Zeckensack's as it was the most stable), since it looks better than on Direct 3D or Direct Draw modes (it has additional atmospheric lighting, and other improved FX).
Seems to work ok on other computers.

However, I'm not sure Zeckensack is widescreen capable either. So there may need to be work to make a patch, that will 'wrap' the various 3DFX mode calls in KQ8 directly to Direct 3D mode, and enhance the Direct 3D mode to access all features with higher resolutions. Similar to the Deus Ex DirextX 10 renderer patch.

[DawsonJ]

Is it possible to use the in-game debug terminal to try to adjust the visible dimensions in real time? (As opposed to editing scripts and reloading the game, time after time.)

According to documents I've read, the game uses the following syntax, for temporary changes:

SET <variable>::<parameters>

http://www.gamewinners.com/DOSWIN/blkingsquest8.htm

[Baggins]

I'll have to give it a try. Not sure what to type in the 'parameters" though.

[DawsonJ]

I know it doesn't reveal all the coding, but the Debug terminal does show some of the code that's happening. Maybe something like. SET Allow1024x768Mode::TRUE.

I'd have to check the syntax again. The GameWinners page has one for allowing Alt-Enter.

Edit:
Left Ctrl-Left Shift-7. Then, type ALIAS for a list of commands. If someone knows graphics (GFX) settings, they may be able to adjust the height and width measurements for the display.

showGfx show $GFXMetrics::UsedEdges

Maybe that string can be modified to increase the size with a SET command. Although, the SHOW command just ECHOs 0.

In order to check the outcome of a command, you have to close the Debug terminal, then relaunch it. (Ctrl-Shift-7 twice)

The terminal allows for a Clear Screen command, being CLS. If your screen starts flashing, just type CLS to start over.


Edit:
Does anybody know the Raster count calculation for screen resolutions? The game defaults at 3000. I've searched, but I can't find any equations for Rasters per resolution.