Setting up childhood games

[DaSchmitt]

Hey, I'm setting up some childhood games for my younger brother to play. The games are reasonably old, running them on Windows 10 is impossible, Windows 7 managed with a few using compatibility mode but I decided to download a Virtual Machine running a copy of Windows XP Pro SP3 32-bit to run the games, as that's what I used quite often when playing the games. 3 Virtual Machine softwares later I get one that supports all the stuff like DX and the like needed to play most of the titles I want to run. So I get the discs, slot them in an run the installer, the disc comes with DX7 to run the games. The problem is, when launching the game, despite having my VM fullscreen resolution at 1080p, the game launches at 800x600, leaving everything around it black. I tried using Windows XP compatibility mode (Windows 2000 and Windows 95) to run the games but the resolution is unchanged.Is there any way to force the game to play at either 1080p, or a 1080p equivalent for the 4:3 resolution ratio. Everything else like sounds and the likes looks fine. The game doesn't have a settings menu. Any help is appreciated.

Yours,

DaSchmitt

[Zando_]

If there's mods for them sometimes there's ones to force 1080p. But some will be like the menu in Battlefront II 2005, it's locked to a certain resolution (I forget which one but it's 480p or something). I can up the game itself to 4K and such but the menu is always locked at a certain resolution. If the game doesn't have resolution options in the menus it's probably locked to a standard (for the time) one AFAIK. If you could force it to a higher res it'd likely break the UI (again, like in BFII 2005, it breaks the UI at anything higher than 1440p). 

[DaSchmitt]

4 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

If there's mods for them sometimes there's ones to force 1080p. But some will be like the menu in Battlefront II 2005, it's locked to a certain resolution (I forget which one but it's 480p or something). I can up the game itself to 4K and such but the menu is always locked at a certain resolution. If the game doesn't have resolution options in the menus it's probably locked to a standard (for the time) one AFAIK. If you could force it to a higher res it'd likely break the UI (again, like in BFII 2005, it breaks the UI at anything higher than 1440p). 

There doesn't seem to be mod for it anywhere, it's a reasonably small title that not too many people know about. Ideally I'd just like for it to fit the screen, my monitor is only made for 1080p anyways. 

[Guest]

18 minutes ago, DaSchmitt said:

Hey, I'm setting up some childhood games for my younger brother to play. The games are reasonably old, running them on Windows 10 is impossible, Windows 7 managed with a few using compatibility mode but I decided to download a Virtual Machine running a copy of Windows XP Pro SP3 32-bit to run the games, as that's what I used quite often when playing the games. 3 Virtual Machine softwares later I get one that supports all the stuff like DX and the like needed to play most of the titles I want to run. So I get the discs, slot them in an run the installer, the disc comes with DX7 to run the games. The problem is, when launching the game, despite having my VM fullscreen resolution at 1080p, the game launches at 800x600, leaving everything around it black. I tried using Windows XP compatibility mode (Windows 2000 and Windows 95) to run the games but the resolution is unchanged.Is there any way to force the game to play at either 1080p, or a 1080p equivalent for the 4:3 resolution ratio. Everything else like sounds and the likes looks fine. The game doesn't have a settings menu. Any help is appreciated.

Yours,

DaSchmitt

 

 

Can't you find the config file in the data and set the resolution manually?

[DaSchmitt]

@Netivity I've attached an image to this reply. Unfortunately all the game files are encoded into the exe file, with a some code in one other file on how the characters move. Everything else is inside that exe file. I think at least, not much of a tech expert. I'm certain that every file for the game is in that folder shown though.

[Guest]

12 minutes ago, DaSchmitt said:

@Netivity I've attached an image to this reply. Unfortunately all the game files are encoded into the exe file, with a some code in one other file on how the characters move. Everything else is inside that exe file. I think at least, not much of a tech expert. I'm certain that every file for the game is in that folder shown though.

 

 

There are a few third party options that could allow you to change the resolution from that specific .exe and then change back to the normal resolution when exited.

 

I have personally never tried it, but I have heard good things about it:

 

http://12noon.com/?page_id=80

 

 

[DaSchmitt]

31 minutes ago, Netivity said:

 

There are a few third party options that could allow you to change the resolution from that specific .exe and then change back to the normal resolution when exited.

 

I have personally never tried it, but I have heard good things about it:

 

http://12noon.com/?page_id=80

 

 

I downloaded it and tried it, my most notable attempt is:

dccmd.exe -force -width=800 -height=600 "C:\Program Files\THQ\Warner Bros\Scooby-Doo\Monsters Unleashed\Scooby.exe"
dccmd.exe -width=1920 -height=1080 -refresh=max -depth=max
pause

the pause is there because I was fixing errors and cmd kept closing. It tried both forcing my display into 800x600 and I also tried forcing the game into 1920x1080 and 1440x1080, niether worked  

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, DaSchmitt said:

I downloaded it and tried it, my most notable attempt is:

dccmd.exe -force -width=800 -height=600 "C:\Program Files\THQ\Warner Bros\Scooby-Doo\Monsters Unleashed\Scooby.exe"
dccmd.exe -width=1920 -height=1080 -refresh=max -depth=max
pause

the pause is there because I was fixing errors and cmd kept closing. It tried both forcing my display into 800x600 and I also tried forcing the game into 1920x1080 and 1440x1080, niether worked  

 

Bugger! Does it actually find the exe? Try sending a shortcut to the desktop and changing the destination to the desktop shortcut instead.

[DaSchmitt]

@Netivity It finds and opens the game with the cmd alright, it just doesn't resize it, I have a feeling it's due to the program being supported by Win7+

[Guest]

Just now, DaSchmitt said:

@Netivity It finds and opens the game with the cmd alright, it just doesn't resize it, I have a feeling it's due to the program being supported by Win7+

Yeah, at least it was worth a try... try QRes?

[DaSchmitt]

@Netivity Still no cigar. Also, the programs seem to be trying to change my monitor display resolution instead of the game resolution. 

[DaSchmitt]

One game runs in fullscreen mode perfectly on a normal host machine running Win 10 and Win 7, the rest are mostly 16-bit titles, with a few 32-bit titles that Windows has trouble with. I don't know what that means exactly, but the VM i'm using is VMWare's Workstation player 12. I'm going to try to install Win98 onto the VM, see if that changes anything.

[Guest]

9 hours ago, DaSchmitt said:

One game runs in fullscreen mode perfectly on a normal host machine running Win 10 and Win 7, the rest are mostly 16-bit titles, with a few 32-bit titles that Windows has trouble with. I don't know what that means exactly, but the VM i'm using is VMWare's Workstation player 12. I'm going to try to install Win98 onto the VM, see if that changes anything.

Are you not able to change the window size within the VM?

[UncleJarvis]

On 2/19/2019 at 3:30 PM, DaSchmitt said:

Hey, I'm setting up some childhood games for my younger brother to play. The games are reasonably old, running them on Windows 10 is impossible, Windows 7 managed with a few using compatibility mode but I decided to download a Virtual Machine running a copy of Windows XP Pro SP3 32-bit to run the games, as that's what I used quite often when playing the games. 3 Virtual Machine softwares later I get one that supports all the stuff like DX and the like needed to play most of the titles I want to run. So I get the discs, slot them in an run the installer, the disc comes with DX7 to run the games. The problem is, when launching the game, despite having my VM fullscreen resolution at 1080p, the game launches at 800x600, leaving everything around it black. I tried using Windows XP compatibility mode (Windows 2000 and Windows 95) to run the games but the resolution is unchanged.Is there any way to force the game to play at either 1080p, or a 1080p equivalent for the 4:3 resolution ratio. Everything else like sounds and the likes looks fine. The game doesn't have a settings menu. Any help is appreciated.

Yours,

DaSchmitt

Kudos for setting up your lil bro with games. I hope you get things working. I'm glad I saved my WinXP for older games I installed on my last retired build. Old school Need for Speed is awesome again.