Zeus: Master of Olympus - Zeus and Poseidon Resolution Customiser v.1.2022.8.0 - Game mod - Download

Zeus and Poseidon Resolution Customiser is a mod for Zeus: Master of Olympus, created by XJDHDR.

Description (in author’s own words):

Program that lets you change the resolution Zeus runs at as well as apply specific patches.

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Program's readme: https://xjdhdr.gitlab.io/my_creations/Impressions_Resolution_Customiser/Zeus_Poseidon_Resolution_Customiser.html

With the wide variety of screen sizes and resolutions available, it is important for a game to be able to give the player options. This is especially important for LCD monitors in that running a game outside it's native resolution creates a blurry image. By default, Zeus and Poseidon only allow you to choose between two resolutions: 800x600 and 1024x768. Though this was manageable at the time due to these being the most common resolutions used then, screens have since gotten bigger and denser. The switch to LCD further caused issues due to their blurring images that run outside their native resolutions, as well as the adoption of widescreen aspect ratios meaning that 4:3 resolutions are stretched and distorted.

This started to change on the 5th of February, 2012 when a Widescreen Gaming Forum member named JackFuste uploaded copies of Pharaoh's EXE that he had modified to run on a few widescreen resolutions. From there, he went on to upload a number of packs and fixes containing edits for all 4 of the Impressions Studios' 2D City Building strategy games to run on a number of common resolutions and whatever resolutions users requested. While a massive improvement over the default options, the main issue was that Jack was for the most part the only one making these fixes and any resolution not already available had to be requested. Another thing that can be seen is that he became better at modifying the resolutions over time, ultimately adding some fixes to the UI in his latest mods that weren't present in earlier versions. This meant that his fixes as they stand have varying levels of quality and some resolution options simply never had fixes created.

A small area of progress here came from another Widescreen Gaming Forum member named Mario who, on the 4th of September, 2018, uploaded his own modifications for Zeus and Emperor that came with a guide describing how he created his fixes. With this guide, it was now easier for people to create their own fixes.

And that is where this project comes in. This program gives you the ability to change what resolution the game runs at. It does so by modifying the 1024x768 option so that it will instead run the game at the resolution you specified. It also resizes various elements of the game's UI to fit the new resolution. To do this, this resolution customiser needs an unmodified copy of the game's EXE. Once done, it will create a modified copy of that EXE that you can drop into the location you installed the game. In short, this utility will give you a modified copy of Zeus' EXE that will run at the resolution you specified and which has all of the fixes that are present in the last EXEs Jack released.

You can optionally apply two additional patches to the game as well. The first is a fix for an animation bug where the game suffers from slow god and urchin quay animations on modern CPUs. The second is from the inability to switch the game into windowed mode if you have customised the game's resolution.

Finally, this program can also automatically resize the game's background images to fit the new resolution.

FAQ

Is this open source? What language did you use?

Yes, it is. I have placed the source code under the MIT license and you can find it on GitHub?. The language used is C#.

What versions of Zeus are supported?

Currently, only the Steam and GOG? versions are supported. I would like to add support for more versions but to do so, I need to know where I can find these versions.

How fast is this program?

Patching just the EXE without resizing any images: Instantaneous. The program finishes pretty much right after clinking the button.

Patching the EXE and resizing images: During the testing phase, this took around 3 seconds. However, after I added multithreading to the image processing stage, the process takes around half a second on my PC (1st gen Ryzen 5 at stock speeds).

I tried to use this and saw an error that says, "Zeus.exe was not recognised. Only the following distributions and languages are currently supported: ..."

This means that you tried to modify a version of Zeus that my program doesn't recognise. In order to apply the required changes, I have to add and modify code to Zeus' EXE. To do this, I need to know exactly where the required changes need to be made. If my program applies it's changes to the wrong offsets in the EXE, it will cause problems. Due to this, I opted for a whitelist approach to figuring out where the changes need to be made. The program will only work if the Zeus.exe is recognised.

What limits are there to the resolutions this program can set?

One big limit is the maximum resolution. The size of the city viewport is determined by two multipliers that are fed into formulae to determine what size they are drawn to. Both of these are signed 8-bit numbers which means that they can reach a maximum of 127. This means that the maximum size of the game's usable UI (meaning the city viewport, top menubar and right sidebar) is 7863x1934. That said, I have configured the program to allow a higher resolution than this, where any gaps created by larger numbers will be filled in by a blue background. I have set these to be 3x larger so that the usable part of the game's window will never be less than 11.1%.

So in short, the maximum resolution you can set is 23589x5802, with the game's usable UI being limited to 7863x1934 and will be drawn in the top-left corner of the window if smaller than the overall resolution.

Besides this, your selected resolution also needs to be at least 800x600, as the game is not designed to be displayed on a resolution smaller than this.

The width component also needs to be divisible by 4, as major visual bugs happen if this is not the case.

I used this utility and the game's resolution didn't change.

This is most likely because your game is still configured to run at 800x600. You have to set the game to run at 1024x768 to use the new resolution. There are four ways you can choose to do this:

Automatic way: One of the optional downloads is My Zeus INF. Download and copy the contents into your Zeus folder.

Semi-automated way: Another optional download is Display option patcher scripts. Drop the appropriate script into your Zeus folder then run it.

Manual way: Launch the game, load a map then open the "Options->Display" menu then choose the "1024x768" option.

Manual and hard way: Open "Zeus.inf" in the folder you installed Zeus using a hex editor and look at the 17th byte. If it's value is equal to "1" or "2", change it to "3".

What are the files you have under the "Misc" section?

The first is my old widescreen fixes pack that I used to have on Sourceforge before I created this utility. It contains all of the modified EXEs I could find for Zeus that JackFuste created as well as a bunch of docs, files and helper scripts that I created which make it easier to get the game setup after installing a widescreen fix.

The second is an archive containing the scripts and tools I used to create the widescreen EXEs I packaged in the above pack.

The third is the widescreen fix that Mario created and uploaded to the WSGF post I mentioned above which has subsequently become unavailable due to changes made on the website, which included deleting all files uploaded there.

These three files are provided as-is with no support whatsoever from me. I consider all of these uploads depreciated by my utility and have mainly uploaded them to preserve their history. You might need to download the widescreen fixes pack if you are using a version of the game that is not currently supported by my utility. Otherwise, you should be using my Resolution Customiser instead of any of these.

I have an unrecognised version of the game. Can you please add support for it?

Yes, I am willing to add support for other versions of the game. There are three conditions though:

First, I am only willing to add support for fully patched copies of the game (i.e. Enhancement Pack v1.1 for Zeus alone and v2.1 with Poseidon). Digital distributions of the game are already patched. If you're using a CD version, you can download the relevant patch from here?.

Next, the game's EXE must not be modified in any way. In particular, I will not add support for no-CD patches under any circumstances. If you are using one, remove it. If you are using some other type of modification to the EXE, I recommend providing this resolution customiser an unmodified copy of the game then re-apply your modifications to the modified EXE that this program creates. If this modification is good, you could even suggest that it be added to my program.

Finally, I need to know where I can find this version of the game. This is because I need to be able to take a look at the game's files to find out at what offsets they need to be modified and test the modifications.

Why don't you support no-CD patches?

The biggest reason is because these patches are used to facilitate piracy, which is both immoral and damages PC gaming?. People who disagree will reply with things like: "I only pirate games to try them out", "games are too expensive", "I would never have paid to begin with", "game devs are greedy", "DRM is useless", "only paying customers suffer from DRM" and so on. To those people: Don't bother. I've heard them all and none of them stand up to scrutiny.

Next, even if we remove that aspect from the discussion, there is no way I can know what exactly was changed in the EXE to remove the copy protection or what bugs and incompatibilities this removal potentially caused. Additionally, there could be any number of variations of these patches where different groups would remove the copy protection in their own way, leading to different code layouts and hence, different offsets that would need to be found.

In short, the only legitimate reason I can see for using a no-CD patch is if the copy protection has stopped working on modern PCs, meaning that the game can't be played at all without one. This is not the case as far as I'm aware. If you are desperate to play this game without any DRM present, the only way I'm willing to support is to buy the GOG version.

The display menu option for selecting my resolution still says "1024x768".

This is only a cosmetic issue. Selecting this option will run the game at your chosen resolution despite what that text says. Unfortunately, I don't know what part of the game needs to be edited to change the text in that option and I don't know anyone who managed to work this out themselves. If you find out where the game needs to be edited to correct this, please do let me know.</li>

THis Project requires .NET Framework 4.0.

• Last update: Wednesday, February 15, 2023
• Genre: Strategy
• File size: 63.5 KB