Display resolution issues (legacy Gaming)

hoom

Veteran
Hey guys,

This has been an issue for some time but only minor mostly but has come to a head recently:
Does anybody know how I can play on lower resolution than native on my Primary monitor without it messing up Desktop on the 2ndary?

I have a 30" 2560*1600 with 2ndary 24" 1920*1200 in Extended mode, RX5600XT, both display port & just normal 60Hz at native.

There is a legacy game I'm wanting to play a bunch but it only does 4:3 resolutions so nearest to 2560*1600 is 2048*1536 and when I fire up the game the Game loads full-screen but the extra pixels width from the Primary Desktop get squished over onto the 2ndary monitor, forcing the outside edge of the 2ndary Desktop offscreen.

Setting the Desktop resolution on Primary display to the lower resolution works but seems like an excessively manual step, surely there is a way that this should be behaviour I can set in Windows or Graphics drivers somewhere?
 
I havnt used an amd card since the 6950 with eyefinity but if the same mechanisms exist within the drivers
then setup you monitors the way you like them save as a profile give it a name eg: Default give it some hotkeys eg CTRL- SHIFT - 1
disable your second monitor setup your primary to play the game save as a profile give it a name eg: Legacy give it some hotkeys eg CTRL- SHIFT - 2
then
CTRL- SHIFT - 2
play game
CTRL- SHIFT - 1
 
If by 'legacy' you mean 'MS-DOS', then no.

You could do it in OS 2.x-4.x, which allowed full-screen graphics games to run in a DOS box window, using a Virtual DOS machine, as well as Windows XP and 32-bit Vista/7 with XP drivers, with some limitations. But unfortunately 16-bit NTVDM is not included with 64-bit x64 editions of Windows, because AMD64 Long Mode doesn't include a Virtual 8086 mode.
I mean Rome:Total War which is a 2004 32bit executable, I think that'll be XP?

I was thinking if it could be made to run in some kind of virtualised window the game would think its full-screen but the window be non-fullscreen on my desktop like consoling into a VM -> not mess up my desktop/require manual resolution change before I run it.
 
Why don't you get the remastered version which natively supports modern displays?

https://store.romeremastered.totalwar.com/

Steam re-releases of legacy games are always updated to support the latest Windows versions, UHD display resolutions and wide/ultra-wide aspect ratios.

They would also include bugfixes to long-standing issues which were not adressed in the original release, and also support Steam network gameplay in place of their original publisher-hosted Internet servers or peer-to-peer connections.
 
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Why don't you get the remastered version which natively supports modern displays?

https://store.romeremastered.totalwar.com/

Steam re-releases of legacy games are always updated to support the latest Windows versions, UHD display resolutions and wide/ultra-wide aspect ratios.

They would also include bugfixes to long-standing issues which were not adressed in the original release, and also support Steam network gameplay in place of their original publisher-hosted Internet servers or peer-to-peer connections.

I have been using FAR too much time on Rome - Total War Remastered since it was released :runaway:
 
Remastered doesn't have the mods I'm playing but is the reason I've gone back to playing it.
Its not just this game though, there are plenty of legacy apps that don't support modern resolutions & its going to be more of a problem if I get round to buying a 4K monitor.
 
Remastered doesn't have the mods I'm playing but is the reason I've gone back to playing it.
Even if the Steam Store doesn't have your specific mod, there are others so it's probably worh a try.
https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/about/?appid=885970

For example, Steam version of Empire at War has quite wild 'remake' mod which makes it feel like another game.


Its not just this game though, there are plenty of legacy apps that don't support modern resolutions & its going to be more of a problem if I get round to buying a 4K monitor.
I was thinking if it could be made to run in some kind of virtualised window the game would think its full-screen but the window be non-fullscreen on my desktop like consoling into a VM
Unfortunately Windows 10 or 11 does not support display resolutions upscaling for old games.
 
If the game is old enough that you can likely just do it in a virtual machine with support for D3D. Although something like VMware is limited to DX10 or lower, this shouldn't be a problem for Rome: Total War.

That should allow you to run it in whatever window you have the VM set to.

Regards,
SB
 
Did you try the eyefinity profiles ?
did you try dgvoodoo2 ?
rHvgKxg.jpg


I'm guessing no which is why I'm playing at 3840x1200 and 1920x1080 and your not
 
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Did anything fix this? if not, have you tried enabling GPU Scaling? What about running it in a window, perhaps with Borderless Gaming?
Oh excellent.
I had found that there is a shortcut flag to make it run borderless windowed which prevents the desktop resolution issues but its aligned top-left corner to top-left corner of my monitor & can't be moved, have been making do with that.

This Borderless Gaming apparently takes that borderless windowed screen & scales it back to full-screen size which is pretty much exactly what I'm looking for :)
 
So uh, bit of an update on this:
I did buy the 43" 4k monitor & while the resolution difference between 2560*1600 & 2048*1536 is pretty small so I didn't notice much image degradation, by the time you stretch 2048*1536 out to 4k on 43" those pixels get pretty noticeably big :(

Somebody posted in another thread the WSG master list https://www.wsgf.org/mgl and according to that all you need to do is set the desired resolution in the preferences.txt

I'm pretty sure I looked there before posting this thread & I know I've tried putting higher resolutions into preferences.txt before without success, from recollection it crashed the game but they have screenshots of not just 16:9 but 16:10 & an ultrawide 15:4
So I gave it a go & whaddayaknow
Ni0LBzt.jpg

4k works fine :cool:

I dunno if I was just doing it wrong (crashes due to broken mod install/shortcut?) or if something I've done to get some other legacy games running/at 4k is helping out here :-?

Either way, I'm very happy if a bit embarrassed.
 
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