6 replies to this topic

[trinix777]

Hello people... :)

(First of all I'm totally new to this forum and I'm not sure If I'm even writing this in the right section, I searched but could find a topic for this).

(A possible project)

As many of you who read this topic might know, the old classic game Warcraft III has unsolved issues with the wide-screen aspect ratio.
The only modification I know is the simple regedit (Registry Edit) trick which allows you to get many custom resolutions that aren't in the game options.
But this doesn't really solve the problem with wide-screen as the game was developed for 4:3 resolutions due to the lack of wide-screen usage back then. If you input a wide-screen resolution, it will just stretch the game to wide-screen. Higher resolution gives you more details but the field of view stays the same in any resolution.

I've been Google:ing around quite a bit for several days and checked all kinds of forums and discussions about this issue but the only thing that I could find is the regedit trick.
While Google:ling around I've come across many other games with wide-screen issues and
Wide Screen Gaming Forum where they solved many games with wide-screen issues and also specify the wide-screen conditions of many games.
However, a true salvation wasn't there for WC3.

So now I wonder if it's possible to go deeper, maybe into the source code or something and really try to solve this problem once and for all.
First of all fix the field of view to a correct wide-screen and maybe something that allows you to see more of the field in general, not only to the sides. Something like a zoom out/zoom in tool.
The general HUD/game-interface is not important right now.

I myself have small experience in programming, I went a class in C++ that didn't go as well as I expected but I got some things out of it. Besides that I've used a couple of scripts in Game Maker and modded some games on my own (GTA 3, VC and SA, mostly the handling.cfg and some other files, and Worms) and went a class in web-design, I know basic html and css. I have descent math skills too.
But I have a buddy around here who knows programming pretty good and is interested in giving this a try.

So now I wonder, what do you think? How should we tackle this problem and what program might we need to open up Warcraft 3? Is it possible to make a patch or something?

You are very welcome to help solve this problem with me, any ideas or thoughts are greatly appreciated!

[WingedPanther]

Well, you can easily write a small app to make the regedit trick easier (haven't researched it). With that said, it may be that Blizzard is deliberately not supporting wide-screen resolutions to avoid giving people with a wide-screen monitor an unfair advantage over those who don't have one. When dealing with strategy games, that can make a huge difference (I know from playing OpenArena with a wider field of vision).

[Alexander]

The way those games are built, are that even if a patch is possible it wouldn't be legal. You would need much knowledge of the custom graphical engine used, I would assume it is possible patching a couple hundred values but you would need to know them beforehand.

[trinix777]

WingedPanther said:

Well, you can easily write a small app to make the regedit trick easier (haven't researched it). With that said, it may be that Blizzard is deliberately not supporting wide-screen resolutions to avoid giving people with a wide-screen monitor an unfair advantage over those who don't have one. When dealing with strategy games, that can make a huge difference (I know from playing OpenArena with a wider field of vision).

Heh, I don't want an application for the regedit lol, I already changed the resolution there to 1920 x 1080 and it will be saved forever on this computer if I don't change it. And by the way there is already an app for what you said.
That about unfair advantage with wide-screen and such, well yes, it's kinda true. But if I just want to play single player? Or what about bunch of other games that can get hardware advantages and no one says anything? Or if want to play LAN with a couple of buddies and we all have monitors with the same resolution? Or that people are okay with me or anyone using these "unfair" advantages? :P
And by today standards most people (at least most gamers) have wide-screen monitors.
Sorry, I don't really buy it, this is such a requested fix and it makes perfect sense.

Alexander said:

The way those games are built, are that even if a patch is possible it wouldn't be legal. You would need much knowledge of the custom graphical engine used, I would assume it is possible patching a couple hundred values but you would need to know them beforehand.

Well, at least you could play offline or LAN. Some relevant info above too.
As you may understand, I'm serious about trying to fix this problem so I'm gonna try to find all necessary information by searching around and asking people for help.
It's the whole purpose why I registered on this forum, to get people more seriously interested in this and combine knowledge to find a solution. I won't give up that easily but I need skilled people who can help... :sad:

Edited by trinix777, 24 February 2011 - 06:59 PM.
Edited some grammar and stuff

[WingedPanther]

You're talking about decompiling and recompiling the w3.exe file, non-trivial. Then hacking at the decompiled file as assembly code. Finally, if you go online, the patch will trash your changes.

Sorry, but that's not my idea of fun.

[trinix777]

"The reason why its so complex to make the change of screen ratio in the game is because its hardcoded into the game engine. So the game engine has to be rewritten to make this change. And that is not possible since we don't have access to the source code of the game engine."

A friend of mine wrote that, the one who said he could give this project a try.
I've been looking around a bit but without luck. Even with the source code it would take a while to understand the coding. Unless some programmers at Blizzard did it, it could probably be done within a day. But Blizzard don't seem to be interested in this, their latest Warcraft 3 patch that came out back in januari (this year, 2011) fixed the quality/resolution/aspect ratio the exact same way as the Registry trick, everything is still stretched.

My friend also said that changing the aspect ratio is not just editing some digits, from 4:3 to 16:9 or something like that (I didn't really thought it either but I didn't imagine this being so complex). A lot of other applications has to be added, both support for software and hardware. If not, the game would most likely not start or instantly crash or you could get a bluescreen or other stuff. Larger FOV means more details and more for the game to process, resulting in higher system requirements (but that's not really the point and todays hardware has no problem running this). It would mean more memory has to be used for the game, this needs to be increased along with a bunch of other stuff.

And let's say that I somehow managed to get the source code and re-programmed it to support true wide-screen. If I used this fix online or released a patch or something for anyone to download, Blizzard could bust me pretty bad. Unless they actually understand that I made something good that is very requested, people are still playing Warcraft 3 alot.

I created this thread not only to try find a solution but also, if this attempt failed (like now), to write some things down in case other people after me would attempt this (and I'm pretty sure there will be, or at least a bunch of people google:ing around and wondering why there is no fix).

[ZUKMAN]

Just take some cash and hire professional programmer to write DirectX8 or OpenGl hook for program - proxy app that changes painting calls, similar to this
OpenGl is much easier to do. Who says wc3 doesn't support widescreen look at that pic: