Miniscule fonts and graphics..

[Aetius_Varras]

I'm using a Dell 4K screen which I'll admit has had scaling issues with some games and has a BIG one with EIA.The fonts are so microscopic that I need a magnifying glass in order to see them and the counters and information components are way too small as well. In essence, the game is visually unplayable at this point. Question, I know I can resolve this issue to an extent by changing screen resolution but I don't like doing that. Is there some way of changing the numerical values on some Notepad in the game's program that can change the graphics such as font size to an acceptable resolution? Or any other kind of fix that adjusts the game to 4K screens??

[pzgndr]

Unfortunately, no. I wrestled with enlarging some fonts and buttons a few years ago when issues with high resolution monitors came up. See https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 0&t=376900 I made some changes to make it better but it's not scalable or adjustable. In fact, it was a challenge to enlarge every individual menu button and dialog on the main screen top menu bar to make them larger but not so large that laptop resolutions would not work.

The workaround is to adjust your screen resolution to make it work for you. If there's a program out there to maybe run old resolution games on high resolution monitors, sort of like DOSBox to run old DOS games, that would be nice. Perhaps some way to play in windowed mode might work. I don't know. The bottom line is that this game code was originally built on Borland C++Builder almost 25 years ago and has not aged as gracefully as one would like. I do what I can to keep it going.

If you figure out a good solution for yourself, please share? Thanks!

[Aetius_Varras]

Thanks Bill; a possible solution would be to get one of those retro laptops that could also be used for quite a few other old games. Question, if I may, how far back would one have to go considering this is Borland C++Builder? This would probably run well on Windows 98 but could the game run on Windows 7 or even XP? Would one have to go back to the days of 386/486 or even Windows 3.1. I guess one might even need x86 CPUs, and VGA graphics cards.

This also brings up the problem if I could even install EIA on such a system.

[pzgndr]

Question, if I may, how far back would one have to go considering this is Borland C++Builder?

You don't need to go back to an old O/S. I'm running EIA fine on 64-bit Win11, and no fancy graphics cards are necessary. I mentioned that only to highlight how limited I am with keeping this old game going with regard to code development. AFAIK, it's running fine on most all players' systems as long as they don't try running the game at the higher resolutions. Most issues are related to bad installations or incorrect compatibility settings. As for how far back one could go, I suspect anything before WinXP would have issues, but again no need to do that. Good luck. Enjoy!

[789456281]

I just upgraded to win 11 and it is UNPLAYABLE for me the map scrolling is practically non-existent I also want a higher screen resolution but I can not even begin where to look and I have tried all in all I'm pissed had to cough up another 16$ bucks to get it on my new hardrive and I'm pretty fed-up, this game is an old horse I really love it but I think it is time to shoot it.

[pzgndr]

I just upgraded to win 11 and it is UNPLAYABLE for me... it is time to shoot it.

I'd like to help. For me, I'm running 64-bit Win11 with a 27" monitor and 1920x1080 screen resolution. The game runs fine for me and others. Usually a bad installation or incorrect compatibility settings cause issues. As for larger monitors and higher resolutions, that's a problem and there's not much more I can do about that. I understand the problem, but I cannot do anything about that except to recommend players reset their monitors to a lower resolution. Now, if your monitor and resolution is not the issue, then I recommend you contact Matrix Games tech support and provide them dxdiag diagnostics for them to help resolve your issue. It *IS* playable, and I'd like it to be playable for you too.

As for time to shoot this old horse, I've thought about it many times while performing CPR on this old code. I was worried that upgrading to Win10/11 and from 32-bit to 64-bit might have done in the old nag. But it still runs fine and as long as it continues to do so then I will continue to nurse it along. The latest v1.26.04 official update appears to be fine. Other than some pbem game issues that I am working on for a hotfix patch, there have been no other reported issues. I think one more final official update next year will close out code development for Empires in Arms, once I am satisfied that all gameplay and AI issues are resolved. For all of us who really love the game. May it continue to run as long as possible.