Ask the Experts / RCT Display Resolution Hacking

I have stumbled upon http://www.widescreengamingforum.com and found a guide for hacking RCT1's exe file to allow widescreen resolutions in RCT1:

To add widescreen support to this game you'll need a hex editor such as Be.HexEditor. Open your rct.exe file with it and search for the following two strings.

58 02 00 00 68 20 03 00 00
20 03 00 00 c7 45 f4 58 02 00 00

20 03 and 58 02 represent the resolution 800x600. Change them to represent the resolution you want.

1280x720 - Replace 20 03 with 00 05 and replace 58 02 with D0 02
1280x768 - Replace 20 03 with 00 05 and replace 58 02 with 00 03
1280x1024 - Replace 20 03 with 00 05 and replace 58 02 with 00 04

After you're done, save the file and change your in-game resolution to 800x600.

[Added]
With further testing I found that the game failed with a widescreen resolution above 1280x768. 1280x1024 did work, however.

I noticed no corruption or stretching. The viewable area is directly related to the resolution.

Source: http://www.widescree...pic.php?t=16039

Result:

 rctll_1280x720.png (138.69KB)
downloads: 147

^As you can see, it worked well for me and I managed to view RCT1 in 1280x720 pixels. Very cool!

My question: Does anyone know how to determine the values I must enter in the hex editor to achieve the "HD ready" resolution 1366x768? This is my laptop's native resolution that I'd like to use.

I'm pretty sure the same is possible in RCT2 as well, although it seems to support widescreen by default already, right? Still it might come in handy if a certain resolution you know your hardware is capable of is not offered by the game for whatever reason, and you want to force it.

Thanks for ideas, comments.

Awesome! Maybe I'll try to do this, windowed mode lags and fullscreen is too small for my likings when viewing parks. Thanks for sharing!

I'm pretty sure the same is possible in RCT2 as well, although it seems to support widescreen by default already, right? Still it might come in handy if a certain resolution you know your hardware is capable of is not offered by the game for whatever reason, and you want to force it.

I would like 1024x2560! Dual screen! Could it work?

you rock

Yes this is possible in rct2 it was planned for rctmodified

Hey Liam, I think it should be possible. You just have to find out what values to enter. The same problem I have.

Levis, I have found all kinds of hex converters online, but when I enter 1280 it doesn't output "0005" or "D002", as the guide says. How were those values derived? And how to derive other values like Liam and I need them?

EDIT: Okay, I googled up some info.

I can't get 1280x1024 to work on my desktop, unfortunately, but 1152x864 works. Here's how you do it.

http://www.statman.i...exadecimal.html

Enter your desired resolutions. For example 1152 is "480" in hex. Now you add so many zeros until you have 4 digits. In this case "4800". Then you take the first number and exchange it with the last: "8004". And this is what it wants you to enter in the hex editor for width.

Very confusing. But the difference is quite nice!

Here's the RCT.EXE with 1152x864 (if 800x600 is selected):  RCT 1152x864.zip (795.04KB)
downloads: 27

well let me make it a bit more simpel for you .

1280x720 - Replace 20 03 with 00 05 and replace 58 02 with D0 02
1280x768 - Replace 20 03 with 00 05 and replace 58 02 with 00 03
1280x1024 - Replace 20 03 with 00 05 and replace 58 02 with 00 04

I just use the windows calculator on programming settings.
Take the 1280 and enter it. now press the HEX button and you will get "500". The hexadecimal numbers always have to be a power of 2 numbers so in this case 4 numbers, so you add a 0 in front. that doesn't change anything. so you get "0500". Now rct almost stores all his variables which are larger than 255 into multiple bytes but they are rotated. so you have to rotate this also. you've got two bytes being "05" and "00", so you rotate those and you get "0005", which is what you want.
for example 768 will give you "300", added a zero gives "0300" and rotated gives "0003".

In theory you should be able to got to the max of FFFF which is 65535 or something like that. But probally rct will crash in such a case.
I could see if I can get rct2 and LL (when I'm back at uni) to run at higher resolutions. I believe its a bit more trickier in rct2.

Okay, after some trying I found out the following:

If you want a other resolution than the supported ones in rct2 open the game.cfg file in your data folder (in a hex editor like HxD and go to adress "0x86A". here you can change the resolution to what you want.
The first two are the widht the seccond two bytes the height. And they are noted the same as above (so rotated).

you can probally only select the resolutions which your videocard supports and some higher ones aren't possible. I haven't really tested it out so it could be it doesn't work but I think it does .

Would Ultra-HD be supported now (a)?

if your video card supports it I would say try it.
I had my game running in 1600x900 at one point (did it trough a other way) but the game decided to quite on me. thats why I had to look for this way to change it back .
What you are editing now is just the options file.

everytime i change it to 1920x1080 i get an error trapper "unknown window driver"

than your video card driver probally doesn't support it.
besides that I now remember rct2 relies on software rendering. so probally the chipset/motherboard driver has more to do with it than the videocard driver.

Great find Posix and thanks Leo for figuring out how to make this work with RCT2.
Can't wait for after New Year when I am back home to test this. Apart from very limited time the fact that the native resolution of my notebook is not supported by RCT always held me back from playing the game again.

Ok can some one help me out here. What steps do I need to follow to run my Rct2 in a resolution of 1680x1050? Thank you!

Like magnus said the way my current resolution distorts the game has held me back from playing as much as Id like to.

Hey

Sounds awesome guys.
Hoping it works on my 2 monitors.
1920x1080 and 1920x1200...

Here's hoping.

I wish I had any comprehension of how to do this.

Yeah me too. I tried opening the rct2.exe in the HxD program, but could not find the strings to edit.

read carefully. you dont need to change the rct2.exe

Yeah, the hex editing is only for RCT1. For info on RCT2, read Levis'es posts.

Levis. Any idea if this works for WW/TT as well. My Game.cfg is mostly empty.

I got another game.cfg from someone who has this problem also. I think it has something to do with WW and/or TT
best think is to check which file is changed after you set the resolution to something else and close the game.
I wont install the expansions so I can't check.