How to set a custom resolution in Homeworld 1 Classic

This guide will show you how to set a custom resolution as well as widescreen and windowed modes.

1. Introduction

So Gearbox decided to polish up the original Homeworld game to work better on modern PCs. Unfortunately, this meant only making the game compatible, taking out the obsolete online service (and LAN play for whatever reason), and nothing else. This means we're stuck with default resolutions in the video options menu only going up to 1024x768. Thankfully, there's still a way to enable higher resolutions, but it will require a bit of tweaking to do so.

2. Running the game as an Administrator

First off, you are going to want to locate the EXE for Homeworld 1 Classic in the game's folder in your "steamapps" folder. For most people, it should be in:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Homeworld\Homeworld1Classic\exe

but it might be different if you have Steam or the game installed somewhere else. Either way, it shouldn't be too hard too find and if it is somewhere different, you probably already know where it is.

Once you have found "Homeworld.exe", right-click on it and bring up the properties. Select the Compatibility tab on the top. Next, enable the compatibility mode for Windows 95 and enable Run as Administrator. Here's an example of what it should look like:


The compatibility mode for Win95 is required for some reason because without it, the user interface of the game will be off-center. Also, if you enable these options, you will no longer be able to open the game through the Remastered Collection launcher in the Steam library. The game and the launcher will crash when you select Homeworld Classic. Therefore, it's advised to create a shortcut on your desktop or somewhere that goes straight to the game's EXE (this will laso help if you want to run the game in a windowed mode later). The game will still use the steam overlay and will still show you as playing Homeworld Remastered Collection.

After that's done, you must run the game once with the compatibility options enabled. This will ensure that the appropriate registry entries are created so we can edit them for custom resolutions later.

3. Edit the game's registry entries

To edit the values for the game's resolution, you'll need to edit the game's registry entries. To do this, open up the "regedit" program by clicking on START and searching for regedit and selecting it. Once the program is open, click on the folders on the left side to go to the game's registry location:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Sierra On-Line\Homeworld

Once you're there, look for the screenHeight and screenWidth values. It should look like this:


To edit the values, right click on one and click Modify. In the Modify window, switch the Base to Decimal and enter your desired value in the Value Data.

For example: if I want to play the game with 1280x720 resolution with 32-bit color, I would change the values to this:

screenWidth to 1280
screenHeight to 720
screenDepth to 32

And that's it!

To play the game with the new resolution, you need to use either the game's EXE, or the new shortcut you created. If you run the game without the Administrator mode enabled, the game will revert to the default resolutions.

4. A small warning about custom resolutions

The game does not scale the user interface (menus, hud, etc.) to high resolutions. So playing the game with too high a resolution wil result in tiny menus and unreadable text. Don't go overboard.

Also, on my laptop and for some other users, the game may crash whenever a ship explodes when using a resolution with a 32-bit color depth. The 16-bit color depth is the safer option, though this may only be a rare problem for certain systems.

EDIT (3/4/2015): I have found out that using a widescreen resolution will make using the movement dial when issuing a movement command seem a little wonky. The movement target will not match up with the cursor for some reason and you may have to move the cursor farther than usual. I'm not sure what causes this or how to fix it. If I find out anything, I'll edit the guide for it.

5. Run the game in a window

To run the game in a window, right click on the shortcut you created to the Homeworld 1 Classic EXE. in the Target area, add -window to the end of the line. Should look like this:


If you also want a borderless mode, you could also add -noBorder to the end.

And that's it! I hope this guide has helped!

[DieSide]

Tested in Widows 10 with 32/9 5k monitor(5120x2560)

1, Create a shortcut of the EXE file.
2, Use admin to run the shortcut.
3, DESABLE W10 window display scale 125% or 150%, you must return to 100%.
4, Set a correct zoom resolution 3840x1080 and maintain aspec ratio in the reg edit keys.
5, Run the shortcut & Enjoy !

[Linark]

Suddenly, i've found a solution for non-admin execution. Try to install this fix
https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/5-homeworld-hardware-acceleration-fix/
And according to description of this fix, you no longer need to set win95 compatibility mode.
It works for me at least, with ability to launch the game through the launcher.

[HeliGungir]

Running in windowed mode solves that issue.

[HeliGungir]

Well I hit a snag. Running in Win 95 or Win 98 compatibility with or without admin privelages crashes the game on startup, but later Windows versions or no compatibility mode at all results in an off-center UI.

[Deakul]

Have ships always moved at like 20 FPS? Something seems really off about them.

[BoffinBrain]

@Guntychops I had the same issue. You MUST run the game as an administrator first, so it can create those registry entries, then quit and refresh the registry list.

[JW]

Great thanks!

[Plazma]

Its not listed there in regedit. Is this for the non steam old version of classic?