Play at any resolution + add Anti-Alias (get rid of staircase jaggies)

[Red Dragon]

What's great about Blizkrieg is that you can play it at any resolution without streching or skewing the picture. A pixel will be a pixel, by putting in a higher resolution you will simply see more of the battlefield without sacrificing picture quality.

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1) Fix the resolution:

First start the game and go to the video options and adjust them however you like. For me the mouse speed was way too high for example. Don't bother changing the resolution there.

Now locate the game folder. I have the GOG version of the game, I don't have it on steam but I suspect the steam path will be something like this for you:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Blitzkrieg Anthology\Blitzkrieg\Run\

You'll find a file called -> config.cfg <- in that folder. Right click it + open + select a program from a list... + OK + select "notepad". Now a text file opens and we need to find where the used resolution is located. Just scan the text with your eyes from top to bottom, it will be the very first resolution setting from the top. It looks something like this:

InstantApply="1"><Var>640x480x16

Change the 640x480x16 resolution (or whatever it says in your case) to whatever you want, but preferrably the native resolution of your monitor to get the best picture quality. I use 1920x1080x32, so that's what I'll put in there:

InstantApply="1"><Var>1920x1080x32

Close the notepad and save (!) your changes. Now this is important: DO NOT TOUCH THE SETTINGS MENU EVER AGAIN. Every time you change any setting (not just the video resolution, I mean anything even mouse sensitivity) the resolution will be reset inside the config.cfg file again. So adjust all the settings to your liking once >before< you do the above resolution fix and don't touch the options menu ever again.

One way to prevent this from happening is to right-click on the config.cfg file and enable the "read-only" option but this has drawbacks. First of all this will NOT prevent the resolution changing automatically back to 640x480x16 if you touch the options menu, but if you quit and restart the game it will be back to 1920x1080 or whatever you saved. However any other options you changed (multiplayer options, mouse speed, sound settings) will also revert, so make sure to adjust them to your liking first before you put in the read-only option.

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2) Better Anti-Aliasing

All the game models apart from the soldiers are actually tiny 3D models, so you can apply anti-alias to them in order to get rid of the staircase jagged pixels on the models as well as their shadows. Looks much better that way.

There is no option for this in the in-game option menu but you can make your game look much better nontheless. The way to do it is to force it via your graphics card driver. I have an NVIDIA card, I don't own any ATI cards but I imagine what I'll describe here for Nvidia cards works analogous for ATI.

Righ click anywhere on your desktop and select "NVIDIA Control Panel". On the left click "Manage 3D settings". Make sure the "program settings" tab is selected and click the "add" button. Up comes a list with all the programs you started recently. Pick the "Game" one with the Blitzkrieg icon net to it. In the list below look for "Antialiasing mode" and switch it to "Override any application setting", and then a bit above that setting switch "Antialiasing - FXAA" to ON. Click on "Apply" in the lower right corner and you're done. You should see the difference immediately once you start the game up.

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Now you might wonder why I picked the blurry-♥♥♥ FXAA option instead of some crazy 16xQ CSAA setting which is the much better quality antialiasing technique. The reason is that if you choose any other anti-alias option (even just 2x or 4x) the "tiles" that make up the terrain will get visible dark borders that look quite annoying. I've played around with every imaginable combination of texture filtering and anti-alias options but hands down FXAA looks the best, everything else just makes the tiles way too visible. But if you wanna try it out yourself, then the 3rd tutorial about using artillery is a good map to compare the anti-alias options by looking at the the snow tiles. And hands down the blurriness really isn't too bad in this game, in my opinion still the best option.

Have fun! :)

[skulz87]

Damn i hate FXAA i wonder if theres Nvidia inspector settings that i can use instead of FXAA

[Red Dragon]

If you happen to find anything that works better please let us know ;)

Seriously though I tried everything in the Nvidia Control Panel. Personally, seeing individual tiles bothers me much more than FXAA.

[skulz87]

Can you post comparison screenshots in .png format?

[Red Dragon]

I don't have Blitzkrieg on steam and I currently don't have any program that does .png captures. Just make a quick comparison yourself by starting up the 3rd tutorial. Try only FXAA vs. say 8x AA and FXAA off, for me those tile borders feel much worse than FXAA.

[SUPER MALE VITALITY]

I know I'm reviving a dead topic, but this fix isn't working for me. I change both of the entries for resolution to 1920x1080x32 in both config.cfg and defcon.cfg (which seems to just be a formatted version of config.cfg).
Also, for the Steam version, there is no Run folder in the directory. Everything is just in Blitzkrieg Anthology/Blitzkrieg
EDIT:
In fact, it seems the game will only launch if I set my primary monitor to 1024x768.
I can launch the game if I run Steam in Big Picture mode, and tell it to launch games on my secondary monitor, which is 1600x900. However, if I set the resolution of my main monitor down to 1600x900, it fails to launch.

[x-Throd-x]

It worked for me with a resolution of 1920x1080x32 but it only improves the in-game resolution, the menu still uses a low resolution.

[Red Dragon]

Originally posted by x-Throd-x:

It worked for me with a resolution of 1920x1080x32 but it only improves the in-game resolution, the menu still uses a low resolution.

Nothing you can do about that, but it's just a menu and doesn't look that terrible anyway...

[Penitent_Machine]

Thank you!

[Red Dragon]

Originally posted by Solarstrike:

Thank you!

No Problem :) Glad to help.

[Brown Sugar]

Doesn't work for me, sadly. Done everything in regards to resolution. But it remains the same. Even changed the config files of the two expansions and set them to read only. Changed both the config and the deconf.cfg files to no avail.

[Red Dragon]

Originally posted by Toby:

Doesn't work for me, sadly. Done everything in regards to resolution. But it remains the same. Even changed the config files of the two expansions and set them to read only. Changed both the config and the deconf.cfg files to no avail.

So you changed the resolution in the config.cfg, even set it to read only but you still don't get the resolution you set in the config file in-game? Just to make sure you did not click or touch the in-game options menu at all, right? Because even if you simply press the options button your config settings completely reset again (until you restart the game, in case you ticked the "read only" box). If it's not that, then unfortunately I have absolutely no clue why it doesn't work for you.

[Brown Sugar]

Maybe I shouldn't edit the defconf.cfg?

[Brown Sugar]

Fixed! Didn't change defconf at all. Works like a charm. Thanks.