Pharaoh: Widescreen and Windowed Mode

So it's the current year, we generally like to run our games without being forced into a low resolution fullscreen mode, right? Thankfully we still can, with a little bit of work.

Widescreen Fix

Notes on compatibility, etc: https://www.wsgf.org/dr/pharaoh/en

Head on over to the link below, scroll down, download "cleopatra.7z" and inside that file, select a version of Pharaoh.exe that corresponds with your desired resolution, then backup/replace the Pharaoh.exe in your Steam installation folder:

https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/1762-cleopatra-widescreen-fix/

EDIT: If you don't know what 7z files are... Sigh: https://www.7-zip.org/

WSGF added a password to their file. The password is on the download page. Not sure why they did that. Maybe the wiki host they're using doesn't like compressed executables.

Be advised there are widescreen fixes for both Pharaoh and Cleopatra. You're going to want the Cleopatra version. If you accidentally get the Pharaoh version it will throw an error about building lines when you launch.

If for some reason the patch doesn't work and you forgot to backup Pharaoh.exe, just delete the Pharaoh.exe and verify the game cache using Steam, it'll restore it to its original state.

Of course this is a workaround to widescreen support, not an official patch: a few of the in-game menus and overlays will render with nodraw in regions of the screen that are bigger than the background images, particularly your overseer and world map screens will have large empty chunks in the bottom-right, basically they're still 1024x768 and haven't been scaled for anything higher.

I won't make any promises but if I get invested enough in the game I might cobble together a prettier patch myself. If I do I'll definitely share it here. It'd be nice for Activision to consider a little fix or two. I mean, they didn't seem to mind shoving a link to their website onto the main menu, so how hard could a little dynamic upscaling be? lol, not gonna hold my breath for that one.

UPDATE 5/25/2020 - Added a bunch extra info. Sorry about the dead links! Fixed that for now.

In the likely case the download link breaks again in the future, you can always do a Google or DuckDuckGo search for "cleopatra.7z" including the quotation marks - this is a unique enough query to likely surface the file on alternative hosting sources. Worst case scenario I'll upload it myself, just spam my comments if that becomes necessary lol

Windowed Mode

On a Windows 10 machine just right-click Pharaoh.exe go to Properties and in the Compatibility tab make sure it's set to run in 16bit color mode.

Launch the game, enter a mission (or mission editor) and go to the Options menu in the top left, select 1024x768 as the resolution, then select Windowed mode.

You might notice the game looks weird after entering Windowed mode for the first time. Just close out of the game (press esc, click yes) and then re-launch it again, it should look fine afterwards.

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The following information from the old version of this guide is no longer applicable to Windows 10. I'm going to leave it up for any fools who still might be stuck on Windows 7. If that applies to you, I hate to throw shade, but IT/cybersec is my day job and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ please bite the bullet and upgrade to 10. The vulnerabilities for orphaned Win7 machines on the open internet just keep piling on

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While the widescreen fix does look really good, it has a few issues, and I've personally found the game is quite acceptable when kept at 1024x768 in windowed mode. None of the in-game assets have scaling issues at that resolution and you can stretch/resize the window as you see fit. Problem is, for just about everyone, attempting to change the game to Windowed mode will fail. The reason for this, oddly enough, is that the game simply can't handle being a desktop window in a 32-bit color space. You could simply go into your monitor settings (Screen Resolution->Advanced Settings->Monitor if you're on Windows 7) prior to launching the game and set manually set it to 16-bit, however, switching back and forth can become tedious if you play often. A hero by the name of Exvel over on GOG forums made a little Launcher program that will automatically set your color mode to 16-bit while Pharaoh is running. Get it from the sixth post in the thread below:

https://www.gog.com/forum/pharaoh_cleopatra/q_is_there_a_way_to_activate_the_windowed_mode/post6

To run his launcher you'll need .NET Framework 4 if you don't already have it:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=17851

The only downside to using the launcher is you'll have to make a shortcut to it instead of the game itself, thus Steam won't recognize the game is running. Hardly a big loss; it seems impossible to get the Steam in-game overlay working as of yet, so you're only really missing out on getting your hours played recorded. Oh well. Enjoy this classic title with a touch of modernization folks!

[Jay]

Not sure if someone has posted this already, but this is super helpful if you're unsure how to install this. It takes you step by step, and I was able to follow this successfully on the latest windows system. Cheers!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXZFDIGdJ0g&ab_channel=GuppySharkGames

[Sunderbraze]

@Circled Svn Right click, show more options, properties, compatibility

[Circled Svn]

Can't find compatibility tab on WIN 11 :(

[Larmar MBF]

Thanks, finally 16:9

Although some menus and overlays are little confusing, but in-game looks much more wide...

Love it !!

Great fix ♥

[Начуша]

Works acceptably well. My only prob is that I can only play it in the Windows main display. If I move the window to another display other than the main one it does not recognize mouse clicks anymore. And sometimes even if I bring it back to the main display, it won't get responsive again. Has anyone had this problem and figured out how to circumvent it?

[yakirice]

I tried this and the steam launcher said "invalid platform" and didnt launch

[Sunderbraze]

@flextape The password is on the download page.

[thgangster43]

whats the password? I cannot find it

[Sunderbraze]

That's weird, it sounds like it might be a display scaling issue. This would be a bit of a brute force thing to try but you could try setting your monitor's display resolution down to something the original game expects, like 1024x768 or 800x600, and also make sure display scaling is set to 100% because that can mess with old games like this too. You'd only need to do that long enough to get the game's settings changed to Windowed mode then you could go back

[Kiryuu Sonya]

I have the same problem with the regular .exe, and I just can't enter the mission or mission editor. The button to start either is just off screen both with the regular .exe and the widescreen patch. Is there no way to change this outside of the game?