[3rdFloor]

Earlier this week, the fine folks over at Widescreen Gaming Forum posted instructions for running Gabriel Knight 3 on any native display resolution (at least, the one your monitor has). I haven't tested it myself because I'm busy playing other adventures at the moment, but these guys know their widescreen stuff; I used their instructions on a large number of my old 3D games and it always worked wonders. Furthermore, they are usually against any form of video stretching, so the characters don't look like they gained 50 pounds or something.

Here goes:

I found a way to change the resolution in this game, editing the registry keys. The game, by default, only lets you select 3 resolutions: 640x480, 800x600 and 1024x768.

To play at any other resolution you must :

1- Open regedit and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Sierra On-Line\Gabriel Knight 3\Engine

2- edit the decimal value of these keys :
(default) = yyyy
Screen Height = yyyy
Screen Widht = xxxx

Where xxxx is desired width & yyyy is desired height.
(default) and "Screen Height" MUST have the same value.

Yes, it involves a registry hack, so use at your own risk. To open the registry editor, simply press the Start button in Windows, then click Run, and type "regedit" without the quotes. In-game screenshots can be seen here.

Lemme know if it works.

[DustCropper]

Sorry for bumping an old thread, but I stumbled across this when I was searching for a way to raise GK3's resolution.

I discovered another way to change the resolution, which I found at this website:
http://www.sierrahelp.com/Games/Gabr...t/GK3Help.html

Basically you just make a shortcut and edit the path in "properties" to specify width and height (your desired resolution). So for my shortcut, I've got it at 1600x900:
"C:\Sierra\Gabriel Knight 3\GK3.exe" -width 1600 -height 900

I must say it looks better than ever. Much more cinematic in wide-screen than before. Plus the higher resolution makes the graphics look a little less outdated. I haven't gotten far into the game so haven't reached the map screen or Sydney yet, but so far the inventory and videos play fine. :)

[seanparkerfilms]

Huh... that's really cool. I didn't realize that when I was playing it, it was stretched. Well then, that gives me a reason to go back and play it again...

It's unfortunate that nothing (obviously) can be done about the first two games though. Does anyone know of a way to run them that keeps it in a strict 4:3 ratio on my widescreen monitor so that it doesn't try to fill it?

[fov]

Thanks for the info, I recently got a nice 21" widescreen monitor so I'll give this a try.

Does anyone know of a way to run them that keeps it in a strict 4:3 ratio on my widescreen monitor so that it doesn't try to fill it?

You might be able to set your monitor to letterbox rather than stretch. On mine it's done with the controls accessed by buttons on the monitor (as opposed to through the computer's video settings).

[DustCropper]

Originally Posted by seanparkerfilms

It's unfortunate that nothing (obviously) can be done about the first two games though. Does anyone know of a way to run them that keeps it in a strict 4:3 ratio on my widescreen monitor so that it doesn't try to fill it?

On my computer, I can fix this by checking the "Scaling options" of my video card. "Preserve Aspect Ratio" prevents any stretching.

[Veovis]

Originally Posted by seanparkerfilms

It's unfortunate that nothing (obviously) can be done about the first two games though. Does anyone know of a way to run them that keeps it in a strict 4:3 ratio on my widescreen monitor so that it doesn't try to fill it?

It should be easily done in the video settings for your card. Look for "keep original aspect ratio" or similar.

Oops, DustCropper was quicker.

[Collector]

The first two games should be played in DOSBox, anyway. This can be done in the conf file. The new Gabriel Knight installers will give you this if you select full screen.

[Little Writer]

Ah, video settings. People have gone mad because of them, hiding away in the cupboard under their sinks, slowly mutating into vicious cockroaches while staying alive on what comes down the garbage disposal.

With me, these games ran fine in XP and I played the third game on Vista not all that long ago. Perhaps I'm just used to worse that I don't notice a less than perfect image.

(By the way, shouldn't this be in the technical forum?)

[3rdFloor]

Ah, excellent. Nice to see most of you got it working properly.

[fov]

Originally Posted by Little Writer

(By the way, shouldn't this be in the technical forum?)

Yeah, probably. Good call.