Xcom in XP with LCD

[TheShade]

After hours of research and trying every fix on the planet, I have xcom gold edition working (barely) on my laptop. I have a radeon mobility 9600 video card with a 1600x1200 lcd. If I disable DirectDraw, and disable the option in the video card's control panel "Scale image to panel size" the game runs. My problem is, the game runs in a 2"x2" window in the center of the screen. Has anyone encountered this problem and fixed it? I've tried f0dder's fix, and it gives the same results.

 

Is there a way I can force my screen to display in a lower resolution?

 

Thanks in advance!

[Zombie]

You know, I had the same problem running X-COM on my XP laptop with the same video card. First, try this: go into control panel, then display properties, and reduce the screen area to 640x480. This might do the trick. Otherwise, do what I always do: completely disable your video card altogether! This forces the game to run in its native form without any kind of acceleration (hardware or software). The acceleration used by the video card is what causes the trouble.

 

f0dders fix usually works on my machine though. Hope this helps!

[TheShade]

Thanks Zombie, disabling the video card works perfectly! The mouse can still get lost off the right and lower edges of the screen, but otherwise flawless! I'm running at 10% of my cpu's power to make the speed acceptable.

 

I made another hardware profile so each time I turn on my laptop it asks if I want to use 1 (my normal config, and default) or 2, my config with the standard VGA driver loaded.

 

Thanks for the tip, I'm off to save the Earth!

[Zombie]

My trick of disabling the video card on laptops to run X-COM works, but like you said it does have some flaws. The rationale why your mouse pointer gets lost on the edges of the screen is attributed to the LCD monitor. For some reason, the game does not recognize where the edge of the screen is and allows the pointer to drift past the actual perimeter. This is most likely due to disabling the card *sigh*! I am still working on a "fix" for this problem.

 

By disabling DirectDraw, you are still allowing your video card free-reign over how to display something. No DirectDraw and the card resorts to its hardware acceleration which is bad. X-COM was never programmed to take advantage of these technologies and hence the problems. You also have to mess around with the settings a bit with the DirectDraw way. By only disabling the video card, one thing is being changed, rather than a handful - which is a lot easier to change back in case of serious problems!

 

How did you create another hardware profile? I would like to do this with my machine also! (Usually, I just enable my video card after I am done playing the game).

 

Anyhow, I am glad to be of assistance! Have fun playing X-COM!

[TheShade]

Properties of my computer (or the system icon in the control panel), hardware tab, bottom button is "Hardware Profiles". Hit the copy button to create a new one. Reboot and select the new profile, change whatever you want. Now when you boot with tha profile, it will have those hardware properties. I believe you can have different drivers, etc.

[Zombie]

Thanks TheShade! It works! Now I won't have to enable my video card anymore after I play X-COM!

[Kernel]

I had the same problem getting the gold edition working at first on my LCD screen. I got it working in the end and I didn't need to disable anything.

 

I'll investigate how exactly I did it when I get home because I can't remember right now. I'm sure I used something like x-com ultil or that other patch.