Fix for resolution problems.

[edyzmedieval]

Interesting topic that came up, because I also struggled recently with some resolution issues. In the end, because of a wide monitor (which I guess did not exist back in 2002 when MTW released), I went for 1280 x 720 and Widescreen mode in MTW (Steam Edition) to cover the entire screen and not have too many issues.

It worked, and it's an enjoyable experience.

[caravel]

Leave your desktop rez to what you had (that must have been ugly!). How high of a resolution does the game menu allow? I would try both the campaign and battle map at the highest.

If that doesn't work, set both the campaign and battle map resolutions to 800x600, and try to run in Windowed mode. To run in Windowed mode, you will need to change your game shortcut properties to something like this:

"D:\games\Total War\Medieval - Total War\Medieval_TW.exe" -strictserver D

Basically, you want to add the "D" to the end. If this works, be aware that the game is also running in the -ian mode, which allows you to change factions and do a lot of other debugging functionality.

The "D" command line argument was actually debug mode, rather than windowed mode. The game then runs as an overlay on the desktop. The caveat is that the desktop must be in 16 bit colour mode. In older Windows versions (XP and earlier), this was easy enough to do, but in Windows 7 it was a case of "Start" > "Control Panel" > "Display" > "Screen Resolution" > "Advanced settings" > "Monitor" tab and change the "Colour" drop down box from 32 to 16 bit (well hidden away). For Windows 10 it's a compatibility mode setting, but I have tried this in conjunction with the "D" argument and the game still attempted to run full screen (and crashed). So, to cut a long story short: For "D" to work, the Windows desktop must be in 16 bit colour mode (but regardless, it's better to use 16 bit mode (and older Windows version than 10) for STW/MTW anyway).

I have had no success at all using dxwnd, also probably due to the desktop being in 32 bit colour. My setups consist of two identical laptops running Windows 7 and both games (originals, not Steam) run almost flawlessly full screen. I fact this is the best result I have gotten since the days of Windows 98...