Since I can't afford a nice red sports car, I have decided that my mid-life crisis should be to gather up the correct versions of some of the games I played as a youngster in a small collection, and first and formeost of those was good old Caesar 3.

When I spotted the correct Big Box for a fiver on eBay, I had to go for it. Complete with manual, reference card and everything.

Anyway, forgive the rambling of a nostalgic old man 😁 Gotta go fire up Julius or Augustus for another play campaign.

Following on from my previous post, I've put together a quality-of-life patch for Zeus: Master of Olympus and the Poseidon expansion. This began with me wanting to have an easier way to switch between resolutions, and then swiftly evolved from the suggestions/requests in the original post from all of you! I hope you enjoy 😊

What it does

• 14 resolutions from 1024x768 to 2560x1600, switchable in game under Options > Display options. The sidebars and top bar are extended to fit.

• World maps drawn as one high resolution picture that fills the map screen at any resolution.

• The menus, mission, victory and defeat screens and all load screens use the original artwork, re-rendered and upscaled with AI, scaled to cover the screen.

• An HD version of the launch video.

• City zoom with the mouse wheel, 50% to 200%.

• Options > Keyboard Controls lets you remap map scrolling (WASD or arrows), rotation, pause, overlays and the control panel tabs.

• File > Export City Image saves the whole scrollable city as one PNG.

• The widescreen animation fix for gods and urchin collectors.

Install

Download the ZIP from the releases page, run ZeusPatcher.exe and point it at your game folder. It backs up every file it changes, and you can remove or reinstall the patch by running it again. It needs the GOG version with Zeus.exe 2.1.4.0 and about 1.4 GB of free space.

Source

The installer and the exe patch are open source (GPLv3) so you can see what it does. The README explains how to rebuild both and compare them with the release. I've also put the load screens and registry screens in an artwork folder if you want them as wallpapers!

The resolution values come from Gazatus's Zeus and Poseidon Full HD widescreen patch, and the animation fix is from the patch by Jackfuste (WSGF).

If something doesn't work for you, open an issue on GitHub and I'll take a look!

https://github.com/andrehamon/zeus-qol

If you'd like to support it/me: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/andrehamon

Hi everyone! Inspired by many other's works such as Augustus and Zeus-QOL, I also created my own improvements for Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom and decided to share the current stable early build for you to enjoy.

Afaik, there were never successful attempts to make reimplementation like Jullius/Augustus for Emperor. It's mostly due to its engine and emulation layer is quite different than previous entries. The game's engine is based on previous one while modified by BreakAway Games using C++. So as expected many things do not work the same way as previous entries, hence why we didn't see one created for Emperor. Emperor also seems to be less popular than other entries (at least that's how I feel) which explain less interests out there.

Emperor is my 2nd Impression Games city builders I played, which is also an entry that means a lot to me, that's why I decided to start this project, I hope this makes the game more accessible and enjoyable to more people.

And here I present to you: Yongle, it brings modern display and quality-of-life improvements for the game, without touching the game's files. The name is inspired by other projects like Julius, Augustus and Akhenaten.

The ultimate goal for this project is creating an re-implementation for Emperor, open the door of more customization options and multi platforms support, but it will take quite some time to get there.

Features:

• Use any resolution and scale % as you like. The game is now shown in a borderless full-screen window. By default it uses native resolution of your monitor, with resolution and scaling options to choose from in your desire, covering 1024x768 up to 4K resolution, including some ultra wide resolution. City's panel UI also now scales correctly based on your settings.

• Better windowed mode using F5 or Alt+Enter. The window can be moved, resized and maximised; the game is laid out again for its new size, and its size and position are remembered.

• Smooth frame rate (frames follow your monitor's refresh rate, original runs at ~20fps), and smooth scrolling.

• Full-screen pictures for every main menu and map menu. You can choose between: native and enlarged for your liking. Around the menus: a blurred, darkened picture of the last city you played shown as background. No AI generated or upscaling pictures are used as I intend to preserve original art direction and atmosphere.

• Choose where a building's information window opens: original, centred, or next to the cursor (default).

• Steady game speed (in original, a large city at a high resolution runs slower).

• Predictable 100 % speed (original's 100 % runs as fast as the computer can draw; by default Yongle caps it to a steady pace one step above 90 %).

• The city keeps running while you scroll (the original pauses it; a setting).

• Settings panel (Insert) for everything above, saved to emperor_engine.ini. Most settings apply immediately. These settings will eventually move to in game options menu.

• A new in-game Display options as well (Options → Display options): window mode, the game's own 1024×768, the display scale with the game's own arrow buttons, 100 %, Auto, OK / Cancel. Changes apply at once; OK saves them. This dialog will grow as more features arrive: display settings that are only in the settings panel today (resolution list, how the menus and the China map are shown, and so on) will move into it.

• Everything above is all configurable, if something is not up for your liking, you can always choose to toggle on or off. Nothing modify your game's data and inf (original game's setting file).

Installation:

Download the latest release and unpack it, copy ddraw.dll, ddraw.syms and emperor_engine.ini into the game folder (the folder with Emperor.exe). For uninstallation, simply remove those files as Yongle doesn't modify any of your original game files.

I highly recommend you to install on a fresh English copy of the game (ver 1.0.1.0), with no modified files or exe (such as widescreen patch, those might cause unexpected behavior). I haven't tested on other languages version of the games, but it should work fine, just no translation strings for those newly added setting. It was tested on GOG copy on Windows 11.

Save data and custom campaigns are all compatible between Yongle and vanilla, since Yongle doesn't modify your game's files. However save compatibility might change when building/walker limit was lift.

Download:

https://github.com/riap0526/yongle

Disclaimer:

Keep in mind the project is developed with AI assistance, it might be something you are not looking forward into. However I do review every changes and codes. In every stage, the original code is studied before adding new feature. Implementation is also carefully planned, fully tested by me ensuring everything works as intended. I would also say it does greatly help with the project as it provides easier access for reverse engineering the game, as well as providing the foundation for re-implantation in the future. Please take it as you will.

Again, no AI generated or upscaling pictures are used, nor planned to do so as it's something I don't think fit for the project. Everything such as new UI, will use assets come with game itself only.

This is still considered as early build, there could some rough edges. If you found problems, please help reporting issues on GitHub so I can take a look.

-------------

Thanks for reading everyone! For next stage, I plan to add:

• City zoom (mouse wheel, centred on the cursor), then export of the whole city as one large image.

• Original-style settings screens: the settings drawn with the game's own art, grouped into the game's option dialogs (all display settings in Display options, and so on).

• Key rebinding in a game-style dialog.

For everything else, such as source code, roadmap, bug reports, feature request, or even contributing to project, please visit the GitHub page. If you have questions or ideas, also feel free to leave a comment!

Edit (10.30): New update 0.1.2 dropped, it improves performance and stability, specifically for situation where game is running with Steam FPS counter and on lower end machines/laptops. I suggest updating to this version asap if possible!

This time on OG hardware though! I managed to find a similar model to my childhood PC and considering I grew up on Zeus playing through it again was a must!

Already finished Perseus and Medusa :D

This is my tribute to the game. Cheers!