Decided I wanted to fire up Gothic 2 for the first time, but the game won't allow for a resolution higher than 1024x768.

I understand that the game can be played at a higher resolution, along with a number of other visual goodies, by editing the .ini file.

Problem is, I am by no means a computer person and have never played that many games on the pc. This would be the first time I would have ever attempted manually editing the settings of a game in such a way. I have no idea how to actually access the .ini file, and any assistance I've searched for online hasn't seemed to help.

It would be greatly appreciated if someone can give me an in-depth, step by step walkthrough of how to go about this. Also, if there is anything I should be aware of as far as actually editing the file, please let me know. I am running Windows 7, if that changes anything.

Also, if anyone can recommend any mods, graphical or otherwise, please do.

Anyway, thanks to whoever can help me. I am kind of lost when it comes to this stuff, but really want to try the game. Being able to play it at its best is definitely the way I want to go about things.

First off, the .ini file is located in the "system" directory under wherever you installed the file. For instance, for me, the file is located at C:\gog\Gothic 2 Gold\system\Gothic.ini.

Editing the file is pretty straightforward. First off, just in case, make a copy of the unedited Gothic.ini file. Then, just open up Gothic.ini in a text editing program like Notepad. I like Notepad++ myself, since it clearly delineates the different sections of the .ini file and shows the comments in a different color for more clarity. There will be a lot of settings, but they're mostly explained by comments in the file.

In my opinion, it's not as necessary to tweak the ini file for Gothic 2 as it was for Gothic 1, but there are a few important parts that I'll point out. For instance, the videos that play in various parts of the game won't display the video (though you can hear sound) at anything other than the vanilla resolutions they let you pick in the menu unless you disable video scaling.

So under the [GAME] portion of the file, find a setting called scaleVideos= and make sure you set it read scaleVideos=0. If you're not familiar with it, 0 means false and 1 means true in the context of .ini files like this.

Another little thing you can do for convenience is set playLogoVideos= to 0 so that the game will skip the jowood and PiranhaBytes logo videos when you start the game and just go straight to the title screen. Saves a lot of time over the course of the game.

Other useful settings to take a look at:

keyDelayFirst, which changes the speed (in milliseconds) at which the game repeats a keystroke the first time. I find the default value of 0 to be a bit too short, so you can increase this so that you have to hold down a key longer before it counts as pressing it again if you feel like navigating dialog menus and your inventory is too twitchy.

invCatOrder, which changes how items will be sorted in your inventory in the game. You may find it more convenient to have your potions at the top of the list rather than weapons, since you don't need to swap those as frequently as you will need to use potions.

usePotionKeys, which lets you bind potions to the number keys so that you can chug them in the middle of a fight instead of having to go into your inventory (which will make you put away your weapon and navigate a menu while the world around you continues to move). This is not what the developers intended and blunts the challenge a bit, however.

useQuickSaveKeys, which, as the name suggests, allows you to use quick saves. It's off by default. F5 to save, F9 to load.

Under the [INTERNAL] heading, extendedMenu is a very important one. It will let you set more things under the in-game options menu, including letting you pick from all the resolutions your computer supports. Keep in mind that due to a bug or something, if you choose a widescreen resolution, everything will look fat and stretched until you talk to an NPC. Also, if you set Gore to "Much" you can use it to track people and animals who flee when badly hurt, as the blood will leave a trail.

I hope that's enough to get you started. It can actually be kind of fun to see what the developers allow you to tweak.

Assuming the game is installed in the normal location, the file you're wanting to edit is gothic.ini in the following location:

%localappdata%\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\GOG.com\Gothic 2 Gold\System

You can paste that into any folder's address bar to jump right to it.

If you're using a 32-bit version of Windows 7 the path is instead the following:

%localappdata%\VirtualStore\Program Files\GOG.com\Gothic 2 Gold\System

If you've installed the game outside the normal location, e.g. in C:\Games\ or whatever you'll find gothic.ini in the game's system folder wherever you installed it to.

Thanks for the posts, guys.

That was actually much quicker than I was expecting, considering.

If I have a problem with anything, I'll post here. Thanks again,

Will try and get everything working once I get back from work.

How do you get the resolution to stay permanently to the resolution that you set because every time I quit Gothic 2 it always goes to 800x600 16bit

@Xuang9:

To change your resolution to anything just add to the command line of the following:

-zRes:<width>,<height>,<bpp>

for example I have:

-zRes:1920,1200,32

with my 24" 16:10 screen

LL

Hmmm this is an old post, I don't play gothic 2 anymore and I already know how to change my resolution in that game, does your solution grant a permanant solution to when I quit the game and enter the game again? Because I remembered that when you quit the game the game would then go back to it's original resolution thus having to edit your Ini file again for your native resolution.

This is added to the shortcut's command line, not the ini file, and so forces that resolution every time you launch it.

Note that the shortcut must point to gothic.exe, not gogwrap.exe, otherwise this won't work.

Could it be that either another program is still accessing the ini.-file? OR could it be that your ini.-file is for some reason write protected or whatever it is called? If so, just right click on the file and somewhere under properties there is an option to toggle it on and off.

To get higher resolutions to stick in the ini, read my post here (put "https://" in front of it because, though I've been buying from GOG for years, I just joined the forums and they won't let me post links yet - thanks GOG):
www.gog.com/forum/gothic_series/gothic_series_patches_mods_tweaks/post136