Hi,

I am using a widescreen monitor. When I play Lands of Lore, the game does not stay in its original dimensions, it stretches to fit my widescreen. I'm wondering if I can turn this off, or is there any way to fix this?

Hey,

I'm assuming you're playing Lands of Lore 1, in fullscreen mode.
There's 2 fairly easy ways that fix this issue on my machine, if one doesn't work try the other.

METHOD 1 - USING THE ORIGINAL GOG INSTALL
In your Lands of Lore directory edit dosboxLOL1.conf with notepad or something similar
You'll want to find these settings in the file and replace them with the following: You should now be able to play with aspect correction
**Note: You can also try playing with scaler=normal2x or scaler=normal3x. It didn't allow for aspect correction on my computer when I originally tried it, but resetting my computer fixed it. Good 'ol windows *sigh

METHOD 2 - PLAY THE GAME WITH SCUMMVM
This method's a bit more complicated, but has a nice GUI for changing options once installed and may have less graphical glitches overall.

In your Lands of Lore directory create an empty directory within named something like LOLCD
Open GAME.DAT in your Lands of Lore directory with 7-zip or another archive extractor and extract all the files to the directory you just made

Download and install scummvm https://www.scummvm.org/downloads/#stable
Run scummvm and "Add Game" point it to the new directory DATA folder. For example c:\GOG\Lands Of Lore\LOLCD\DATA
If done correctly, you have now added Lands of Lore to scummvm. Under the Graphics Tab of the game, you can enable aspect correction.

Hi,

Thanks for such a thorough response! I managed the get the aspect ratio correct, but the image is still stretched and pixelated across the screen. I suspect I'm going to have to lower my desktop resolution, or my only other option will be to play in a window. Any suggestions on this? When I tried lowering my desktop resolution to 800x600 it still stretched to play across the screen. I need a native resolution that will work with this game, I am gonna try 1280x720 next, keep this thread posted.

I am having a little issue switching between cutscenes and gameplay now, where the sound skip and/or the frame stutters and artifacting occurs. I don't know if there is a fix for this, but I'm going to try to get this game as playable as possible on my PC, then plough through it. I was an avid fan of LoLII, and it's nice to revisit this universe. May I say the game has aged charmingly, as well?

Thanks,

AXIV

Hmmm. It's weird that your aspect ratio is correct but the image is still stretched and pixalated across the screen. I'm assuming since you mentioned graphical glitches you're still using the gog dosbox method? Running it in Scummvm, as per the previous post, did fix several graphical glitches for me, including the switching between cutscenes and gameplay.

You shouldn't need to change your desktop resolution if you want to try and continue with dosbox, however.
In the dosboxLOL1.conf file. the fullresolution=desktop can be modified to try different resolutions. For example: fullresolution=1920x1080. The configuration file does specify that you should set it to your monitors native resolution for best results with aspect=true.

Another setting to play with in the dosboxLOL1.conf is output=overlay. You may want to try one of the other outputs like ddraw or openglnb.

Trying a newer version of DOSBox may also help (better filtering options). I like DOSBox ECE. https://blog.yesterplay80.net/dosbox-ece-en/ Make a copy of the DOSBOX folder in the Lands of Lore directory, and then replace the files in the original DOSBOX folder with these. With this, you can now enable output=surfacepp (with scaler=none)in the dosboxLOL1.conf. A pixel perfect scaling option!

At the end of the day though, Scummvm will likely be the better option for a graphics bug free run.

I somehow missed these games when i was younger, but had quite a bit of fun finishing LOL2 for the first time this year. I will likely go through LOL3 next, and then head back to finally try LOL1, as (like you said) it's aged fairly gracefully compared to the others.

Good Luck!

I managed to get it running with Scummvm as suggested. Seems to have fixed the video issue. For some reason the "aspect correction" is grayed out, but I assume it is in proper aspect ratio as there are black bars to each side of the game screen. It still looks very pixelated and stretched compared to YouTube videos of the game. Maybe something is wrong with the resolution, I'll play around and see if I can get the graphics looking cleaner.

I was able to override the global graphics settings and choose aspect ratio correction. That fixed most of the problem. Thank you!

On closer inspection, it seems that the game is still stretched, this time vertically. I have "aspect ratio correction" selected in ScummVM, but it doesn't look like the graphics as they appear in YouTube videos. Maybe there is some way to play this game in its original resolution, even if there are black bars around the game? Sorry to request help, this problem has been ongoing, and I really want to play this game without graphical distortion.

More than likely those YouTube videos were recorded in windowed mode (alt-enter or change the option in the GUI). Have you tried that yet to see if it's more correct in aspect than fullscreen?

Otherwise as I mentioned in an earlier post: DOSBox ECE has a pixel perfect fullscreen mode if enabled correctly. However, You will likely get the graphical artifacts when it switches between the gameplay and playing movies again.