Please excuse my shameless plug but I wanted to make a post about a program that I have been working on for a few months now: The Emperor Resolution Customiser.

It is a program that essentially allows you to create a modified copy of the game's EXE that has all of the fixes that are present in the various widescreen mods and let you choose almost any resolution values you want the game to run at (except ones that cause bugs or are physically impossible to support). I designed this as a replacement for the various widescreen fixes that are available for this game. It currently supports only the GOG version but I would like to add support for as many distributions and languages as possible.

You can find the program here: https://www.nexusmods.com/emperorriseofthemiddlekingdom/mods/1

The source code is available here: https://github.com/XJDHDR/impressions-resolution-customiser

Thank you!

I draw your attention
The widescreen patches (by JackFuste, 2012) has a bug that prevents Emperor (and Zeus) from switching to Windowed mode.
(And it has nothing to do with Color Rendering not 16bit)

web.archive.org/web/20190910005136/www.wsgf.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=14149&start=160#p145033 It depends on the value of only one byte.
When I noticed the difference in CRC32, XJDHDR explained the reason to me: Outdated patches without patch "noWindowed" bug
community . pcgamingwiki . com/files/file/1745-emperor-rise-of-the-middle-kingdom-widescreen-fix/
www . moddb . com/mods/emperor-full-hd-support/downloads/emperor-full-hd-support

XJDHDR Customiser with patch "noWindowed" bug
www . gog . com/forum/emperor_rise_of_the_middle_kingdom/emperor_resolution_customiser
www . nexusmods . com/emperorriseofthemiddlekingdom/mods/1

Now, if you're can't switch to Windowed Mode, then you know why.
Use a resizer from XJDHDR or apply a patch to the old ones.
Thx, XJDHDR!

Hello @XJDHDR, people like you make the gaming world a better place :)
Thanks a lot for sharing, it is truly amazing!

Thank you @XJDHDR! This mod makes it much easier for me to navigate my city!

Firstly, huge thanks to the mod creator for your work!

Well, this has been a rollercoaster. It worked, then it didn't, then it did - and then it didn't.

But I think I can now offer some good advice to others looking to make this game run in a decent resolution thanks to this mod. This was in Windows 10 Pro 22H2.

Download GOG version so it's all brand new (or verify to go back to square one)

Run the customiser
Type in 1280 by 960 resolution (or whatever you want - but some resolutions don't work)
Click on "Select emperor.exe" and find where you put the GOG folder/Emperor.exe file for the game.
Then "Generate EXE"
Close customiser

Cut and paste the newly created files from the patched_files folder into the main GOG Emperor folder and overwrite all.
Rename the Binks folder to Binks2

Right click the Emperor.exe file and select properties and compatibility tab:

Run this program in Windows XP (service pack 2)
Reduced colour mode 16bit
Disable full-screen optimisations
Change high DPI settings - override high DPI scaling behaviour by Application

Run the game from this EXE file rather than GOG. Create a shortcut for your desktop to make life even easier. I didn't need to disable the NVIDIA overlay.

The main menu will be the wrong resolution but the game itself should be fine. You've lost the intro movie but it can cause so many crashes it's not worth it. Re-name the Binks2 folder back to Binks and MAYBE it will work, that's for you to try.

The mod itself suggests 1024 x 768 but that's a bit too closeup for my liking whereas 1920 by 1080 was too far out. 1280 by 960 seemed to me the balance between being in close to see all the details but not too close. That's just my personal choice though.

As for trying to run the game in a "windowed mode" with the "Stretch Menu" option, I've never got it to work. However this is such an old game that if you quit and do something else, reloading it again will take less than ten seconds. So I've given up trying to get that to work. I just don't need it.

I haven't played the game thoroughly yet so there may be additional issues that turn up but for getting the game to run at the start, I hope this was helpful.