Yongle 0.2.0

Yongle 0.2.0: Options window, key rebinding, city zoom and full city screenshots

Download yongle-0.2.0.zip below (not "Source code (zip)", which has no ddraw.dll).

Added

• Options window. A new settings window that looks like the game's own dialogs. It has the game's settings (game speed, scroll speed, autosave, messages, volumes) and Yongle's settings together, on General, Video and Audio pages. Open it with F6, from the Options menu in the city, or from the main menu (Options replaces Visit Website). If you change the resolution or display scale, the game asks "Keep this setting?" and switches back after 15 seconds if you don't answer. The game's own settings are still saved in the game's files.
• Key rebinding in Options > Hotkeys. Almost every key can be changed, with two keys per action. Ctrl, Shift, Alt and the mouse side buttons work too. The default keys are the same as the original game. The "Game paused" message shows your pause key.
• Esc closes windows and opens a Pause menu. Esc now closes any open window, like a right click. This includes confirmation boxes, which before could only be closed with the mouse. In the city, Esc cancels the building tool or the selected company first; if there is nothing to cancel, it opens the Pause menu (Continue, Replay map, Load game, Save game, Delete game, Options, Exit to main menu, Exit game). In the city, Esc no longer asks if you want to quit: to quit, use Exit game in the Pause menu or the File menu. On the menu screens (campaigns, Open Play, high scores and so on), Esc goes back, like a right click. On the main menu, Esc asks before quitting instead of quitting right away.
• Full city and minimap screenshots. F10 saves the whole city as one PNG, at the game's normal size and without the interface. Shift+F10 saves the minimap. Both are also in the File menu. A big city gives a picture of about 9000×4500 pixels.
• City zoom with the mouse wheel, from 50 % to 150 %, toward the cursor. A "Zoom" message shows the current level. The middle mouse button goes back to 100 %. Over the sidebar, the wheel still changes the building category. The starting zoom can be set in Options > Video. Saved games are not affected.
• Unused nature sounds, on by default. The game comes with recordings of birds, wind, crickets, frogs and wind chimes that it never actually played. Yongle now plays them now and then in the city, moving slowly around you. To turn them off, use Options > Audio > Unused nature sounds, or set nature_sounds = off in [audio].
• Master volume and mute for all music and sounds (Options > Audio). The game's own volume settings are kept.
• Skip the intro movie (Options > General Settings).

Changed

• The display scale applies to every screen, not just the city: menus, briefings and loading screens get bigger too. Menu screens now only sets the background around them (city, parchment or original), and so does Loading screens (framed or original).
• Yongle's messages use the game's message boxes at the top of the city, with errors in red like the game's.
• New default speeds for new players: 80 % game speed and 30 % scroll speed (the original defaults are 90 % and 60 %). If you have played before, your settings stay the same.
• Yongle's files go to Documents when needed. If the game folder needs administrator rights to write to (for example under C:\Program Files (x86)), Yongle's settings, log and screenshots now go to Documents\My Games\Yongle instead of Windows' VirtualStore. Your settings are copied there at the first start.
• emperor_engine.ini is updated when you upgrade. It gets the new version's descriptions and keeps your values. The old file is saved as emperor_engine.ini.bak. If the file is missing, it is created again.
• The settings panel is now a debug panel (Insert), for testing and for fixing the display if something goes wrong. All other settings are in Options.
• Ctrl+arrow keys no longer scroll faster; you can bind Ctrl+arrows to other actions instead. F6, F7 and F8 are no longer passed to the game.
• No new ambient sounds while Yongle's windows are open, the same as with the game's own dialogs.

Fixed

• Full screen is no longer pushed up by the compatibility setting that GOG installs. Since 0.1.1, Yongle moved the window back each time; now it doesn't get moved at all.
• Alt+1 to Alt+5 crashed the game above 1024×768, because they also try to save a BMP screenshot the game can't make at larger sizes. The BMP is no longer saved. Calling back your companies works as before.
• The city no longer jumps forward for a moment after you close a window or the Pause menu.

For bug reports

• The log now records how Windows shows the game's picture, and F12 reports include the latest changes, to help track down the rare black squares.

Upgrade notes

• In emperor_engine.ini, [display] is now [video] and [sound] is now [audio]. The China map is now called the empire map (empire_map and so on), and some values of menu_screens and loading_screen were renamed. Your file is converted at the first start and keeps your values.
• Keys are in the new [keys] section. Each action can have two keys, separated by a comma.
• present = original is no longer offered in Options or the debug panel, because neither works with it. If your file has it, it becomes display. You can still set it by hand for troubleshooting.

Upgrade: replace ddraw.dll and ddraw.syms in the game folder with the ones in the zip. Keep your emperor_engine.ini: Yongle updates it at the first start and keeps your values.

yongle-0.2.0.zip SHA256: 040df38ab41df712e3faa035137f44de1c3ff8fbad0920a3808044a153584085

Yongle 0.1.3

Yongle 0.1.3 — smoother on every renderer, sound, and display options

Changed

• The music and the sounds pause when you switch away (Alt+Tab, clicking another window, minimizing) and go on where they were when you come back. The original game stops them all and starts another song when you return; set background_sound = original in the new [sound] section of emperor_engine.ini (also in the settings panel, Insert) to keep that.
• Ambient sounds no longer depend on your resolution and computer. The game plays a random city sound once in about 300 passes of its main loop, so a fast computer at 1024×768 was very noisy (about one per second) and a large resolution far quieter (about one in four seconds). Now it is about one every two seconds whatever the resolution ([sound] ambient_sounds = 0.5; also 0.25, 0.75, 1.0, or original).
• Direct3D 11 is always the default (renderer = auto); Steam's FPS counter no longer makes it stop for seconds at a time. Yongle's own work and the graphics driver now run on the other processor cores, while the game stays on the one core the GOG release gives it ([compat] cpu_affinity, for troubleshooting only).
• Screenshots no longer slow the game down (F11, F12).
• Output scaling can be switched at once — nearest, linear (new) or sharp_bilinear — in Display options and the settings panel; renderer = direct3d now has sharp bilinear too.
• Menus and loading screens: new original look (the whole 1024×768 picture at its own size, black around); the blur and brightness of the city behind the menus can be set (background_blur, background_brightness). The screens before a mission (mission choice, briefing and introduction) and the editors now have parchment around them instead of the city you played last, since the next mission is usually on another map (your own menu_background picture is still shown there).
• China map: a scale of your own (china_map_scale, in percent) and the city as you left it behind the map (china_map_background = city).

Fixed

• Clicks on the sidebar or the top bar no longer reach the city. While holding a building or a road, a click on a sidebar button could also build right under the sidebar, or under the top bar (since 0.1.0, whenever the smooth-scrolled view had stopped between two tiles). The cursor's tile and the construction preview now stop at the edge of the city as you see it.

Known issues

• If the game is under C:\Program Files (x86) and does not run as administrator, Windows keeps Yongle's settings, log and screenshots in %LOCALAPPDATA%\VirtualStore (default GOG Galaxy installs run as administrator and are not affected). See Known issues.

Tip: the game itself can skip its intro movie: set PlayIntroMovie=no in the [Config] section of Emperor.ini in the game folder (Yongle does not change this file).

Upgrade notes

• china_map_integer is gone: if you had it on, the China map (China map = scaled) now fills the map area; use China map: scale to set the size you want. The old line is removed from emperor_engine.ini at the first start (the file as it was is kept as emperor_engine.ini.bak).
• framed and black in loading_screen / menu_screens are now called scaled and scaled_black; your file is updated at the first start (also kept as .bak).

Upgrade: replace ddraw.dll and ddraw.syms in the game folder with the ones in the zip. Keep your emperor_engine.ini: new settings take their defaults when they are missing.

yongle-0.1.3.zip SHA256: 8bb0d20ed85ccf651464d6cfed75a7e95a1141dbc2f112d2d8b9d56a721685da

Yongle 0.1.2

Yongle 0.1.2 — performance and stability

Changed

• Direct3D 9 when the Steam overlay is in the game. Steam's in-game FPS counter makes Direct3D 11 stop for about 2.5 seconds at a time (the overlay itself, with the counter off, runs smoothly). The counter cannot be detected, so Yongle now picks the renderer by itself and plays it safe (renderer = auto, new in the [display] section): Direct3D 11 as before, or Direct3D 9 when the Steam overlay is in the game, at about 25 % fewer frames per second. If you do not use Steam's FPS counter, set renderer = direct3d11 to get that performance back; see Known issues.
• Screenshots no longer freeze the game (F11, F12; this was worst on laptops). Pictures are saved in the background, one at a time, at most six waiting; the frame rate dips for a second or two while one is saved.
• No more jumping city when the computer cannot keep up. When the game falls far behind, Yongle stops catching up on all the missed simulation steps at once; the game runs slower for a moment instead of skipping ahead.
• The log is limited: over 4 MB it is renamed to ddraw_proxy.old.log at the next start.
• The README is shorter; the known issues, the roadmap, building and the menu background are now in docs/.

Fixed

• Error logs now show Yongle's function names. In 0.1.0 and 0.1.1 the symbol table ddraw.syms did not match the DLL, so crash reports only had addresses.
• In a window, the picture is laid out again once you let go of the window's edge, not while you drag it.

For bug reports

• The log now records what runs alongside the game (overlays and recorders, the power plan, how much processor time the game gets) and samples long freezes, which helps us find the cause of stutters.

Upgrade: replace ddraw.dll and ddraw.syms in the game folder with the ones in the zip. Keep your emperor_engine.ini: the new renderer setting defaults to auto when it is missing. New install: see the README.

yongle-0.1.2.zip SHA256: b127f30800fed1a2942f9f2b79abd9f86b0097e3de27a1ba71b96ee74beb019b

Yongle 0.1.1

Warning

If you encounter stuttering/low fps issue, please try changing renderer method to Direct3D to see whether if that solves your issue, either via setting panel (Insert), or editing emperor_engine.ini (find the line: renderer = direct3d11, change direct3d11 into direct3d). If you don't have such issue, you are safe to continue using Direct3D11. Next update will address such issue.

Yongle 0.1.1 — fix for GOG installs

Fixed

• Full screen did not cover the screen on GOG installs: the game sat about 30 pixels too high (the top bar was cut off) and the Windows taskbar stayed on top of it. GOG installs Emperor with a Windows compatibility setting (DWM8And16BitMitigation) that moves the game window up each time the game changes its display mode; Yongle now places its window past that setting and puts it back whenever it is moved off the screen. The setting itself is left as GOG installed it.

Changed

• The log notes when a Windows compatibility setting is active, which helps with bug reports.

Upgrade: replace ddraw.dll and ddraw.syms in the game folder with the ones in the zip (keep your emperor_engine.ini). New install: see the README.

yongle-0.1.1.zip SHA256: 295373b6d4bcc416418fd549927e124fe0c6f2c6a95a842409b73cb72f5327f9

Yongle 0.1.0

Warning

Please use Yongle 0.1.1 instead. On GOG installs, 0.1.0 does not cover the whole screen: the game sits about 30 pixels too high and the Windows taskbar stays on top of it. 0.1.1 fixes this.

Yongle 0.1.0 — first public release

Modern display and quality-of-life improvements for Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom (GOG, version 1.0.1.0). Yongle is a single ddraw.dll: it changes nothing in the game's files, and deleting it restores the original game.

Highlights

• The game at your monitor's resolution and refresh rate, with the interface laid out for wide and high-resolution screens (display scale 100–250 % or Auto)
• Pixel-smooth scrolling and a steady game speed in large cities
• Menus and the China map at their own size over a blurred backdrop; windowed mode (F5 / Alt+Enter)
• Yongle's settings in the game's own Display options, plus a settings panel (Insert)

Install: unpack the zip and copy ddraw.dll, ddraw.syms and emperor_engine.ini into the game folder. See the README for details, keys and known issues.

This is an early release, tested by hand on one machine (AMD, 2560×1440 and 1920×1080). Reports from other setups (4K, NVIDIA, Intel) are very welcome — please use the Bug report form.

yongle-0.1.0.zip SHA256: 1891c61738e1d47cf5353315ddda842c7dc90c8be1caf1417fc515522406c72e