How to play in windowed mode?

[Mivo]

The search doesn't seem to work and with Google I only found links to threads about EU3. The solution for EU3 is to open the settings.txt file and set the "fullscreen" variable to "no". I tried this with settings.txt in the Rome folder, but there was no effect. How can this be achieved?

Actually, even though I changed the resolution in the game (and at the next start the new resolution was used), settings.txt in C:\Program Files (x86)\Paradox Interactive\Europa Universalis - Rome doesn't reflect the change, so I wonder if I edited the correct file. I didn't find anything Rome related in the user space, though.

 

[unmerged(189088)]

This is in the Rome Gold manual:

Windowed Mode – This setting is not on the game menus, but you can change to Windowed Mode, if you
prefer, by manually editing (using Windows Notepad) the settings.txt file. Simply change the line “windowed =
no” to “windowed = yes” and save. Please note that Windowed Mode is not officially supported, and may cause
performance loss, visual issues or crashes with some systems.

 

[y1kdcb5au9rqw]

In Vista and 7 save games, setting etc. is saved somewhere else, so you probably need to do a search for the files if they are not in the "user space" you describe.

 

[Mivo]

I found the solution.

The settings.txt that is located in Rome's program folder (see my first post for the path) is not the settings.txt that is read by the game. There is another settings.txt that is located at:

C:\Users\NAME\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\Paradox Interactive\Europa Universalis - Rome

Changing "fullscreen" to "yes" worked. The above (posted by V1R14T0) most likely does the same, too. So the issue was that there are two settings.txt files, at least in the GamersGate version, and the "obvious" one (in the program folder) is not the one that is read by the game.

 

[Slavick3000]

As a solution to that, install the game in C:/Games/ rather than C:/Program Files/. Windows Vista and 7 are very jealous of the Program Files folder and don't allow any changes to be made to it except by installer programs. All other changes are done to the Virtual Store. While its not a serious problem for regular play, it can be rather annoying when modding the game.

 

[Ordo Impavidus]

In my settings file, "fullscreen=yes" is what is listed, not "windowmode".

So I change fullscreen=yes to fullscreen=no, then I click 'save' but then I'm denied access so no changes can be made/saved.

How did you guys get around that "access denied" crap??

 

[AndrewT]

You disable UAC or log into Windows as the Administrator user. Or copy settings.txt to your desktop, edit it there, and move it back.