Age of Wonders

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Age of Wonders
Age of wonders.jpg
Developers
Publishers
Release dates
Windows
October 31, 1999
Age of Wonders at Steam Charts
Age of Wonders at SteamDB
 Age of Wonders at Wikipedia
Age of Wonders
Age of Wonders 1999
Age of Wonders II: The Wizard's Throne 2002
Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic 2003
Age of Wonders III 2014
Golden Realms

General information

More information GOG.com Community Discussions for game series
More information GOG.com Support Page
More information Steam Community Discussions
More information Steam Users' Forums for game series
More information Age of Wonders Heaven fansite

Availability[edit]

Source DRM Notes Keys
Retail DRM details are not known
GOG.com DRM-free Soundtrack and HD wallpaper included.
Steam Availability Table Icons - Steam.svg Also available in Age of Wonders Trilogy with soundtrack.
GamersGate DRM-free Also available in Age of Wonders Trilogy with soundtrack.
Information The demo is available at FilePlanet.

Essential improvements[edit]

The latest official patch is v1.36. It can be found in the Age of Wonders Heaven fansite (only needed for retail versions).

Mods[edit]

Information Most mods are found in the AoW Heaven fansite.
Information DevEdit, the tool for customizing the game, is available also at the AoW Heaven fansite, and also make sure to read the beginner's guide if you want to start modding.

Warlock's Rule-Set[edit]

Information The most popular rule-set in Age of Wonders which is a basis to many other rule-sets.
Information For 64-bit systems: download this mod fix if you want it to work on your configurations (works with GOG.com, doesn't work with Steam).

Skip intro videos[edit]

Fix Enable from launcher

  1. Open the Age of Wonders Launcher.
  2. Open the Settings.
  3. Check the box labeled "Skip Intro".
  4. Press OK.

Fix Enable from registry

  1. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Triumph Studios
  2. Open "Age of Wonders" and then click on "General".
  3. Right-click on "Skip Intro" and choose "Modify".
  4. Change the value to 1 and click OK.

Game data[edit]

In-game menu can be found by clicking the dragon icon in the lower-left corner.

Configuration file(s) location[edit]

  Location 
Windows HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Triumph Studios

Save game data location[edit]

  Location 
Windows <path-to-game>\Save\

Save game cloud syncing[edit]

System Native Notes
Steam Cloud Impossible
GameSave Manager Native

Video settings[edit]

General settings.
Graphics option Option WSGF Notes
Widescreen resolution Native WSGF WS Gold.svg Fully supported in Windowed mode.
Multi-monitor Native WSGF MM Gold.svg Fully supported in Windowed mode.
Ultra-widescreen Native WSGF Incomplete.svg
Windowed Native Resolution is changed by dragging window borders or maximizing.
Borderless fullscreen windowed Hackable Works using Borderless Gaming.
Anisotropic filtering (AF) Not applicable
Anti-aliasing (AA) Not applicable
Vertical sync (Vsync) Impossible
High frame rate Impossible

The widescreen support is sort of incomplete because the game doesn't scale neither images nor text to fit the resolution, so it's pretty much unplayable at 1920x1080, everything is microscopic. It was designed to be played at 800x600 or something like that, and there's no 16:9 widescreen resolutions that are similarly low.

What worked for me (assuming NVidia cards, AMD's should have similar settings):

1. Go to NVidia control panel, "Display -> Change resolution -> Customize" add a custom resolution like 960x540 (1920x1080 halved in each dimension, pretty close to 800x600) with 16-bit bpp (bits per pixel) color depth.

2. Same, "Adjust desktop size and position -> Perform scaling on -> GPU". Enabling GPU scaling is critical.

3. Run the game, select fullscreen and the resolution you added (it must be 16-bpp to show up in the list), enjoy widescreen experience with nice scaling.

Why the second step is absolutely critical: apparently, LCD displays have a fixed set of resolutions they support, when you just create a 960x540 resolution, with GPU scaling disabled, the display first finds a resolution in that fixed set that allows it to accommodate your custom resolution (so it would be 1280x1024 probably), then rescales the image to fit that resolution, then rescales the resulting image to fit the native resolution of the LCD pixel grid. The result of those two rescalings looks like shit and usually even has black bars. If you enable GPU scaling then your GPU upscales the image to fit the native resolution and renders it directly to the native resolution of the display, yay.

(on a side note, maybe someone more proficient with Wiki than I am could move this trick to its own page and link it here?)

Input settings[edit]

Keyboard and mouse Native Notes
Remapping Impossible
Mouse acceleration Not applicable
Mouse input in menus Native
Mouse Y-axis inversion Not applicable
Controller
Controller support Impossible

Audio settings[edit]

Audio options Native Notes
Separate volume controls Native Music & SFX.
Surround sound Impossible
Subtitles Impossible
Closed captions Impossible
Mute on focus lost Impossible

Localizations

Language UI Audio CC Notes
English Native Impossible Impossible

Network[edit]

Multiplayer types

Type Native Notes
LAN play Native Direct TCP protocol.
Online play Native Direct TCP protocol.
Hot-seat Native
Asynchronous multiplayer Native Play-by-Mail; see Asynchronous multiplayer.

Asynchronous multiplayer[edit]

  • Play-by-Email is an another form of online play which basically works by e-mailing the turns. The advantage to it is that you can post turns at any time while the disadvantage is the slowness of the games.
Information Age of Wonders Email Wrapper is almost a required way to play the game by E-mail. It automates the sending and receiving process to eliminate mistakes made by manual e-mail sending.
Information If you don't want to play through the wrapper, be sure to check this guide on AoW Heaven forums.

Connection types

Type Native Notes
Matchmaking Impossible
Peer-to-peer Impossible
Dedicated Impossible
Self-hosting Impossible
Direct IP Unknown

Issues fixed[edit]

Information If you haven't found an issue, even if you haven't downloaded from GOG.com, read GOG.com Support Page for more information.

Enabling cheats[edit]

Fix Use beatrix parameter

  1. Make a shortcut to AoW.exe instead of Launcher.exe.
  2. Replace the AoWCompat command line parameter with beatrix
  3. Start playing and press Ctrl+⇧ Shift+C. You will hear a ringing sound to confirm it.
  4. Start cheating by simply typing the words into the game (The cheats list)

Game crashing/mapview error/error during draw[edit]

Fix Game crashing

Play the game in a full screen resolution

Fix Fix Data Execution Prevention setting[1]

Ensure Data Execution Prevention (DEP) is set to the default (Windows programs and services only).

Garbled text[edit]

Fix Garbled text[2]

. Reinstall the game or lower the resolution.

Retail doesn't work on Windows 7[edit]

Fix Retail W7[3]

Information Sometimes, the retail game won't work on Windows 7. To fix this, run the game in windowed and if you want to play fullscreen, you can get it to run on Borderless fullscreen windowed.

Maps[edit]

Advantage The game also supports external singleplayer and multiplayer maps. Map editor is included in the game.
Information Archive: AoW Heaven Downloads Central

System requirements[edit]

Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS)
XP or newer
Processor (CPU) 1 GHz 1.4 GHz
System memory (RAM) 256 MB 512 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD)
350 MB
Video card (GPU) DirectX 7 compatible DirectX 9 compatible

References

  1. ↑ http://www.gog.com/forum/age_of_wonders_series/aow_1_crashes_on_startup_win7x64_desktop/post1
  2. ↑ http://www.gog.com/forum/age_of_wonders_series/strange_text
  3. ↑ http://aow.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=ct&f=13,5427,,60