Evil Genius

Evil Genius

Developers   Elixir Studios

Publishers   Sierra Entertainment   Rebellion Developments

Release dates Windows September 28, 2004 OS X May 9, 2013

Key points

Fairly moddable, further documentation can be found here along with a handy modding guide.

Lacks an official map editor for new scenarios.

General information

Evil Planet Wiki

Steam Community Discussions

Evil Planet Community Site - Great source of mods and tutorials

GOG.com Support Page - Wide array of common fixes

GOG.com Community Discussions

Steam Users Forums

Availability

Source	DRM	Notes	Keys
Retail
Developer website
GamersGate
Green Man Gaming
GOG.com		Windows and OS X.
Steam		EU release with stability fixes from the US version.

The Steam release is a blend between the 1.0 European Patch and the 1.1 US patch, the latter missing some of the most obvious changes.

Essential improvements

Skip intro videos

Skip Intro Open concept.cfg with a text editor, in the configuration files location. Find the following lines and set them to these values. StartupState=1 CopyrightScreenDuration=0

Patches

PCGamingWiki Patch

Contains all the official fixes and most tweaks, new fixes, the extra bonus content, some small balance changes and more.

Official 1.01

The only official patch, released by Elixir before its demise in 2005. It fixes a number of issues, however certain issues still remain.

• European Version
• American Version

Bonus CD

A free expansion to the game, it provides a new unit, a new trap, and various other additions.

Game data

In-game general settings.

Configuration file(s) location

	Location
Windows	<path-to-game>\DynamicResources\Config
OS X

Save game data location

	Location
Windows	<path-to-game>\DynamicResources\Layouts\
OS X

Save game cloud syncing

System	Native	Notes
Steam Cloud
GameSave Manager

Video settings

On a Windowed mode the game might crash after being left for too long out of focus.

In-game general video settings.

In-game advanced video settings.

Graphics option	Option	WSGF	Notes
Widescreen resolution			See Widescreen resolution.
Multi-monitor
Field of view (FOV)		Change the Max Camera Height. See Custom camera height.
Windowed		See Windowed.
Borderless fullscreen windowed		Fixes Alt+Tab ↹ crashes. When out of focus it will appear as paused.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)		Force in the graphics card control panel.
Anti-aliasing (AA)
Vertical sync (Vsync)
High frame rate		No FPS cap. Performance hits are to be expected with more entities.

Widescreen resolution

Widescreen resolution Download the universal resolution changer and extract it to <path-to-game>\ReleaseExe Open resolution.ini and set your desired values. Notes A windowed mode can be forced through the configuration file.

Windowed

Through the resolution changer See Widescreen resolution. Open resolution.ini Look for the line Windowed and change it to Windowed=1 Notes Starting up Fraps after the game has already been launched may cause Evil Genius to crash.

Input settings

In-game general control settings.

In-game key map settings.

Keyboard and mouse	Native	Notes
Remapping
Mouse acceleration
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support

Audio settings

In-game audio settings.

Audio options	Native	Notes
Separate volume controls
Surround sound		Up to 7.1 output.
Subtitles		A subtitles mod only used for basic announcements.
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
EAX support		EAX 4

Localizations

Language	UI	Audio	CC	Notes
English
French
German				Some dialogues are disabled by default. See this.
Italian				A text translation is available here.
Spanish

Issues unresolved

Dissapearing grass

This issue only seems to persist when rotating the camera inside the lair while viewing whatever is outside.

Issues fixed

Error "The Direct3D device has a non-zero reference"

Caused by a resolution change while in the main menu rendering the game unplayable.

Deleteting configuration file Delete Current.opt in the configuration files location. Follow the Widescreen resolution fix in order to set up a custom resolution.

Missing grass (Windows)

Instructions See compatibility mode. Set <path-to-game>\ReleaseExe\EvilGeniusExeStub-Release.exe to run as Windows Vista.

Playtime not being tracked (Steam)

Open Evil Genius twice.

Enabling speech on the German version

Instructions Open concept.cfg in the configuration files location. Find the following lines and set them to these values or add them if they are missing. [Sound] PlayFeedback=true PlayNewsflashes=true

Other information

Enabling the developer console

Instructions Open Default.ksb and Current.ksb with a text editor, in the configuration files location. Add the following line near the end of the file, before the three hypens. ToggleDebugCommands:Ctrl+D Notes While playing push Ctrl+D once, then press ~ or \ to open the console. A handy list of commands can be found here and here.

Custom camera height

Instructions Open concept.cfg in the configuration files location. Find the following lines and set them to your desired values. MinHeight=7.0 MaxHeight=40.0 MinAngle=2.55 MaxAngle=3.1415 Notes MinHeight=2.0, MaxHeight=65 appear to be the most optimal values.

Changing the default Debug.log location

By default on Windows this file is created into the main C: drive.

Instructions Open concept.cfg in the configuration files location. Find the following lines and change the path to something else such as this. Debug output log file=C:/Game Path/DynamicResources

System requirements

Windows
	Minimum	Recommended
Operating system (OS)	98SE	ME, 2000, XP
Processor (CPU)	Pentium III 800 MHz	Pentium IV 1.5 GHz
System memory (RAM)	128 MB	256 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD)	1.4 GB
Video card (GPU)	nVidia GeForce 2 16 MB of VRAM	nVidia GeForce 3 64 MB of VRAM