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Master of Orion III

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
Master of Orion III
Master of Orion III cover
Developers
Quicksilver Software
Publishers
2003 Infogrames
2003-2013 Atari
2013-present Wargaming.net
Mac OS MacSoft
Release dates
Windows February 25, 2003
Mac OS (Classic) March 28, 2003
macOS (OS X) March 28, 2003
Taxonomy
Monetization One-time game purchase
Modes Singleplayer, Multiplayer
Pacing Turn-based
Controls Point and select
Genres 4X, TBS
Themes Sci-fi, Space
Series Master of Orion
Master of Orion III on HowLongToBeat
Master of Orion III guide on StrategyWiki
Master of Orion III on MobyGames
Master of Orion III on Wikipedia
Master of Orion
Master of Orion 1993
Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares 1996
Master of Orion III 2003
Master of Orion (2016) 2016

Warnings

GameSpy online services have been shut down (see Network for solutions).

Master of Orion III is a singleplayer and multiplayer 4X and TBS game in the Master of Orion series.

In 2002, a pre-alpha copy of the game was leaked to the PC PowerPlay magazine in Australia, thinking it was a demo. This version was extremely unstable, crashing constantly, causing outrage from some fans before the game was even officially released. Due to being released by an Australian magazine, fans have come to refer to this version as KangaMOO!

General information

GOG.com Community Discussions for game series
GOG.com Support Page
Steam Community Discussions

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
Disc check (requires the CD/DVD in the drive to play)
SecuROM DRM. Polish release uses SafeDisc 2 DRM[Note 1]
Windows
Mac OS
macOS (OS X)
GOG.com
DRM-free
Windows
Humble Store
Icon overlay.png
Windows
Steam
Icon overlay.png
Windows
ZOOM Platform
DRM-free
Windows
SafeDisc retail DRM does not work on Windows Vista and later (see above for affected versions).

Essential improvements

Patches

  • The latest official patch is version 1.25.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\Moo3Prefs.ini[Note 2]
Mac OS (Classic)
macOS (OS X)
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/410990/pfx/[Note 3]

Save game data location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\SaveGameFiles[Note 2]
Mac OS (Classic)
macOS (OS X)
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/410990/pfx/[Note 3]

Save game cloud syncing

System Native Notes
GOG Galaxy
Steam Cloud

Video

General settings
General settings

Graphics feature State Notes
Widescreen resolution
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen
4K Ultra HD
The game is rendered in a fixed 800x600 resolution with 16BPP color. Can only be upscaled with a display wrapper.
Field of view (FOV)
Windowed
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Borderless fullscreen windowed
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
Anti-aliasing (AA)
High-fidelity upscaling
Vertical sync (Vsync)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
60 FPS
120+ FPS
The game is trying to switch the display into an 85 Hz mode. If that fails, it tries to switch it into lower refresh rates with a 1 Hz step down on each attempt.[citation needed]
High dynamic range display (HDR)

Input

Keyboard and mouse State Notes
Remapping
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Mouse acceleration
Mouse sensitivity
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support
Controller types

Audio

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
UI sound effects, music
Surround sound
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
Royalty free audio

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
Russian
Retail and GOG.com only; download and instructions for Steam version.

Network

Multiplayer types

Type Native Notes
LAN play
Online play
GameSpy services have been shut down;[3] see GameSpy for workarounds.

Connection types

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
DirectDraw 4
ExecutablePPC16-bit 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows
macOS (OS X)
Mac OS (Classic)

Middleware

Middleware Notes
Cutscenes Bink Video
Multiplayer GameSpy

System requirements

Windows
Minimum
Operating system (OS) 98, 2000, ME, XP
Processor (CPU) 700 MHz
System memory (RAM) 64 MB (98/ME)
128 MB (2000/XP)
Hard disk drive (HDD) 2 GB
Video card (GPU) 32 MB of VRAM
DirectX 8.1 compatible


Notes

  1. SafeDisc retail DRM does not work on Windows 10[1] or Windows 11 and is disabled by default on Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 when the KB3086255 update is installed.[2]
  2. 2.0 2.1 When running this game without elevated privileges (Run as administrator option), write operations against a location below %PROGRAMFILES%, %PROGRAMDATA%, or %WINDIR% might be redirected to %LOCALAPPDATA%\VirtualStore on Windows Vista and later (more details).
  3. 3.0 3.1 File/folder structure within this directory reflects the path(s) listed for Windows and/or Steam game data (use Wine regedit to access Windows registry paths). Games with Steam Cloud support may store data in ~/.steam/steam/userdata/<user-id>/410990/ in addition to or instead of this directory. The app ID (410990) may differ in some cases. Treat backslashes as forward slashes. See the glossary page for details.

References