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Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom
Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom cover
Developers
Impressions Games
BreakAway Games
Publishers
Retail Sierra Entertainment
Digital Activision
Re-release Sold Out Software
Release dates
Windows September 9, 2002
Taxonomy
Monetization One-time game purchase
Modes Singleplayer, Multiplayer
Pacing Real-time
Perspectives Bird's-eye view, Isometric
Controls Point and select
Genres Building
Themes China, Medieval
Series City Building (Sierra)
Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom on HowLongToBeat
Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom on MobyGames
Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom on Wikipedia
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Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom is a singleplayer and multiplayer bird's-eye view and isometric building game in the City Building (Sierra) series.

General information

Emperor Heaven fan site
GOG.com Community Discussions
GOG.com Support Page

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
Disc check (requires the CD/DVD in the drive to play)
CD key
SecuROM 4 DRM
Windows
GOG.com
DRM-free
Windows
A free demo version is available from GameFront.

Essential improvements

Patches

  • The 1.0.1.0 patch is the latest official update for the game (already included in the GOG.com release).

Skip intro videos

Skip all intro videos[1]
  1. Open <path-to-game>\Emperor.ini.
  2. Change the line PlayIntroMovie=yes to PlayIntroMovie=no then save the changes.

Notes

Some have reported that this tweak also fixed random sound glitches for them.[citation needed]

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\[Note 1]

Save game data location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\Save[Note 1]

Save game cloud syncing

System Native Notes
GOG Galaxy

Video

Video settings
Video settings

Graphics feature State WSGF Notes
Widescreen resolution
Patch the game's EXE using the Emperor Resolution Customiser, or use the older WSGF community files
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen
Patch the game's EXE using the Emperor Resolution Customiser.
4K Ultra HD
Patch the game's EXE using the Emperor Resolution Customiser. Note that due to the way the game is rendered, text and graphics will be very small.
Field of view (FOV)
Windowed
Borderless fullscreen windowed
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
Anti-aliasing (AA)
Vertical sync (Vsync)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
60 FPS and 120+ FPS
20 FPS cap. Mouse not clamped to engine framerate.

Windowed mode

Switch to windowed mode outside the game[2]
  1. Open <path-to-game>\Emperor.inf in a hex editor.
  2. Look for the byte at address 0x04 (5th byte).
  3. If this byte is equal to 0x01, the game will run in fullscreen. If it's 0x00, the game will be windowed.
  4. Change this byte to the appropriate value and save the edited hex file.

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 settings
Audio settings

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Surround sound
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
Game pauses during Alt+Tab .
Royalty free audio

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
French
Retail only.
German
Retail only; download for GOG.com version.
Hungarian
Fan translation.
Italian
Retail only.
Polish
Local retail version only. Details
Spanish
Retail only.

Network

Multiplayer types

Type Native Players Notes
LAN play
8 Versus
Players play separate cities connected by a world map menu.
Online play
8 Versus
The official WON service has been shut down.

Connection types

Issues fixed

Game does not start after patching to 1.0.1.0

Run the game in compatibility mode for Windows 98/ME and as administrator[citation needed]

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
DirectDraw
Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows

Middleware

Middleware Notes
Audio Miles Sound System 6.0i[3]
Cutscenes Bink Video
Multiplayer WON (World Opponent Network) Was shut down in 2008

System requirements

Windows
Minimum
Operating system (OS) 98
Processor (CPU) Intel Pentium II 400 MHz
System memory (RAM) 64 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 800 MB
Video card (GPU) 16-bit 4 MB SVGA


Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 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).

References

  1. Useful Emperor ROTMK links - last accessed on February 08, 2018
  2. Verified by User:XJDHDR on 2023-03-08
  3. Verified by User:Nessy on 2021-05-29
    Version number found in Mss32.dll in the game installation folder.