Great work figuring out the widescreen, but lack of text scaling in higher resolutions still means I'll play the original (since that can be forced to 4K with dgVoodoo and still have text readable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HYXydbIvDs).

I also think the FPS limit should be 30, not 60, though I know that was wheybags's choice not yours.

ZellSF wrote on 2026-06-16, 12:16:

Great work figuring out the widescreen, but lack of text scaling in higher resolutions still means I'll play the original (since that can be forced to 4K with dgVoodoo and still have text readable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HYXydbIvDs).

I also think the FPS limit should be 30, not 60, though I know that was wheybags's choice not yours.

Thanks, that's fair feedback and I appreciate you actually trying it.

On the text size, it's worth clearing up what dgVoodoo is doing in that video, because it isn't rendering the UI crisply at 4K. It runs the game at a low internal resolution and then upscales the whole frame to fill your 4K screen, so the font looks big and readable because the entire image is enlarged (a little soft up close, but perfectly readable).

The thing is, the mod already gives you that same result today. If you pick 1280x720 or 1920x1080 in the launcher on a 4K display, you get large, readable text. On a 4K panel 1920x1080 is an exact 2x scale, so it stays clean rather than blurry. So readable text at high res is already there, you just select a lower game resolution and let it fill the screen.

The one real difference from dgVoodoo is how the upscale happens. Right now the launcher switches your display mode and lets the monitor do the scaling, whereas dgVoodoo keeps your desktop at 4K and upscales inside its own wrapper. I'm looking at adding an internal render-scale option so the game can render low and stretch itself up to a 4K window, which would match dgVoodoo more closely and avoid touching your desktop resolution.

Genuinely native 4K rendering with a large, sharp UI is a different beast. The HUD and fonts are fixed-size bitmap art with no scaling parameter, so enlarging them cleanly means hooking the 2D/font layer and keeping click hit-testing in sync, which is a much bigger reverse-engineering job. It's on my radar, but it isn't a quick toggle.

On the 30 vs 60 fps cap, you're right that was wheybags's call rather than mine. I'll take a look at whether it can be exposed as a launcher option so people can pick what they prefer.

Cheers.

ZellSF wrote on 2026-06-16, 12:16:

Great work figuring out the widescreen, but lack of text scaling in higher resolutions still means I'll play the original (since that can be forced to 4K with dgVoodoo and still have text readable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HYXydbIvDs).

I also think the FPS limit should be 30, not 60, though I know that was wheybags's choice not yours.

Update for anyone who ran into the small-text problem at high resolution: v2.5 is out and adds exactly this.

There are new "Upscale 4K / 2K / 1K, big UI" presets in the launcher. They do the same thing dgVoodoo does, the game renders at a lower resolution and the whole frame is stretched up to fill your screen, so the menus and text get big and stay readable. It is a touch soft up close, same as the dgVoodoo route, since it is the same upscale trick and the game's UI art is fixed-size, there is no high-res UI to draw instead. The difference is that it is built into the launcher, so there is no separate wrapper to install or configure, and it runs alongside the widescreen and HUD fixes out of the box. Your Windows desktop stays at its native resolution the whole time.

The number is the render resolution, not your screen, so pick the tier at or below your monitor. On a 4K display "Upscale 2K" is the sweet spot, or "Upscale 1K" if you want the UI even bigger.

Grab it here: https://github.com/azmawee/EmperorReborn/releases/latest

Thanks for the nudge, that small-text complaint is exactly what pushed me to build it.

Nice, but no dgVoodoo2 doesn't only upscale. It renders at 4K, obviously 2D elements do need to get upscaled, but if you watch my video at 4K you can see the rendering resolution of the 3D geometry is that; 4K, there's no aliasing to be found anywhere (despite the fact that the UI resolution is 960x720).

Something about your (or wheybags's original) patch breaks that functionality though, dgVoodoo is still loaded (shows watermark), but rendering resolution is always native.