Btw it runs with DosBox 0.65 (as said before) and dynamic machine setting with 20-30 frames in 320x400 on a AMD 64 3000+ (WinXP 🙁 ) and 1GB RAM with 22.000 cycles. Nearly smoothly.

Odd. DOSBox emulates vesa 2.0 not sure how many mb though,

Jep, odd.
But ROTH needs VESA 1.2 support. I tried also loading UNIVBE drivers and the multiple VBE chipset patch, none of them seems to work 😢 .
But as stated here http://www.realmsofthehaunting.com/support.php#requirements it should only need VESA 1.2 support. Can Dosbox emulate this too?

Vesa2 is downwards compatible. Emulated graphics memory is 2mb.

Hm, any ideas what else I can test?

Not sure, how do you determine that you can't switch into higher
resolutions? By some setup.exe or is it an in-game options menu?
Sometimes you need to specify some parameters at the command
line for the game in order to enable high-resolution graphics modes.

First when running the game it says:
"VGA card detected" which chould be sth like "SVGA card detected"
Then you can via F6 switch the game resolution (ingame not in the menu) and when a svga card is detected a new setting shows up, which lets you choose the screen resolution (without svga this setting is hidden.)

Suppose they are searching for some svga card then, not a vesa one
(at least not using the regular vesa calls).
Some cvs builds contain emulation for additional svga chipsets,
maybe that helps (see the development forum).

I'm not 100% sure it says "SVGA card .." (it's a long time ago I played this game on a real computer).
"1 Meg VGA/SVGA (Vesa 1.2 compliant card needed for high res.)" Says the product desription.

Thanks I will try that when I come home from work and report back 😁

So I've tried it, no of them seems to work. I tried the dosbox version from ykhwong (with the different svga bios patch).

Hm, there is a file included (with ROTH) named "VESAFIX.COM", which should fix if vesa cards are not detected as such, but this doesn't also help ...
After running the Vesafix.com it says "VESA FIX (mode 19) added to system.". Maybe this gives a glue of how the program tries to search for a vesa (or svga, whatever) card.

Is there anything else I can do to figure out the problem?

Have you tried to run VESA Driver for SVGA (s3 card) before playing the game? You can download the VESA driver from my page.

Thanks for your suggestion!

Yep now I have.
But I think the game doesn't use drivers vor vesa (ok i'm a vesa n00b) because it doesn't say that there must be some installed.

So did you manage to run the game at 640x480 Res??

I just got this classic from Amazon, and I have to play it at 320x400 resolution.... since I can't access the SVGA menu.

Any Ideas?

There is no "SVGA menu" in this game. You can switch resolutions (i believe two of them) with the "F6" key. Some more info here.

Oh, and you should have opened a new thread. This one is ancient.

Well I'll be damned..!
Just to close this thread on happy note;
I did find a way to access the highest 640x480 SVGA resolutions in the game.

Sometimes the answer is in the most obvious place.
When ingame, click on the upper left corner of the screen to access the inventory, once inside, access the menu (clicking on the image of the 1.44 diskette) go to settings, and choose screen.

In there you will get a list of options including the highest VESA resolutions.
You will have to restart the game, after changing the resolution.

Behold! Crisp 640x480 resolution! A real thing of beauty in 1996!