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Difference between revisions of "Pharaoh"

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Revision as of 16:18, 13 June 2021

This page is for the original release. For the remaster, see Pharaoh: A New Era.

Pharaoh
Pharaoh cover
Developers
Impressions Games
BreakAway Games
Publishers
Retail Sierra Entertainment
Digital Activision
Release dates
Windows November 5, 1999
Taxonomy
Genres Building
Themes Egypt
Series City Building (Sierra)
Pharaoh on HowLongToBeat
Pharaoh on IGDB
Pharaoh guide on StrategyWiki
Pharaoh on MobyGames
Pharaoh on Wikipedia
City Building (Sierra)
Caesar (series)
Pharaoh 1999
Zeus: Master of Olympus 2000
Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom 2002
Children of the Nile 2004
Pharaoh: A New Era 2023

General information

Pharaoh Heaven community site
GOG.com Community Discussions
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)
The basegame using simple disc-check.
The Cleopatra expansion utilize SecuROM V4 DRM disc check.
Windows
GOG.com
DRM-free
Includes expansion Cleopatra
Windows
Steam
Icon overlay.png
Includes expansion Cleopatra
Windows
The GOG.com version includes the expansion Queen of the Nile: Cleopatra, the latest patch and is fixed to run on modern computers.

DLC and expansion packs

Name Notes
Queen of the Nile: Cleopatra
Windows

Essential improvements

Patches

Pharaoh Enhancement Pack 1.2 enables the in-game Mission Editor and fixes various issues. (Already included in the GOG and Steam versions).

Skip intro videos

Instructions[1]
  1. Go to <path-to-game>\Binks\High
  2. Rename, move or delete this file:
Intro_big.bik

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\[Note 1]
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/564530/pfx/[Note 2]

Save game data location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\Save[Note 1]
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/564530/pfx/[Note 2]

Save game cloud syncing

System Native Notes
GOG Galaxy
Steam Cloud

Video

Video settings
Video settings

Widescreen resolution

For Pharaoh with Cleopatra (available from GOG or Steam):
  1. Download Pharaoh Resizer (French version)
  2. Place it in the same folder where Pharaoh.exe is
  3. Open PharaohResizer.exe, set the desired resolution and save the new executable in the same folder of Pharaoh.exe
  4. Use the new executable file to play
  • If the game crashes you may need to choose another resolution
For Pharaoh without Cleopatra replace Pharaoh.exe with this file.

Windowed

Change color depth[2]
  1. Change the colour depth of the display to 16-bit
    • For Windows 8 and newer, enable the following compatibility settings for the Pharaoh.exe file (located in <path-to-game>: Reduced color mode (16-bit color).
    • For Windows Vista and 7, change the colour mode through the Screen resolution settings in the Control Panel.
    • For Windows XP, change the colour mode through the Display settings in the Control Panel.
  2. Download the patched files and extract them into <path-to-game>.
  3. Launch the game.
PharaohStarter.exe[3]

An application that automatically changes the colour depth to 16-bit and starts Pharaoh in a window. After the game is closed the color depth returns to 32-bit.

  1. Download the launcher.
  2. Extract the contents of the download to <path-to-game>.
  3. Run the game using PharaohStarter.exe.

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
Sliders for Music, Speech, Effects and City Ambient.
Surround sound
Subtitles
Not during cutscenes
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
French
German
Hungarian
Fan translation.
Italian
Polish
Local retail version only
Spanish
Swedish
Local retail version only

Issues fixed

Unable to load function; Ft_thunk (Kernell32.dll)

Enable Compatibility mode[4]
  1. Enable the following compatibility settings for the Pharaoh.exe file (located in <path-to-game>: Compatibility mode (Windows 2000).
  2. Launch the game.

Game freezes / movies not playing

Force only one CPU core to run the game[5]
  1. Download ImageCFG.
  2. Extract the contents of the download to <path-to-game>.
  3. Open a text editor (ex. Notepad) and paste in the following:
@echo off
if not exist Pharaoh.exe goto end
if exist Pharaoh.exe.bak goto end
copy Pharaoh.exe Pharaoh.exe.bak
imagecfg -u Pharaoh.exe
imagecfg -a 0x1 Pharaoh.exe
pause
:end

4. Save the file with the .bat extension and place it in <path-to-game>.
5. Run this file to launch the game.

Update the mss32.dll file[6]
  1. In <path-to-game>, rename the mss32.dll file to oldmss32.dll.
  2. Download Miles Sound System (MSS) v6.0m.
  3. Extract the contents of the download to <path-to-game>.
  4. Launch the game.
Stop Pharaoh from freezing[7]
  1. Download the "Pharaoh v1.2 [ENGLISH] No-CD/Fixed EXE" from "http://www.gamecopyworld.eu/games/pc_pharaoh.shtml" (or in your language from the list)
  2. Add it the installation folder and double-click it - this will patch your Pharaoh.EXE file to play the game without the CD and Fix the .EXE to stop freezing (in my case it worked over all other work-arounds)
  3. Hopefully this fixed your problem as it did me. Play and enjoy!

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
DirectDraw 6 [citation needed]
Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows

Middleware

Middleware Notes
Audio Miles Sound System 5.0r[8]
Cutscenes Bink Video, Smacker

System requirements

Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 95
Processor (CPU) Intel Pentium 133 MHz
System memory (RAM) 32 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 360 MB
Video card (GPU) 1 MB of VRAM
DirectX 6 compatible


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).
  2. 2.0 2.1 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>/564530/ in addition to or instead of this directory. The app ID (564530) may differ in some cases. Treat backslashes as forward slashes. See the glossary page for details.

References