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Zeus: Master of Olympus

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Revision as of 09:44, 16 September 2021 by Garrbot (talk | contribs) (updated template usage)
Zeus: Master of Olympus
Zeus: Master of Olympus cover
Developers
Impressions Games
Publishers
Retail Sierra Entertainment
Digital Activision
Release dates
Windows October 17, 2000
Taxonomy
Monetization Expansion pack
Modes Singleplayer
Pacing Real-time
Perspectives Bird's-eye view, Isometric
Controls Point and select
Genres Building
Themes Europe, Classical, Fantasy
Series City Building (Sierra)
Zeus: Master of Olympus on MobyGames
Zeus: Master of Olympus 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

Key points

Comes with an adventure editor for creation of custom campaigns and scenarios

General information

Official website (retrieved)
Zeus Heaven website
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)
Several versions available by Sierra and Vivendi Universal. SecuROM DRM disc check.
Windows
GOG.com
DRM-free
Includes the expansion Poseidon: Master of Atlantis
Windows
Steam
Icon overlay.png
Includes the expansion Poseidon: Master of Atlantis
Windows

DLC and expansion packs

Name Notes
Poseidon: Master of Atlantis
Windows

Essential improvements

Patches

The Enhancement Pack 1.1 is the latest patch for Zeus, and Enhancement Pack 2.1 for Poseidon, both available here. Steam and GOG releases already include this update.

Skip intro videos

Instructions[1]
  1. Go to <path-to-game>\Binks
  2. Rename, move or delete these files:
Zeus_Intro.bik
Zeus_Intro_HiQ.bik

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\[Note 1]
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/566050/pfx/[Note 2]

Save game data location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\<user-id>\[Note 1]
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/566050/pfx/[Note 2]

Save game cloud syncing

System Native Notes
GOG Galaxy
Steam Cloud

Video

In-game video settings.
In-game video settings.

Graphics feature State Notes
Widescreen resolution
Use the Zeus & Poseidon Resolution Customiser utility.
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen
4K Ultra HD
Field of view (FOV)
Windowed
Pressing F5 will switch to windowed, if the desktop resolution is higher than the game resolution.
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 is not clamped to engine framerate.

Input

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

Audio

In-game audio settings.
In-game audio settings.

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Music, speech, ambient and SFX
Surround sound
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
Separate UK and US versions
French
German
Hungarian
Fan translation.
Italian
Polish
Local retail version only.
Spanish
Local retail version only.For digital Version https://steamcommunity.com/app/566050/discussions/0/3112530528196239245/

Issues fixed

Animation Speed Problems

The game has notable issues with specific animations that play too slow or too fast on modern systems. (Eg. god spawning effects and the urchin collectors along with various buildings).

Instructions[2]
A user patch that addresses several of these problems (including the god spawn effect and the urchin collector bug) can be found here.
The widescreen fix comes prepackaged with this fix aswell. See Video settings.

Issues unresolved

Unresolved Animation Issues

No animation patches for non-digital releases of the game exist.
Not all of the animation issues are addressed in user patches. (Eg. the trading piers, hippodrome spectators and other buildings).

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
DirectDraw 5
Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows

Middleware

Middleware Notes
Audio Miles Sound System 6.0m[3]
Cutscenes Bink Video

System requirements

Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 98
Processor (CPU) Intel Pentium 166 MHz
System memory (RAM) 32 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 600 MB
Video card (GPU) 2 MB of VRAM


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>/566050/ in addition to or instead of this directory. The app ID (566050) may differ in some cases. Treat backslashes as forward slashes. See the glossary page for details.

References

  1. Tested by Nessy
  2. Tested by Nessy
  3. Verified by User:Nessy on 2019-12-08
    Version number found in Mss32.dll in the game installation folder.