Hmmmm Zoom Level of Detail

[Red Communist]

TLDR Version: I want to see things at max detail from further away, like horses, villagers, Wonders! Is there any way to do that, like a file I could edit or a registry tweak I could make?

So, Black & White came out in 2001, and computers were all garbage back then. I mean, 4 gigs of RAM was considered a lot of RAM, everyone had those box 4x3 monitors, there were built in 32 bit limitations that crashed anything to desktop for going over, most new graphics cards could just barely run Unreal Tournament (the original 1999 version) on the highest settings (older cards melted, literally melted, for trying).

So it's no wonder the level of detail turns to shit if you're even just barely zoomed out, and even epic wonders turn transparent and then invisible as you zoom away from them.

But you know what? I have GeForce GTX 1050 Ti with an I7 processor and more than 12gb of ram, and a 64x Windows 10 operating system, so I'm pretty sure my computer could handle displaying literally everything on the map at maximum detail, even when I have thousands of villagers running around.

Is there any way to manually adjust the zoom level of detail?

 

[Matt]

it's hard coded and I have no idea where ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

always something I'm looking out for though

 

[Xyphis]

I realise this thread is a year old now, but since the forum isn't very active and because there wasn't already an answer here this reply hopefully won't annoy anyone too much. I couldn't find an answer elsewhere anyway so if anything it might save someone else some trouble in future...

Running the BaW patch should set the LoD far past the game's usual maximum. I can see a single sheep from orbit now, when before I couldn't see it from the other side of the village!

I've been playing around with the game's settings in the registry (Under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Lionhead Studios Ltd\Black & White\BWSetup) trying to find out how the LoD setting works so I could increase it past whatever the setup program allows. However it seems like changing the LoD to anything, even a value you've copied in from before, breaks the setting permanantly and the game will always be stuck at the lowest LoD. The only fix I found for it was deleting the registry key entirely and restoring from a backup as changing it back did absolutely nothing to fix the problem. So don't do that.

I wish I'd realised sooner I was just missing a patch so I didn't waste so much time doing basically nothing...

I did find that if you change maxdetailidx to 7 (I think?) and start the game you can switch to "SUPER Detail!" mode, but it doesn't seem much different to enabling everything the usual way. Still pretty cool though!

Edit: Wait, now that's stopped working for me. Now it's broken again. What the hell.

 

[Kratzean]

Do you mean like this?

I know, how I can change it in Black&White Creature Isle, but I think, that these values I can change easy in B&W too^^

 

[guitarjoe]

Do you mean like this?

I know, how I can change it in Black&White Creature Isle, but I think, that these values I can change easy in B&W too^^

Resurrecting this old thread...  Kratzean, how did you get that level of detail from that far away?

 

[GonTar]

Do you mean like this?

I know, how I can change it in Black&White Creature Isle, but I think, that these values I can change easy in B&W too^^

I forgot how to do it, can anyone be a hero for us?

 

[Annarchy]

I'm looking to increase zoom level of detail too. Bumping this thread for more visibility.