Evil Genius

Evil Genius

154 ratings
Configuring your game :D
By bills6693
A back-to-basics walkthrough of how to change your game to give you (hopefully) the best experience, with things like screen res, the patch, and making changes. Overview and step-by-step (windows 7) guide.
   
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Brief Introduction to the Guide
Hi, and first off thanks for reading this guide (not that it really benefits me, but, ya know).

This guide aims to help you get the most out of this game. The game itself is getting pretty darn old, and there are several things you can do that will hopefully increase your enjoyment.

As you can see it's a work in progress - at the moment I'm just detailing the things I've done so I have a step-by-step guide that should work for you if you are running windows 7 (64 bit).

If you are running a different system you should still be able to use this guide but the step-by-step guide will of course not fully work for you... you'll just have to make do like people normally do when being told how to do something on the internet (i.e. I assume you have a basic knowledge of how to mess around with files and stuff).

Enjoy :D
Screen resolution
OK so the old thread I found on this looks like it has issues... I'll try it and see if it works for me at some point.

If anyone knows a way to make this work (that doesn't break for some people, or stop you lauching it through steam, or require doing something between every launch of the game etc.) let me know in the comments or some other way :)
Changing population
This is something you may or may not want to do. Basically this involves the simple task of going into a notepad and changing a few numbers to increase the maximum population from 100 to something else. If you are a purist and want to the play the game as it was made (which is perfectly fine by me) then of course this is changing something that you don't want to change. But personally I find that a higher population basically makes a better game, given the ease with which your guys die off, especially thanks to the AI (for example, a squad of soldiers can sit outside your enterence and slaughter half your population as they are running out to go board a boat/chopper to do deeds around the world).

Also I believe this will be overridden by the community patch (but you can come back and do this again for different numbers - I believe that increases it to 150, but you can choose whatever value you want here).

The actual process is very simple -
Go to the location of the file that defines population - you will find it here:

My Computer
Windows7 (C:)
Program Files (x86)
Steam
steamapps
common
Evil Genius
DynamicResources
Config

The file itself is called "population" and is a wordpad file. Just double-click it and it will pop up.

Then you simply have to replace all the existing numerical values for new ones. The rule is you multiply everything by the same number. Your base population is 100, so if you want 200 maximum population then you need to multiply all values by 2. If you want 500 you multiply all by 5. Etc.

For your personal benefit and to save you 30 seconds of time and a little basic mental maths, you can simply replace the whole doccument with this for 200, 300 or 500 population respectivly-


MaxPopulation=200
PopulationEntry=0,20
PopulationEntry=2,30
PopulationEntry=4,40
PopulationEntry=10,50
PopulationEntry=20,70
PopulationEntry=40,90
PopulationEntry=60,130
PopulationEntry=80,140
PopulationEntry=100,150
PopulationEntry=120,160
PopulationEntry=140,170
PopulationEntry=160,180
PopulationEntry=190,200
PopulationEntry=200,200


MaxPopulation=300
PopulationEntry=0,60
PopulationEntry=3,75
PopulationEntry=6,90
PopulationEntry=15,105
PopulationEntry=30,120
PopulationEntry=60,180
PopulationEntry=90,225
PopulationEntry=120,240
PopulationEntry=150,265
PopulationEntry=180,270
PopulationEntry=210,280
PopulationEntry=240,290
PopulationEntry=270,300
PopulationEntry=300,300


MaxPopulation=500
PopulationEntry=0,50
PopulationEntry=5,75
PopulationEntry=10,100
PopulationEntry=25,125
PopulationEntry=50,175
PopulationEntry=100,225
PopulationEntry=150,275
PopulationEntry=200,325
PopulationEntry=250,375
PopulationEntry=300,400
PopulationEntry=350,425
PopulationEntry=400,450
PopulationEntry=450,500
PopulationEntry=500,500
Official patch
There is an official patch (or possibly its two patches - basically the situation got confused with there being a US and EU version and what is on steam now isn't the final verison, just possibly half-way patched... wierd).

You can download a version that will work with steam here:

{LINK REMOVED}

This will give you a .rar file

I extracted this with 7zip, which is free software you can get here -
http://www.7-zip.org/

Using 7zip: open up the 7-Zip File Manager
Find where you had saved your patch download to (when you open up 7-Zip you'll see what I mean, its like browsing for a file)
Click the patch download and click "Extract" on the 7-Zip toolbar

Now you find your extracted file, and open it up. Go through
Evil_Genius_Patch
Evil Genius Patch
Evil Genius

You should now see 6 objects - DynamicResources, ReleaseExe etc

Select all six, and copy them. Paste them into the evil genius folder for steam. You will probably find it here (if you don't then you've moved it around and shouldn't need my step-by-step guide anyway :P)
My Computer
Windows7 (C:)
Program Files (x86)
Steam
steamapps
common
Evil Genius

In that folder (Evil Genius) you need to paste the thing you copied earlier.

There will be several things the same. When it prompts you what to do, you want to choose to merge the folders (when that option is given) or to replace the pre-existing files (when thats the option given).

You now have a patched verison of the game :D

An easy way to check it is patched is to run the game and see if the main menu has "Load Save" or "Load and Save". If the former, its not worked. If the latter, congratulations :D
CD Bonus Content
I haven't done this yet - when I do it I'll tell you how :)
Unofficial Community Patch
I haven't done this yet - when I do it I'll tell you how :)
49 Comments
protoborg 23 Feb, 2021 @ 11:00pm 
One point; it is NOT a text file, though it does open as one. The population file is actually an .ini file. These files can be edited with a text editor. Just be sure you only do what is shown in this guide. Any other changes could result in a corrupted file. For the population file, you would right click the file name then click on "edit" in the pop up menu.
Chris Solomon 20 Sep, 2020 @ 3:49pm 
bonus CD in all it's glory is availible from here, 100% legal and free. it was originally given away for free on the game's website.
https://www.moddb.com/games/evil-genius/downloads/evil-genius-bonus-cd
LeNUTRIE Metanolo 22 Jul, 2019 @ 3:12pm 
For the ones who needs the widescreen resolution fix check this page https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Evil_Genius#Widescreen_resolution
brunolopez 15 Dec, 2017 @ 10:37am 
how to swap mouse buttons, anyone???? the windows config doesnt work ingame
Saul_Myers 12 Dec, 2017 @ 8:45am 
There's no need to trust people on internet, I know. So you have choice of NOT using the link I provided.
So here's how you get it yourself.
It's the removed link from guide above.
Right click, press "View source"
It opens in notepad (at least for me).
CTRL+F, search for "link removed".
First result, look a bit to the right and you will see the removed link among all the gibberish.
Saul_Myers 12 Dec, 2017 @ 8:43am 
I got the patch through some nefarious ways
www(dot)mediafire(dot)com/?8q90dso8eb8xlxw
Use it at your own risk.
Patch weights roughly 190 MB.
Doc Frame™ 21 Jul, 2017 @ 2:30am 
Hey I have a resolution fix if you still need.
Cooper 6 Jul, 2016 @ 2:38pm 
Anyone encountered problem with heat generated by completing AoI not going down to 0 over time? Only heat generated by minions goes down. Any ideas on how to fix that?
Bongobob 28 Mar, 2016 @ 11:48pm 
Changing population dont work for me :/
Sir. Jones 3 Mar, 2016 @ 8:17pm 
FYI, For population do not change the first set of numbers, they are percentage of max noterity, just times the last numbers, leave the first numbers alone or it wont work