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Alex Builds His Farm

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
Alex Builds His Farm
Alex Builds His Farm cover
Developers
Ubisoft Montreal
Publishers
Playmobil Interactive
Engines
Ubisoft OpenSpace
Release dates
Windows July 15, 1999
Taxonomy
Monetization One-time game purchase
Modes Singleplayer
Pacing Real-time
Perspectives Third-person
Controls Direct control
Genres Adventure, Building, Educational, Farming, Simulation
Vehicles Industrial
Art styles Stylized
Series Playmobil
Alex Builds His Farm on IGDB
Alex Builds His Farm on MobyGames
Playmobil
Laura's Happy Adventures 1998
Alex Builds His Farm 1999
Hype: The Time Quest 1999
Rescue from Rock Castle 2004
The Big Treasure Hunt 2005
Playmobil Alarm 2007
Playmobil Constructions 2007
Playmobil Knights 2009
Playmobil Pirates 2009
Playmobil: The Movie VR Adventures Cancelled

Warnings

SafeDisc retail DRM does not work on Windows Vista and later (see Availability for affected versions).

Alex Builds His Farm is a singleplayer third-person adventure, building, educational, farming and simulation game in the Playmobil series.

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
Disc check (requires the CD/DVD in the drive to play)
SafeDisc 2 DRM[Note 1] with unreadable errors
Windows
SafeDisc retail DRM does not work on Windows Vista and later (see above for affected versions).
This game is not available digitally.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows %WINDIR%\UbiSoft\ubi.ini[Note 2]

Save game data location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\Gamedata\SaveGame[Note 2]

Video

Ubisoft Configuration Tool.
Ubisoft Configuration Tool.

Graphics feature State Notes
Widescreen resolution
See Widescreen resolution.
Multi-monitor
See Widescreen resolution.
Ultra-widescreen
See Widescreen resolution.
4K Ultra HD
See Widescreen resolution.
Field of view (FOV)
See Field of view (FOV).
Windowed
The game can be forced to run in Windowed mode, when using dgVoodoo2.
Borderless fullscreen windowed
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anti-aliasing (AA)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Vertical sync (Vsync)
Always on in Direct3D. In Glide, use nGlide and set in nglide_config.exe, or use dgVoodoo2.
60 FPS
Frame rate is capped at 63 FPS in Glide. Animations are locked at 30 FPS by default, but their framerate can be increased by turning on "Use Animation Interpolation" inside Advanced Video Settings in <path-to-game>\UbiAssistant.exe.
120+ FPS
High dynamic range display (HDR)

Widescreen resolution

Game needs to have been run in admin mode before in order for it to write its settings to ubi.ini, which is in C: drive.
Change resolution[3]
  1. Open ubi.ini.
  2. Under the section [Alex Builds His Farm], add the line ScreenSize.
  3. Insert your preferred resolution (for example, ScreenSize=1920x1080).

Notes

dgVoodoo2 is needed for resolutions higher than 2048x2048 to work.
HUD is stretched.
Lower vertical FOV in wider aspect ratios. Increase FOV to compensate, see Field of view (FOV).

Field of view (FOV)

Change Field of View[4]
  1. Open Alex_D3D.exe or Alex_DFX.exe with a hex editor such as HxD.
  2. Press Ctrl+R and set Datatype to Hex-values.
  3. Search for 0000003F 0000803F.
  4. If using Alex_D3D.exe, search for the third match of it. For Alex_DFX.exe, search for the fourth match instead. Replace the 0000803F part with:
    • 8888883F for 5:4 screens
    • 0E745A3F for 25:16 screens
    • 5555553F for 16:10 screens
    • 0000503F for 15:9 screens
    • 0000403F for 16:9 screens
    • 0000103F for 21:9 screens

Notes

Objects keep appearing and disappearing outside the 4:3 area, which is very distracting.

Input

Keyboard and mouse State Notes
Remapping
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Mouse acceleration
Mouse isn't supported in-game.
Mouse sensitivity
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support

Audio

Sound Settings.
Sound Settings.

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Voices, Sound Effects and Music.
Surround sound
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
Royalty free audio

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
Dutch
Alex op de Boerderij.[5]
French
Alex à la ferme.[5]
German
Alex' Abenteuer auf der Farm.[5]
Portuguese
Alex Constrói a Sua Quinta.[6]
Brazilian Portuguese
Alex, O Fazendeiro.[7]
Spanish
Alex en la granja.[5]

Issues fixed

Install the game on modern systems

The game cannot be installed on 64-bit computers because it's a 16-bit application.
Use winevdm

Stuck in Ubisoft Logo Loading (Direct3D mode)

Use dgVoodoo2.

Game runs too fast (Direct3D mode)

Set refresh rate on 60Hz.

Game crashes on Alt+Tab

Install dgVoodoo 2.

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
Direct3D 6
Glide 3.10
Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows

System requirements

Windows
Minimum
Operating system (OS) 95
Processor (CPU) Intel Pentium 166 MHz
System memory (RAM) 32 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 120 MB
Video card (GPU) 4 MB of VRAM
DirectX 6 compatible


Notes

  1. SafeDisc retail DRM does not work on Windows 10[1] or Windows 11 and is disabled by default on Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 when the KB3086255 update is installed.[2]
  2. 2.0 2.1 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).

References

  1. Not Loading in Windows 10; this will break thousands of - Microsoft Community - last accessed on 2017-01-16
  2. Microsoft - MS15-097: Description of the security update for the graphics component in Windows: September 8, 2015 - last accessed on 2018-02-16
  3. Verified by User:AlphaYellow on 2022-11-19
    According to SuicideMachine's findings, the game's exe makes reference of the variable "ScreenSize", which can be altered in the config file and successfully changes the resolution if the game is run in admin mode.
  4. Verified by User:AlphaYellow on 2022-11-19
    Tested with several different FOVs and works.
  5. 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 MobyGames
  6. MobyGames - last accessed on May 2023
  7. Divertire (archived) - last accessed on May 2023