For a wide screen, set the resolution to one
above one of the dimensions, in windowed mode. The window will then use the available desktop real estate (minus the windows task bar, which must be at the normal position at the bottom of the screen, and
not set to auto-hide).
So - for a 1280 by 800 laptop, set it to windowed mode, 1280 by 1024 and off you go. (You may need to tweak the scroll activation pixels on the game options programme).
There will be no multi-monitor support. It uses a DirectX 5(?) third-party graphics library (WinVFX - the windows version of the original VFX DOS library used by SSI), written in about 1998. Source code for that library is available - but most of it is written in Microsoft Assembler for a version of MASM long gone now. I tried feeding it into Borlands assembler, and some other ones, but they all barfed on the thing
. But that library is why fixed windows have to be used - if you use a resizeable widow, the WinVFX library will let you resize the borders, but leave the plotted area the same as the original size requested. And a close-down of the VFX system with a new resize and restart again in the same programme session, leaves it in exactly the same size too - so the only way to resize is a complete programme shut-down and restart. It's also (I think - been some time since the DOS->Windows conversion work!) why the game only uses the "standard" Windows resolutions, as it was from an era from long before widescreen laptops appeared.
Cheers
Andy