Wing Commander games in the future

Triple-B

Triple-B

Rear Admiral
hi WC fans,

Recently I have been pulling out all those WC games and right now I am playing them from WC 1 to WCP with all add ons and fan mods and I am really enjoying it. It just feels like I am a kid again :D.

But I have noticed, that playing these games on modern systems, become more and more difficult. you need dos box, you need patches, fixes, updates etc.

all this stuff is somehow working and I am really thankfull for this support by our programmers around here, that come up with all these tools and fixes.

But how long will this work?

I can`t imagine what will happen with windows 7, 8,9,10 etc. and direct x 15 :rolleyes: etc..

and so on.

will it still be possible to emulate a system that will run all these games? has somebody thought about that?
 
Triple-B said:
hi WC fans,

Recently I have been pulling out all those WC games and right now I am playing them from WC 1 to WCP with all add ons and fan mods and I am really enjoying it. It just feels like I am a kid again :D.

But I have noticed, that playing these games on modern systems, become more and more difficult. you need dos box, you need patches, fixes, updates etc.

all this stuff is somehow working and I am really thankfull for this support by our programmers around here, that come up with all these tools and fixes.

But how long will this work?

I can`t imagine what will happen with windows 7, 8,9,10 etc. and direct x 15 :rolleyes: etc..

and so on.

will it still be possible to emulate a system that will run all these games? has somebody thought about that?
Click to expand...

I have a Windows 7 machine and TKS works fine on it.
 
As computers keep growing more powerfull, and backward compatibility is climbing since pentium 3 days, with dosbox, you can probably game through a fully virtual machine in a few years.

Since most software is still targeted at XP, you can expect backward compatibility for older programs and systems, just things like the DVD-decoder patch need to be upgraded. And I never heard of DirectX versions dropping backward compatibility...
 
I imagine dosbox will always be pretty straight forward to adapt for any new OS that will come out.
 
ok, I believe there were always be dosbox support, besides emulating dos will allways be easier than emulating win 98 or win xp (with 3d support)


but what about prophecy for example? or WCKS? as long as win xp combatibility is available, these games will run.but when will microsoft stop that combatibility?
 
Triple-B said:
ok, I believe there were always be dosbox support, besides emulating dos will allways be easier than emulating win 98 or win xp (with 3d support)


but what about prophecy for example? or WCKS? as long as win xp combatibility is available, these games will run.but when will microsoft stop that combatibility?
Click to expand...

By the time we get to that point, a windows version... say 'Winbox' or something will be commonplace... heck, you can do it right now. You can install win 3.1, win95, 98 2000 as a "virtual machine" from within XP, Vista, and windows 7. You just need a fast enough CPU.
 
I am already using a virtual machine of XP on my vista computer due to the 64 bit incompatibilities with a few games and 16 bit programs.
 
Some virtualisation software like VMWare has rudimentary hardware 3d graphics support.

I think the real problem in a few years would be to actually obtain and activate a copy of Windows XP...
 
vmware does not have hardware 3d support. All of the emulators that emulate windows right now use a modified version of wine to emulate 3d hardware. Vmware is starting to work on a system called gallium3d which at least on linux will allow true hardware 3d however I have not heard of any plans to support windows 98 with that system.
 
The glide wrapper can run through an intel GPU-based system these days, with ease, this basically emulates the 3DFX hardware, that was around before Direct3D/OpenGL became industry standard, and was not even 100% compatible.

Ever looked at console emulators? some had 3D accerated graphics that an emulator laugs at these days, so make perfect emulators(3DO excluded ATM.) Consoles like the Sega Saturn or NeoGeo are very different from a PC.

Windows Vista and 7, and XP64 can run "windows on windows", relying on current hardware to handle the old instructions. I can still play some windows 95-based games flawlessly on modern hardware, save a few patches, and the best usage of dosbox is limiting CPU cycles and memory, and ofcourse emulating sound standards from way over a decade ago.

If only enough people struggle with it, there will come a solution.
 
mmh, I heard a lot of people are pretty upset with vista and windows 7, because they can't run their old win 95/98 games anymore..

I am using the hi res pack from HCL for prophecy (with 3dfx support). Is this pack similar to the glide wrapper?

anyway I dont believe in a "windows box", since windows with direct x and all the direct 3d stuff ( all the different commands) is far more complex to emulate than a simple dos, or am I wrong?
 
because they can't run their old win 95/98 games anymore
Click to expand...
Could you name an example of a few of these games?

Is this pack similar to the glide wrapper
Click to expand...
Glide wrapper emulates 3DFX voodoo cards, for all windows-based games who made use of these cards. Basically a unique piece of hardware that brought Arcade-cabinet quality and refresh rates for 3D-racing/shooter games to the PC. The standards are gone and the company was bought by Nvidia a long time ago; here is the list of supported games
 
Heroes of might and magic 4....can't remember any others right off...

A quick search and looks like Sim City 4, Rome Total War (rather surprising), Rise of Nations, KOTOR, and Civ 4 usually load up but crash before getting the main menu (as determined by Gamespot). Still looks like a majority of the major games since 98-00'ish seem to work, just some odd ones here and there. There's probably a number of 93-96 games that have issues due to the lack of 16 bit compatibility, but I'm not sure on that.
 
There's probably a number of 93-96 games that have issues due to the lack of 16 bit compatibility
Click to expand...

This was a problem sometimes related(and resolved) by setting the videocard to a 16-bit display depth. Also some games do not like NTFT, install them on a flashdrive that you format with FAT32, and some/most games will run.

Also use the compatibility flags, the only game I know of that pretty much requires to rebuild your complete system and not even function then is "Star Trek:Borg"
 
If you really think it'll be that bad, I have to options for you...

1. Go on Ebay and buy an older machine. The old clunkers should be able to do what you need.

2. Create a second partition on your computer and load windows xp on to it. One of my frjends did that and it worked just fine.
 
well since the wc games run on vista and probably win 7 too, there is no need for a nostalgica pc at the moment. nevertheless it might become important with " windows 8" etc, so to speak, if there is no more support for the old games.

and who knows, maybe HCL for isntance has even a trick for that :)
 
Maybe...

Maybe someone will come up with a large game pack that runs all the old wing commander games using a "shell". I know some older games have been ported that way.
 
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