All-In-One Computer for WC Games (Lengthy Post)

[Flappy]

Hello Everyone!
Hope this isn't in the wrong spot or somesuch,Mods pls. move if it is.

First a little background is in order.....(I warned ya it was a lengthy post).......
I've been playing WC games since WC3 released for PSX and I paid enough $$ towards rental to buy it many times over,so when I got my first PC the first games I bought for it were WC4 and Sci-Fi pack from EA. Over the years I've upgraded so many times it's not funny and of course the titles became harder and harder to get to run. Big thanks to WCnews for keeping this place up I'd have died if it weren't for you guys!
Recently,I acquired an old rev. Athlon board which allows me to run my old Voodoo 5500,so the first thing I thought was to install every WC game on it in all their retro-goodness! So now here's what we got: Athlon XP1800+ on VIA Apollo Pro with 1.43 Hyperions,64Mb PC 133 Ghetto Ram(Needs upgrade!),Voodoo5500 AGP running last 1.04 WHQL's under DirectX8.1,WD 40Gb IDE 100,16X AOpen DVDRW,Saitek x-52 USB or Logitech Wingman Force on Gameport,Windows 98se.
The list of games for it is thus: Kilrathi Saga,WC4(CD),Prophecy with Secret Ops add-ons,Unknown Enemy,Standoff 1&2 and Privateer 1 & 2.
I was planning on running gemini gold for Privateer as it's supposed to be more true to the original ,and I created a custom install disk for Privateer2 to make it windows compatible. ( I know how to calibrate w/o using the in-game function).
My questions are : 1. What bottlenecks can I expect other than the RAM?
2. Has anyone else run the high-res patch on the Glide
Versions of secret ops and it's Mods? What were the
results?
3.Will Privateer GG run on my voodoo card? It does have
D3D,although if I'm not mistaken the Vegastrike engine
uses OpenGL ,and I'm probably going to have to hunt for
a miniGL driver for my V5 as if I recall OpenGL was not
implemented very well.
4.What other WC games will run on this system with not
a lot of bother? Armada or Academy?
5. Anyone else using a Saitek X52 figure out a profile to
enable throttle in the first two games? I'm going to give
it a go to see if I can't get it to at least map to one of the
buttons,as using KB is seriously bugging me!

Thanks to all again here at WCnews,and thanks to you who respond, I'll attempt to keep you all updated on what I find out during testing and playing if there's any interest in this.

 

[ChrisReid]

1. What bottlenecks can I expect other than the RAM?

I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to do. All the computer's specs are probably on the low side for Gemini Gold, especially the video card, but it'd be best for you to just download it and try it out. At the same time, you might want a faster processor for modern emulation of certain titles like Armada.

2. Has anyone else run the high-res patch on the Glide
Versions of secret ops and it's Mods? What were the
results?

The Secret Ops mods don't have separate high res patches, nor do they support Glide mode really. They support different resolutions from within their in-game menus. The high res patch pretty much just increases the resolution in Secret Ops.

3.Will Privateer GG run on my voodoo card? It does have
D3D,although if I'm not mistaken the Vegastrike engine
uses OpenGL ,and I'm probably going to have to hunt for
a miniGL driver for my V5 as if I recall OpenGL was not
implemented very well.

Gemini Gold recommends at least a Geforce 2, so the Voodoo card might not handle it well.

4.What other WC games will run on this system with not
a lot of bother? Armada or Academy? Thanks to all again here at WCnews,and thanks to you who respond, I'll attempt to keep you all updated on what I find out during testing and playing if there's any interest in this.

Something of note here is that people no longer need to dig up retro hardware in order to play Wing Commander games. Going back and getting an older computer with five ISA slots and all the related peripherals would be a fun project, but it'd be more work than just getting stuff running on your everyday machine of 2005. Virtually every Wing Commander game runs without any problems on a computer with a 2-3 GHz processor, 512-1024 megs of ram, geforce 3-6/radeon 9800+, Windows XP and so on. Right now on the front page of the CIC we have directions that should let everyone play Armada online. Thanks to many breakthroughs in patching, emulation and tweaks that the Wing Commander community has developed, we now live in an era where virtually everyone has an all-in-one Wing Commander computer with the current equipment they have. We have a wide variety of tutorials and tips on how to get specific things working. Let us know if you need more detailed instructions.

 

[Flappy]

Hey Chris,
Thanks for the feedback! I probably should have mentioned that it isn't for Wing Commander exclusively. I also have a lot of Glide titles such as the first I-War that will not run with Z's Glide Wrapper,so using the V5 is a natural way to get these titles to run. Also, with my particular hardware on my main box,I've had nothing but grief getting WC3 from Kilrathi saga to run acceptably. I could use the Windows XP tweaks that are listed elsewhere,but so far with my new setup I've had no joy.
I realize building a V5 9X box isn't for everyone,but since I had 90% of what I needed either given to me or lying around I figured it's a lot better than junking the components, and there is something to be said for being able to run the old Glide titles without having to tick this box,check that other,do the Hokey Pokey and pray that it works!
Don't get me wrong,some titles look WAY better through the Wrapper (Longbow2)than they ever did in Glide,since the highest Resolution ever supported in it was 800X600 and as you say Remake's Specs are pretty high ,so I'm not too hopeful of getting it to run in even the lowest detail with the V5. But since I have a KVM with sound switch it won't be a thing to put it on my XP-Radeon box along with Saga when it releases and I'll have the best of all possible worlds (I hope).
Thanks again Chris for taking the time to respond, I've noticed over the years that you've always been one of the first to respond to newcomers,in spite of our newbish questions and your answers are concise enough to where I have never needed to post as if I just searched,I would find what I was after. It's just that since my latest upgrade,all the old tricks for WC3 KS aren't working for me anymore (Or maybe I'm getting old and losing brain cells), and I've been looking to fire up my old V5 for a long time as I have very fond memories of Falcon 4 and Prophecy back when that was THE card to have!

 

[ChrisReid]

Yeah, Kilrathi Saga does have a few glitches for some people. It'll be nice in a year or two when people can run the original WC3 in DOSBox if that's the case. Welcome to the forums anyhow.