Kilrathi Saga Observation - Windows 98SE vs. Windows XP

guptasa1

Rear Admiral
Kilrathi Saga Observation - Windows 98 SE vs. Windows XP

Hey all!

I honestly was torn whether to post this in the tech forum or the general one, but since people are more likely to catch it here and it isn't exactly troubleshooting per se, I think it probably fits better here. (Feel free to move it if you disagree, moderators).

I recently reinstalled Kilrathi Saga to replay it from the beginning. (Actually, it'll be my first time legitimately playing 1 and 2...).

Initially, I had installed it in Windows XP. It was going fine and I was actually almost done with WC1 (last sector) when I inadvertantly (doing something else) messed up my partition information. (Yeah...Oops...). I actually was able to restore most of my stuff, but my savegame was a casualty.

Anyways...(yes, there is a point here)...I decided since I have some other old games that aren't as happy with XP to reformat and set up a dual boot system with both an old copy of Windows 98 SE and Windows XP. That way, I could play old-style Windows 95/98 games in a more native operating system.

I have to say I'm shocked at the difference in Wing Commander I, and I thought I'd share this as some of you might not realize it's not working right in XP - I didn't. (Maybe it does on some systems too - who knows?)

I had assumed WCI was just not quite as smooth as the newer games, but the action and movement in 98 is much smoother than it was in XP...everything from firing weapons (guns and missiles) to combat is substantially smoother and maybe a bit faster as well (but not unnaturally so). The strange thing is...it didn't really feel WRONG in XP...just less refined (which I thought was because it was an older game). I think it's a bit more difficult this way as well (but it feels more like a more modern flight engine). Weapons seem to fire faster and in greater succession and movement just seems generally smoother. No stutters either (which I got occasionally in XP, specifically with explosions and such...though even then it was hard to tell something was actually wrong, and these were few and far between).

Anyways, just thought this might be useful information to someone. Maybe this isn't the case for most people and it just is an effect from something in own my computer too.
 
That's because XP has so many memory leaks it's obscene, mostly. My computer has a lot of lag issues, and it SHOULD be able to run all of my stuff at full speed easily (it's a 2.8gig with a 32MB video card, that's more than enough for WCUE). Hell, my 900 (albeit with a better video card) handles better than this pile of drek. It runs 98. Stupid Windows...

P.S. How's the Linux + Wing Commander thing coming along? Any news?
 
Granted, XP takes up more memory and has its lieaks, but I really think there might even be more going on here (and I'm not sure what). I'm also running a fast machine (2.4 GHz but it's got a gig of RAM and a 128 MB video card. I know the KS version of Wing Commander have a built-in slow-down feature. Perhaps it doesn't work right in XP? I dunno... Could be a memory leak, but it'd have to be an awfully big one for this dramatic a difference. (It really feels like a different game almost.)
 
Sorry then if this is old info - I wasn't aware of that. Just joined these forums as well as installed KS.
 
One of the advantages of WC has always been that it's "varied" in playability. You could enjoy WC3 on a 386... until you tried it on a 486.
 
The first time I played WC3 was on a 486SX 33. The space flight ran fine but the movies were jumpy, because of a cheapo CDROM drive. It was actually pretty enjoyable, even though I really had to jury rig the machine prior to playing. But it was definitely more enjoyable when I got my Pentium 133.
 
I wanted to get WC3 online. But after seeing the WC3 demo giving me runtime errors, I totally gave up! By the way, does WC3 require conventional memory to run or is it a protected mode game?
 
The first time I played WC3 was on a Pentium 100 Mhz... Utterly beautiful. Well, perhaps the MIDI left something to be desired, but STILL. *Pout*

Karthik: Hm... That's difficult for me to answer. It's far easier to fire up than Privateer, that's obvious enough. I THINK WC3 uses DOS4GW or whatever it's called. The easiest way would be to look through that demo's directory and look for DOS4GW.EXE. ;)
*Sifts through the installation-guide* VESA good to have, gotcha... otherwise you get VGA... Ah, here we go: Memory.
Wing Commander III uses 360K (368,640 bytes) of conventional RAM (base memory) and 7000K (7,168,000 bytes) of either extended memory (XMS) or expanded memory (EMS). Minimum of 8 Mb RAM, yaddayaddayadda...
Right, no DOS4GW, then. :eek:
 
360K of base memory! Very small compared to some games which require 590KB to 610KB! And those games reuire you to have sound and CDrom dirves! :mad:
 
Let's not bring up Falcon 3.x and its expansions here ...

*fondly remembers much struggling to get Sound, CD-ROM, AND EMS to fit in 30k of conventional memory - I forget the name of the program (Hurricane or NetRoom, I think), but it gave me 615k memory with the above setup ... *

You want smooth, non-stuttering gameplay? Run the original version of WCI on one of today's systems ;)
 
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