4 ms·
As a hardcore gamer, gamedev and old games lover, I am finding sadder and sadder that certain games are getting increasingly forgotten by everyone, and noone ev
by speeder 11y ago
As a hardcore gamer, gamedev and old games lover, I am finding sadder and sadder that certain games are getting increasingly forgotten by everyone, and noone even remember they are in dire need of tools to make them work.
It is the games from Windows 98 and XP era, many used some combination of GDI and DDraw that doesn't work at all on new Windows versions, DDraw emulation is mostly broken, and pity you if the game used DDrawEx (it was to mix DDraw with D3D).
For example I am currently trying to figure a way to play SimCity 4 properly, the game is too demanding to run in an emulator, so some kind of native implementation is needed, but it also uses DDrawEx, that is very poorly supported in all OSes except Windows 98, ME and XP (it doesn't work in XP contemporary NTs either).
I think this is the kind of games the OP is happy ReactOS maybe will implement... because for DOS games, DosBox is more than enough already in most cases (there are some exceptions, like Noctis that is incredibly CPU-intensive and runs at 3 FPS in DosBox).
- anthk 11y agoGet WineD3D's DDraw.dll with the needed dependencies and it will run.
- ekianjo 11y agoGet Linux, run Sim City 4 in WINE :) Apparently works very nicely in latest WINE versions: https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=10515 https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iI...
- voltagex_ 11y agoEven newer games can be tricky - try Assassin's Creed I and II on Windows 10 and you'll struggle.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y agoYou could try running Windows 98 under VirtualBox.
- speeder 11y agoI think you missed the part where I wrote that some games, like SimCity 4, need excessive processor performance to be emulated? Or VirtualBox can sum several cores and simulate a single faster CPU?
- sspiff 11y agoThose old operating systems are quite a pain in VirtualBox. Qemu does a much better job, in this case. VirtualBox's emulated hardware is too new for some systems, and Win98/Win95 flood the CPU during idle time (because that's how things worked back then), causing the input processing from the VM to lag significantly. Regardless though, this would legally require you to acquire a licensed copy of Windows 98, which will only become harder and harder down the road. Unless Microsoft decides to "free" all legacy software at some point. ReactOS and WINE solve this problem in a different way, by providing open source solutions that everyone can use, copy and archive without cost or consequence.