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Demos, Upgrades, Patches, New Versions, Hardware conflicts errrrrrr

 
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Demos, Upgrades, Patches, New Versions, Hardware confli... - 5/2/2002 6:56:13 AM   
Les_the_Sarge_9_1

 

Posts: 4392
Joined: 12/29/2000
Status: offline 		Today I went looking for a PS1 copy of Allied general.

I decided to maybe settle for playing it on my son's Playstation.

"Oh but that game is no longer available for the Playstation sir".

I had a tremendous urge to beat up something or someone).:mad:

Technology is really getting to make me increasingly infuriated.

When will it end. Should it end.

10 years ago (I recall of course because I was there), computers were almost nothing (in contrast to a P4 at least). Game rentals were still a mostly untried notion too.
Have we come so far that it's automatically assumed we need or must upgrade though?

I bought an IBM PS1 which was a 386 machine. It had I think 100 megs of hard drive space and a 33 mhz processor. Back then those numbers were impressive if you can recall what was around about 1985.
I got it because it was a great improvement over a typewriter (even if the typewriter DID have an automated correcting function). I remember playing a couple of games on it. They seemed fine at the time too. I had to load them from 5.25 disks. But those disks sure could hold a lot of data (or so I thought).

Then I went online (which was required to be able to write commercially originally). I found I needed a 486 so I could run online software. Ok, no problem, I borrowed some funds from my parents for that one.

Then an irritatingly short time later, I noticed that even the 586 seemed crummy to what was being advertised. My 486 was yesterdays news and unable to run much of anything useful or new any more.

I went into considerable debt (considerable for me at any rate) to purchase a 300 porcessor system which had dare I say more than a gig of hard drive space. Now I could run aaaanything. Yeah right think again sucker (sucker, thats how you spell "consumer" in technological terms).

The 300 system, is gone largely. A buddy, fed up with altering my system all the time (he helps with my tech hassles), last christmas bought me an upgrade. Now I have a Celeron 800, a rediculous 256 megs of ram, and a 40 gig drive.
What's incredible is , it's already showing signs of not being up to the latest "thing". My "older" ram is not the new ram.

Now I can't run a stupid game that was made several years ago.
Its infuriating.
You would think a new, more powerful computer with greater speed, more versatility would actually "improve" the functionality of an older program.
This is clearly not the case.

I do have an option, but its annoying at best.
At least with Windows XP I can partition the drive and leave a portion open to have Win 98 or 95 reside there to operate older programs (I think, I haven't gotten around to finding out yet).
But what about next time. Will I be stuck lacking some way to use older software?

This is all important when talking about the "future" of wargaming.
I was fully pleased with the look of Patton Strikes Back. Just a map, and stylised arrows for units. Blue for US Red for German. You had to use a pull down menu to do anything basically.

But no one wants to settle for good enough it seems.
We just have to have fancier graphics, fancier sounds, pointless animations in secondary windows and maybe just maybe they will spend effort on the AI.
Personally I liked Steel Panthers a great deal. The graphics were enjoyable, the sounds fun.
But I have seen no small amount of games out there. And all that has been offered is progressively fancier graphics and progressively fancier sounds.
To be honest though, the games have remained just as stupid as the very first ones I ever played.

The trend may well spell the doom for computerised wargaming if nothing else.
We are a niche market now. We have always been a niche market. We will be a niche market tomorrow.
But the effort to make a program is not going to get easier.
Buyers will have to fork out lots of cash so that in a years time they can relinquish yet another game to obscurity.

This is the heart of my beef.

I have spent, hmmm I don't want to think about it really, an ungodly amount of money on bord game wargames.
But and its a very big but, I can play them today, just as well as I could play then 15 years ago.
And I will be able to play them in another 15 years regardless of what happens to the world of computers.

When asking the question, where will computer wargames be in 15 years. Who knows. Maybe in 15 years we will be back playing board games.

Combat Leader is something I am looking forward to seeing. I am sure it will please. Its also the very first computer wargame I have actually waited for.
There is absolutely no reason to assume I will ever buy another though.
In 2 years time the latest thing might require a revolution in hardware.
I will be sufficiently disgusted I think though.
I might dust off the board games and refuse to purchase those flashy new programs.

This is a very real possible future for a lot of us.

I don't know if Matrix could do it. There is no reason to assume Matrix would want to do it.
I personally would enjoy seeing a company though once, just once, intentionally make a "new" game designed, not for the latest computer, but for those people that are not about to get the latest computer.

Wouldn't it be grand if all us PS1 owners and low end computer users, still had people making games for our interests as well.
The technology used to make a PS2 game, should by logic make creating a game based on an earlier technology easy as hell.

If anyone has followed me to this point, yes I clearly hate mindless progress just for the sake of shoving it on me.

_____________________________

I LIKE that my life bothers them,
Why should I be the only one bothered by it eh.
Post #: 1
- 5/2/2002 8:41:00 PM   
Larry Holt

 

Posts: 1969
Joined: 3/31/2000
From: Atlanta, GA 30068
Status: offline 		So Les, how do your really feel about it? Don't hold back? :D

Change is good(?). I started playing SP on a 486/DX4100 with 20MB RAM. It was hot at one time. I had to upgrade twice since I got it in '92. Think of the advances in human-machine interface and functionality since then. Sure I had to upgrade but the benefits are great.

Upgrades are a hassle but with some planning you can limit it to every few years and keep costs down. I had a P1/133 system with EDO & a 12 Gig HD. Not adequate. Bought a bare bones system for under $200 (case, MB, CPU, RAM) & put all the other components in it. My son got a hand-me down system too & now I need to replace his P1/233 MHz CPU with something faster. I will cruise the Internet and local second hand stores to find a faster CPU for under $50.

_____________________________

Never take counsel of your fears.

(in reply to Les_the_Sarge_9_1)
Post #: 2
game design - 5/3/2002 3:03:29 AM   
Ron Saueracker


Posts: 12121
Joined: 1/28/2002
From: Ottawa, Canada OR Zakynthos Island, Greece
Status: offline 		Read Mike Wood's interview about Uncommon Valor on the Wargamer site. He said that the game was designed for older system requirements as well. Matrix seems to take it's consumers needs, as well as desires, to heart. A nice change.;)

_____________________________





Yammas from The Apo-Tiki Lounge. Future site of WITP AE benders! And then the s--t hit the fan

(in reply to Les_the_Sarge_9_1)
Post #: 3
- 5/8/2002 11:50:48 PM   
Les_the_Sarge_9_1

 

Posts: 4392
Joined: 12/29/2000
Status: offline 		Went with the option I always knew was there.

I have two OS's on my computer now. I will just have to play some games with lame a OS I figure. I call anything pre XP as lame by the way.

And this comes from a dude that has screwed up his computer repeatedly with every OS ever made except XP (which I have not been able to bugger since I installed it).

_____________________________

I LIKE that my life bothers them,
Why should I be the only one bothered by it eh.

(in reply to Les_the_Sarge_9_1)
Post #: 4
- 5/9/2002 5:40:10 AM   
Monkeybutt

 

Posts: 59
Joined: 12/15/2001
From: The Black Hole
Status: offline 		Try half.com,they usually have a boat-load of console games listed.

-Monkeybutt

(in reply to Les_the_Sarge_9_1)
Post #: 5
Buggered XP - 5/11/2002 5:51:13 PM   
moore4807


Posts: 1089
Joined: 6/2/2000
From: Punta Gorda FL
Status: offline 		Les,

Thats easy!

Just for my second home built system I chose an Asus P4B266 MoBo and a 1.7Ghz P4 chipset with XP as the OS. Now load my wifes favorite game, Diablo2 and let the system crashes begin- I've got Blue screens of death, Virtual memory failures (with 768MB of PC2100 RAM no less!) and optimized for 1536MB of virtual RAM courtesy of M.$. warranty help, still nobody knows what causes the crashes- Ive run out of warranty tech support with no resolution and I EVEN went thru system configuration and deleted everything one at a time with no glaring errors popping up, NO conflicting drivers and it all started going wrong after an XP update-so who knows what caused it all to start.
M.$. blames everything including the weather!!! Asus POST loads ok and is original drivers-so I dont think its the MoBo or drivers there, so enjoy and realize I'm envious of ya - I cant get ONE OS to run right -your doing ok with 2!!!
VBG
Jim

(in reply to Les_the_Sarge_9_1)
Post #: 6
- 5/12/2002 11:19:36 AM   
nyarlathotep

 

Posts: 169
Joined: 4/28/2001
Status: offline 		Les I read your post and couldn't help but chuckle.

Not at you...but with you.

I have been pondering the same things for the last, oooh, 4 years I believe. How in hell can we be at point we are in computer technology and still have these same stupid system problems? Everything should be backwards compatable with no flaws whatsoever. Everything should be hammered out. The new stuff should maybe cause problems but not the old stuff?!? But alas, it is not to be. ****, I'm still trying to figure out how they goofed the conventional memory deal in the old DOS days...I mean crickey, didn't they see that on the horizon? Maybe, just maybe, someday programs would require more conventional memory and so instead of having to fiddle with your autoexec and configsys we just pile in more conventional mem...is that so hard?

2000 turnover...WHATS THE DEAL WITH THAT?? What nimrod decided computers wouldn't be around at the turn of the millenium so "duh no need in me programing this correctly duh".
Whoever was responsible for that should have been shot on the spot.

[rant]All I want to do is play Clash of Steel on my computer. Is that too much to ask? I guess so since as of today I STILL CANT GET IT TO RUN NO MATTER WHAT! Hell, with all the $$ I invested in SSI one of those bastards owes me big time and better get crackin on making it windows compat.[/rant]

It is sooo true what you said on a different thread I believe. Every older title that you loved, absolutely refuses to work...and every piece of utter crap that is on theunderdogs will work flawlessly as if the authors intended it to be windows/directx compat. Go figure.

*sigh*

What's a hipster doofus nerd from the early generation to do?

_____________________________

That is not dead which can eternal lie
And with strange aeons even death may die.
H.P.L.

(in reply to Les_the_Sarge_9_1)
Post #: 7
- 5/12/2002 11:47:32 AM   
Hartmann

 

Posts: 888
Joined: 11/28/2000
Status: offline 		[QUOTE]Originally posted by nyarlathotep
[B]

[rant]All I want to do is play Clash of Steel on my computer. Is that too much to ask? I guess so since as of today I STILL CANT GET IT TO RUN NO MATTER WHAT! Hell, with all the $$ I invested in SSI one of those bastards owes me big time and better get crackin on making it windows compat.[/rant]

[/B][/QUOTE]

I wrote a "howto" for the Underdogs quite some time ago

http://www.the-underdogs.org/tech/techelp_c.html#clashofsteelgettingittorun

The only things I would add now is:

- better use SlowDown than Moslo, Moslo does not work for really fast systems. I´m playing COS on a P700 without problems. (Simply search for SlowDown on the web with google.)
- If you have WinME or 2000, you should get yourself that addon providing
dosmode (I have no problems, though, playing in a normal dosbox).
- Get the "Future Edition" of Clash of Steel, if you don´t have it already. It has quite a bunch of bugs removed compared to the first release.

Hartmann

(in reply to Les_the_Sarge_9_1)
Post #: 8
- 5/12/2002 12:07:02 PM   
nyarlathotep

 

Posts: 169
Joined: 4/28/2001
Status: offline 		Thanks Hartmann but I already tried that. Believe me I scrounged every forum I know, underdogs included, to see if there were any other ways to get it to run. I used slomo, I edited the executable configsys and autoexec, tried running in windows DOS window, straight windows, reboot to DOS. I get to the splash screen of COS with music but when I hit the keyboard to go to next screen it bumps me back out to windows not with an error but something else I can't remember right now. I'll post screenie when I'm off work just to give you an idea of whats up.

Clash of Steel...I do love her so!

PS I saw the link to the other company(can't remember name now) that is developing a title that looks awfully familiar to COS and am very excited about it. From the webpage it looks like a winner.

_____________________________

That is not dead which can eternal lie
And with strange aeons even death may die.
H.P.L.

(in reply to Les_the_Sarge_9_1)
Post #: 9
- 5/12/2002 12:22:38 PM   
Hartmann

 

Posts: 888
Joined: 11/28/2000
Status: offline 		You mean Strategic Command by Battlefront? Yep, that will rescue all the ETO Grand Strategy gamers who had to wait so long for a new title. :)

Anyway: what I wrote for the Underdogs does not work on very fast computers, despite MoSlo etc. The error you get is a runtime error, due to divisio by 0. This is caused by speed. When I upgraded my system to the P700, I noticed that Moslo etc. don´t work anymore with many titles. As I said: try the program SlowDown - worked for me. It´s also very comfortable to use. Of course, you still have to do the stuff I wrote in that techhelp section, EMS memory being essential. Good luck! :)

Hartmann

Oops: you wrote "not with an error"?
I´m not sure I understand ... yep, post a screenshot please. :)

(in reply to Les_the_Sarge_9_1)
Post #: 10
- 5/12/2002 12:31:08 PM   
nyarlathotep

 

Posts: 169
Joined: 4/28/2001
Status: offline 		Yes, moslo actually worked. I could tell by the cadence of the music. I will try the other program and cross fingers but my gut tells me won't work either. I didn't receive an error, the splash screen for COS came up with sound but as soon as I tap the keyboard to get to the good stuff it just closes out and goes back to windows with a little msg for me. Will post it after work.

BTW I didn't realize it was you who wrote that at the underdogs a big thanks goes out to you and all the rest who post those to help us less savy users out. *applause*

edit: I have AMD athlon 800, SB audigy with DOS drivers installed, and Hercules GeForce MX graphics card.

_____________________________

That is not dead which can eternal lie
And with strange aeons even death may die.
H.P.L.

(in reply to Les_the_Sarge_9_1)
Post #: 11
- 5/12/2002 12:46:25 PM   
Hartmann

 

Posts: 888
Joined: 11/28/2000
Status: offline 		[QUOTE]Originally posted by nyarlathotep
[B]Yes, moslo actually worked. I could tell by the cadence of the music. I will try the other program and cross fingers but my gut tells me won't work either. I didn't receive an error, the splash screen for COS came up with sound but as soon as I tap the keyboard to get to the good stuff it just closes out and goes back to windows with a little msg for me. Will post it after work.

BTW I didn't realize it was you who wrote that at the underdogs a big thanks goes out to you and all the rest who post those to help us less savy users out. *applause*

edit: I have AMD athlon 800, SB audigy with DOS drivers installed, and Hercules GeForce MX graphics card. [/B][/QUOTE]

The AMD should be no prob, also not the SB, *maybe* the GeForce, but I don´t think so and am still optimistic. Don´t let your guts fool you and try the SlowDown. :)

I never failed to run any old games on my own systems, but it is sometimes quite a chore to find out the right trick for a given game. I hope someone will program a working "PC simulator" eventually, especially now that XP arrived to plague and torture us fans of the games of yore. :)

Hartmann

(in reply to Les_the_Sarge_9_1)
Post #: 12
- 5/12/2002 5:06:17 PM   
Les_the_Sarge_9_1

 

Posts: 4392
Joined: 12/29/2000
Status: offline 		Considering it is actually an old piece of hardware now, but probably being run by newer and newer computers....

Anyone actually interested in a free ride on the Space shuttle?

If tomorrow I heard a big rock was heading for earth, and would wipe us all out in say 5 years... what would you do?

1. Que up for a space ship to Mars where life would be run by computers.

or

2. Do like me, get rid of your clothes and have great sex with your significant other for 5 years, then tell the rock to kiss your ***.

Ain't no way I am ever leaving my life in the hands of computers willingly, until the phrase "system crash" is to antique a term for anyone to remember the relevance.

All things considered, I likely have fewer troubles with games, thanks to the fact I have more or less bland hardware, and only a small number of games in the end really.

_____________________________

I LIKE that my life bothers them,
Why should I be the only one bothered by it eh.

(in reply to Les_the_Sarge_9_1)
Post #: 13
- 5/14/2002 7:00:59 AM   
Hartmann

 

Posts: 888
Joined: 11/28/2000
Status: offline 		Nyarlathotep: if you should drop by, and everything else failed, you can also try the "compatibility patch' available here:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/clashofsteel/files/

I myself did not need that, though. :)


Hartmann

(in reply to Les_the_Sarge_9_1)
Post #: 14
- 5/18/2002 4:08:47 PM   
nyarlathotep

 

Posts: 169
Joined: 4/28/2001
Status: offline 		Thanks. I have yet to have the free time to try slowdown and will look at that patch as well. Work stinks...but how else to I support my habits?

_____________________________

That is not dead which can eternal lie
And with strange aeons even death may die.
H.P.L.

(in reply to Les_the_Sarge_9_1)
Post #: 15
Hartmann - 5/20/2002 12:34:29 PM   
nyarlathotep

 

Posts: 169
Joined: 4/28/2001
Status: offline 		Can you link to SlowDown for me? I looked on google and altavista but nothing close to it comes up. A German and Italian page referrences a program but I can't tell what it's for. TIA.

_____________________________

That is not dead which can eternal lie
And with strange aeons even death may die.
H.P.L.

(in reply to Les_the_Sarge_9_1)
Post #: 16
Re: SlowDown - 5/21/2002 1:21:52 AM   
Supervisor

 

Posts: 5166
Joined: 3/2/2004
Status: offline 		Well, I found this site. Worth a try anyway.

http://members.aol.com/bretjohn/

_____________________________


(in reply to Les_the_Sarge_9_1)
Post #: 17
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