Vigil on 2/9/2006 at 12:12
Quote Posted by Obeejw
What about the hundreds of other classic games that can run with no trouble on Win98?. Do I really have to cover
everything in my response so that you know exactly what I'm thinking?. I think it's pretty obvious that you should assume I didn't mean just SS1.
Yeah, it was obvious, and I was being deliberately obtuse, but on the other hand there's a shrinking selection of worthwhile games that won't run perfectly well in DOSBox on a relatively recent computer; essentially, 1994-1996 DOS titles like SS2 and Terra Nova (hell, I even get playable performance out of Crusader, which definitely does not run in Win98). On top of which, SS-Portable allows most (we hope) WinXP users to run System Shock without any fussing around at all. The argument that setting up and maintaining a separate installation of Win98 now will save you time is of dwindling utility.
NoOne on 22/2/2007 at 08:46
what the hell do people have against virtual machines?
dosbox?
ms virtual pc?
Kolya on 22/2/2007 at 14:30
That's not the kind of valuable information that justifies bumping an old thread I think. Especially since it's not like we never discussed dosbox or msvpc here.
ZylonBane on 26/2/2007 at 15:45
Hey, don't be so hard on him. This thread took five months for him to download on his 1-baud modem. It's made of coconuts and powered by a monkey!
Faxfane on 26/2/2007 at 19:48
Hey there Koyla, and thanks for all the work on the Portable, as well as your bedfellows site. I run a dual config with 98SE on C and XP Pro on D. Sysshock Portable runs perfect on XP and didn't take any fandagling at all. 98SE however...I click ssp.exe, dos window opens, and the menu scrolls by very very very fast, completely unresponsive to key commands. When I clicked Mark it paused with this message below the menu:
Quote:
"" is not a valid choice. Please try again.
I haven't done any tinkering yet, such as command lines or whatnot. I unzipped systemshock_portable_v.06, navigated to ssp.exe and clicked it. That's it.
On the other hand, SSII has serious issues with XP and even when I did get it to work, it worked and looked better on 98SE, whereas the SS Portable works super spiffily on XP.
Nameless Voice on 26/2/2007 at 19:53
Instead of using the batch file, simply run the correct PIF (techspeak: 'shortcut to MS-DOS application') file from inside the /res/ folder directly.
If you want to run it with DGVesa, then run the shortcut 'vesa'.
If you want to run it with Mouse2KV, then run the shortcut 'mouse'
If you want to configure DGVesa, then run 'dgVoodooSetup.exe'.
Faxfane on 26/2/2007 at 20:31
Yeah, was next step but no joy. However more would be a thread hijack so I'll tinker some more and use the Portable thread for results.
Kolya on 26/2/2007 at 20:49
Okay, the point why I made exe files of many of the bat files is that certain memory settings defined in the properties of the PIFs must get handed down to the cdshock.exe. And then winXP needs some help with things by programs like dgvoodoo or mouse2kv.
But I do remember playing SS1 without much voodoo on win98. So you might want to try to copy the property settings of one of the PIFs (namely memory, screen and misc) to the properties of cdshock.exe and then start the cdshock.pif that will get created.
uk_john on 17/8/2007 at 16:08
Can I be a bridge between people?! :)
I have a Win98SE and XP PRO dual boot system. I have had it for 5 years now. Win98 has 20gb and XP has 120gb and never the twain shall meet! :)
I also have DOSBox on both OS's, as well as a Commodore 64, Atari and PS One emulator and files - so I am well covered on both sides! :)
The fact is some games will run and play better and give you less greif if running in native Win98 and some will do the same in XP Compatibility mode and some will do the same in DOSBox, but equally, as we see with SS 1 and SS 2, sometimes it is a lot easier to have access to Win98 than to download and tweak half a dozen programs to get a game working in XP!
For great games like SS1 I basically have it on both OS's, one straightforward to run, the other needing all the various utilities, etc to run. I am okay with this, as if I play a game often enough I don't mind the extra small about of hard disk space it takes to have it on both OS's!
To add another drive, buy win98 and install it, along with having to find all the drivers, etc would be a chore. But that chore relates entirely to how many win95/98 games you have in your collection or are interested in playing. DOSBox isn't happy with win95/98 programs and quite often the XP compatibility doesn't work either. I have a collection of over 300 PC games, and at least half are either DOS, Win95 or Win98 games, so for me having the Win98 OS is very worthwhile, hence not getting rid of it when I upgraded to XP all those years ago!
Today, I have the best of all worlds. This is now the PC I will keep when I get a new Vista machine sometime in the next 18 months. I fully expect in 5 years time to be spending more time on my current machine than the newer Vista PC, but that's because great PC games are now few and far between (maybe 2 or 3 a year, if we're lucky!), so I find myself playing 'retro' games more and more!
Given that last year ebay opened it's retro gaming section, and DoSBox announced that it's 7.0/7.1 version had had over TWO MILLION downloads, it would seem there's a few people following my lead! :)
So thank god for great games like SS1 and SS2 and great developers like Looking Glass, for without them I do not know how I would be having so much gaming fun here in August 2007! :)
