Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Wolfala on February 18, 2004, 09:18:55 PM
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Troops,
I've been browsing through some of my old collections, and i've got a sudden urge to bust out the long since neglected classics: Wing Commander 3, Wing Commander 4, and of course Tie Fighter CD ROM. Now as you may remember, almost 10 years has passed since these classics were even talked about - and we've gone through atleast 1/2 a dozen operating systems during that period of time. What do I need to do to find out information like IRQ and DMA channel assignments for the sound card and other other issues to be aware of to make this stuff work on todays hardware?
Wolf
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Wow........ I remember endless hours playing Tie Fighter before I was old enough to grasp the concept of Masturbation. Of course I don't know, hope someone else does.
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I was just trying to get X-COM UFO DEFENSE to work and I discovered a thing called Dosbox. Here's a handy guide to getting it to work:
http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?t=2502
All sounds work in-game. This program seems to have a built in CPU throttle as well.
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For Windows XP, right click the programs icon and select the Compatability tab. Set it to emulate whichever operating system you need.
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Did you get X-Com working, spork? I'd love to play an updated version of the original, but it looks like no one's interested in revamping it properly.
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Is the Wing Commander franchise dead? I don't think I've seen any version of it on store shelves recently.
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A company is making an XCom remake with the Quake 2 engine. I downloaded the tech demo and it looks/feels like the original except with good graphics and it runs in Windows/Linux. I will definetly get it when the full version comes out.
http://ufo.myexp.de/ (http://ufo.myexp.de/)
Preview of UFO:Alien Invasion (http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=795&mode=flat&order=0&thold=0)
(http://ufo.myexp.de/img/ingame/ingame006.jpg)
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Is the Wing Commander franchise dead? I don't think I've seen any version of it on store shelves recently.
Yep, Origin is pretty much gone. Wing Commander V was made for Win9x, so it shouldn't be a problem to run it on modern systems. Wing Commander I - IV are a different story. You can get them to run sometimes, but USB devices won't work, you need serial COM/gameports.
Origin did re-release them in the form of Wing Commander: The Kilrathi Saga, which is the first three games in the series made compatible with Win9x/XP/2000, and a patch to make IV work properly. It's no longer produced. Copies of it are rare and in high demand. They often go for a hefty price on Ebay.
(http://www.thecomputershow.com/computershow/graphics/ksagabox.jpg)
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Thanks for the info. That's a shame about the series coming to an end. I thought it was one of the better games out there. Bummer.
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Excellent find, Makarov. Downloading now.
XCOM XCOM XCOM XCOM!!!
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Good lord, i'm seeing that as high as $250.00 on amazon!
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Engine: Yes, it works perfectly! It hasn't crashed yet. Sound effects and music work with no configuration. I picked Sound Blaster Pro and used the default settings for it.
(http://www.bops.us/spork42/xcom.jpg)
I find using a CPU cycles value of 15000 is good.
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Dos games will run on WinMe if ya can't get WinXP to run 'em :
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Time to break out my old AW DOS game.
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Damn, I don't have my original X-Com cd anymore, so while I can get DOSbox working, X-Com refuses.
So, I downloaded a Win98 compatible version of X-Com, which starts up fine but is graphically a mess. Some refresh rate problem I guess, but damned if I want to try and figure it out.
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Originally posted by Blooz
For Windows XP, right click the programs icon and select the Compatability tab. Set it to emulate whichever operating system you need.
no such thing when i right-click all programs
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Not All Programs.
The programs desktop icon.
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ahhh.... i see it now. thanks
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Tie-Fighter, X-Wing and X-Wing Alliance will all work on WinXP easily. Just check the program compatibility section on the .exe extension or the desktop icon. I used to have X-Com UFO Defense and Terror from the Deep working on XP but I have since reformatted and started over with a new drive. It only took a couple of days one weekend to get them working right.
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Dunno bout yours but on my Windows XP Pro the compatability tab only lists previous versions of Windows
DOS isnt listed
Originally posted by Blooz
For Windows XP, right click the programs icon and select the Compatability tab. Set it to emulate whichever operating system you need.
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Win95 and Win98 are DOS based operating systems. WinXP can emulate these sysyems and they should be able to run a DOS program.
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Theres a snakeman around that corner, Jungos about to get whacked
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Tried it already. Dont work with any of the DOS games I couldnt run in Win95.
Typicaly the problem is with the File buffers and EMS
Originally posted by Blooz
Win95 and Win98 are DOS based operating systems. WinXP can emulate these sysyems and they should be able to run a DOS program.
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You can still play with your autoexec.bat and config.sys files in Win9x, and run emm386.sys to get EMS working properly. Typically the problem is sound drivers. Newer plug-n-play cards have a hard time running old Dos games properly. Creative's legacy drivers suck. You can try emulators like VDMSound, but they only work for a select list of games.
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For TIE Fighter stuff.... look here
http://www.emperorshammer.net/
Fridaddy
AKA
Cmdr Lassiter
2-1 Lamed Squad, Wing IV, SSSV Sov
Imperial Security Medal x 3
Order of the Vanguard - Seventh Echelon
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Very cool DOS game I still play every day:
Begin: A Tactical Starship Combat Simulation
It's a turn based game, each game can take between 5 and 30 minutes, based on the complexity of the battle you set up. You choose which government you are (Federation, Klingon, Romulan, or Orion), then you configure both fleets. The technology is TOS era, with the pre-TNG warp scale (eg, an Orion Assassin (basically a warp drive with a phaser and a crew cabin bolted to it) can sprint at warp 14).
Each race has a bunch of different ship types. For example, the Feds have Interceptors, Destroyers, Heavy Cruisers (same class as the Enterprise), Dreadnoughts (think heavy cruiser with a third warp nacelle, more weapons, reactors, etc), tugs, tankers, and Starbases.
The Klingons have Escorts (roughly like an interceptor, not a lot of weaponry), Frigates, Battle Cruisers, Dreadnoughts, and Outposts.
Romulans have a few different types of Birds of Prey (slow, but has cloaking device and plasma torpedos).
The Orions have six different types of ships, ranging from the Assassin (mentioned above) to a slow but large ship with 3000 designed for capturin ships.
You set up battles with up to a hundred ships and start it up. When you pick up enemy ships on your scanners, you issue commands to set heading and speed, load torpedos, lock weapons on target, and close with them to engage.
Here's an example of the typed commands:
helm 285 warp 5 (sets course of 285 degrees, warp 5)
load all torpedos 220 (sets all torpedo launchers to load the default torpedo class with a proximity fuse of 220 distance units)
lock all torpedos on Medusa spread 2 degrees (lock torpedos on the Medusa with a spread of 2 degrees.)
fire all torpedos (or fire torpedo 1) (commands for firing torps)
If you're within phaser range of the enemy ship, you might fire all phasers in a tight beam with:
fire all phasers 10 degrees
An example ship might have 5 power producing reactors, two warp engines, 4 banks of emergency power batteries, two phaser banks, a torpedo launcher, and a 10 person transporter. A bigger ship might also have a probe launcher (which can launch a slow weapon with a large warhead, dangerous to use as it might be set off by nearby weapons fire when it's close to you) and a tractor beam.
Each vessel has 6 shields providing protection as a hexagon around the ship. When they drop to 0%, you can beam people to them to capture them (some hand to hand combat might be needed, so I like to kill as many with my ship based phasers before I board them). Sometimes I will lock onto the ship with a tractor beam to pin them in place while I boil off their crew with energy weapons. Once I capture the ship, I set a prize crew and the ship will fight as part of my fleet. You have to plan your use of weapons if you intend to capture a ship. A ship that has been gutted with torpedo fire and has had a warp nacelle blown off isn't terribly useful in a space fight, for example. One technique I like it to knock down their shields with torpedo fire, then close and try to poke out their eyes by knocking out their scanners, then I can fire low powered phasers into them to take out their crews and leave the ship relatively intact.
If you finish off an enemy ship or you've conclusively destroyed its abillity to fight (visualize a ship without warp, weapons, shields and barely breaking even on power to run life support) and have no interest in capturing it, you can set a heading away at a leisurely warp factor and, almost as an afterthought, drop a slow homing pod with a 30-charge Matter/Anti-Matter warhead that will close on the ship and detonate, usually causing a chain reaction that destroys the entire ship.
The fleet command stuff is great, you can order your fleet to open fire, give assignments like 'order the Farragut to defend the Lexington' (that exact command), tell them to tow ships, and so on.
The game is easy to learn, the EGA graphics are so simple that it's timeless, and sometimes it's very satisfying to fire a brace of torpedos into the unprotected flank of a ship, crippling it before it detonates.
If parts of this sound familiar, it's because it is based off a game called 'Starfleet Battles'. The modern PC game 'Starfleet Command' is based off the same source, but I find the tactical aspect of Begin to be superior gameplay to the twitch-style playing of SFC.
Here's a link to download it:
http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=2948
Here's a screenshot from the link above. Blurry, but it might look familiar if you've played it before:
(http://www.the-underdogs.org/games/b/begin2/begin2.jpg)
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Originally posted by gofaster
Is the Wing Commander franchise dead? I don't think I've seen any version of it on store shelves recently.
Wing Commander ended with WC: Prophecy, where Blair dies at the end.
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Anybody play the original Afterburner game?
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Yeah, that was a hit. Good one.
:D
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http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3079928626&category=11051
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WIng Commander rocked!
So did UFO and TFD! Awesome games, though really hard. Oh, the suspense of waiting for those alien mofos to show themselves!!!
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Christ, this makes me wish I had kept some of my old games, they'd be worth a fortune now.
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nope. most of them are free
http://www.the-underdogs.org
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I just received as an update to my Microsoft Action Pack subscription the Microsoft Virtual PC 2004. Let's you run multiple virtual PCs on one PC simultaneously including MSDOS and even OS/2. Pretty cool. If you work in the IT industry you can get this along with most of the server products and 10 users of Windows XP Pro and Office XP for $300/yr. Check it out here: http://members.microsoft.com/partner/salesmarketing/partnermarket/actionpack/actionpackus.aspx
Here's a link to the Virtual PC: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/virtualpc/evaluation/overview2004.asp
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Aha! I got X-Com working, and for those of you who've downloaded the Win98-compatible version (8megs), just open up dxdiag and disable Directdraw acceleration. That fixes the graphics garbling.
Been playing for hours. Only a month has passed and I've got frickin battleships attacking my home base.
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I run Windows XP and just installed Virtual PC. I'm now installing Windows 98, have to admit, it made me a little nervous when it asked if I wanted to format my hard drive. BTW, "guest" o/s' don't come with Virtual PC.
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Anyone has Chuck Yeager Air Combat? :D
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Another one that just hit me....Transport Tycoon!
For the simplicity it was pretty damn good.
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I just downloaded Aces of the pacific! The first sim i ever played. It came with a manual that must have been a hundred pages. My whole family read it because it was so interesting, It covered the history of WWII better than any history book i have read. I got win ace to open the file after i unzipped it now i just got to get x com or something to run it since its for dos. Sure hope this thing can work must have been the greatest sim flying i have ever had back in the day. Dang thing got me hooked on these vertual WWII fighter games o well lol. Going to try to get red baron working to!:)