Back around 2020 or so I wanted to play old games because I only had an underpowered laptop that could barely play modern games.

One I downloaded off MyAbandonWare was this shooter from 2003 called Devastation. It’s alright, but more I played it when I was younger and always wondered what happened to it.

On my old laptop it always crashed on startup and I just couldn’t get it working. I could open the level editor and that was about it.

Recently I downloaded it again onto a new laptop I put Linux on and tried a few different configurations. I heard how WINE can be better than Windows for old software so I decided to give it a shot.

Eventually I used Bottles with a gaming configuration set to Windows Xp.

I tried Devastation with that setup and it worked. I still have an issue with the game being in the top left corner and not taking up the full screen, but it’s playable.

I have a top spec gaming PC now running Windows 10, but there are things this Thinkpad can do that my big PC can’t.

  • Malix@sopuli.xyz
    0·
    22 days ago

    Wine is kinda magical. I really like this old 16bit Windows 3.x game “Castle of The Winds” (topdown, turn based, roguelike) which doesn’t run on any 64bit windows as is (though, you CAN, with https://github.com/otya128/winevdm, but iirc it was a bit finicky).

    Wine runs CoTW fine, seemingly.

    • justabigemptyhole@lemmy.ml
      0·
      3 days ago

      Holy cow I did not expect that game to get a mention. I remember buying the sequel and waiting for what seems like an eternity for the floppy disk to arrive by mail. I am making this happen as soon as I can find it.

      • Malix@sopuli.xyz
        0·
        3 days ago

        got the first game/shareware on some random “bajillion games collection!” cd when I was a kid. Even if it wasn’t a full game, the amount of game the shareware episode had was staggering. Years later I came across the second part which was released as freeware. There was much rejoicement.

        The game sure has it’s BS moments - like nearly impossible dragons/whatever enemies which occasionally just murder you, but dangit I like it. :3

        Just got to figure out a way to “double the pixel size” so that all those crusty graphics don’t get too small on my screen, dosbox + win3.1 is nice but… could be better! :P