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.

  • Dojan@lemmy.world
    8·
    3 months ago

    I did something similar just the other day.

    As a kid I really enjoyed Populous The Beginning. I only ever had the demo version. I later bought the game on GOG, but it never ran that well on my computer. You had to use software based graphics acceleration so it didn’t look right, would have issues with the sound, and crash fairly often.

    Tried it through Lutris the other day and it just works. Flawlessly. The graphics look right, there are no audio distortions, and so far I’ve not crashed at all. I’d like to figure out how to get it to run in windowed mode, and then I’ll be satisfied.

    Big win for WINE.

  • SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml
    4·
    3 months ago

    I only had an underpowered laptop that could barely play modern games.

    I would like to point out that not all modern games have stupidly high requirements, and I might argue that the ones that do could actually optimise their shit to work on lower spec machines.

    • tombruzzo@lemm.eeOP
      2·
      3 months ago

      The main problem was Siege with my friends over lockdown. Even on the lowest settings my framerate would drop whenshootouts happened on screen.

      I hooked it up to the TV recently and got through Pseudoregalia fine. It would handle any modern 2D or basic 3D game alright.

      I also tried Art of Rally, and whilst it works, I had to turn all the settings down. That is such a beautiful game that low settings don’t do it justice

  • HouseWolf@lemm.eeEnglish
    31·
    3 months ago

    I’m pretty sure compatibility mode in Windows hasn’t actually done anything after Windows 7. There were a few games and programs I had running on Win7 using the XP compatibility mode, but using the same setting on Win10 did nothing.

    Windows 10 also seemed to be the time many games started needing community made patches to run even if the game worked fine on 7.

  • Jerkface (any/all)@lemmy.caEnglish
    1·
    3 months ago

    I’m super frustrated that for some reason, Sid Meyer’s SimGolf doesn’t run on any emulation or modern hardware. It was just a friggin windows 95 game!! I have no idea what’s so special about it.