text: >>, Informative)
  Re: (Score:3)
  Dosbox is good enough that it can also run Win 3.1 quite well. Apparently it can also run Windows 95, but that's unsupported and I haven't tried it.
  Re: (Score:3)
  All well an good, but none of those games are designed for Windows 3.1. If you'll remember - in the Windows 3.1 days virtually no "real" games depended on Windows. Aside from basic things like card games and a few tetris clones and the like, you mostly exited out of Windows to play a game then booted back into Windows afterwards.
  It wasn't until Windows 95 came along that you had a significant number of games that actually required WIndows.
  Re: (Score:3)
  That was common, but not universal. The top selling PC game of the 1990s, Myst, was released in 1993 and was Windows only. Even after Windows 95 was released, many Windows games could still be run on 3.x.
  Re: (Score:2)
  Re: (Score:2, Informative)
  There is a reason for that, Win 3.x used WinG for graphics and it was VERY primitive and crash prone, DirectX came out with Win95 and was head and shoulders better than WinG.
  Its just a shame that OpenGL dropped the ball and cared more about CAD compatibility and letting the GPU manufacturers use "shims" than they did about actually competing with DirectX because between 98-02 there was a real shot at taking gaming from DirectX and OpenGL being cross platform was really nice. Now between Windows and the X3
  Re:Isn't it mostly dosbox ? (Score:4, Informative)
  Win 3.x used WinG for graphics and it was VERY primitive and crash prone, DirectX came out with Win95 and was head and shoulders better than WinG.
  DirectX came out after Win95, and NT already had GL support and NT's software GL renderer would run on Win95.
  Its just a shame that OpenGL dropped the ball and cared more about CAD compatibility and letting the GPU manufacturers use "shims" than they did about actually competing with DirectX
  You know what's really a shame? That 3dfx made GLIDE instead of starting with MiniGL, which offered Microsoft an opportunity to make their own shitty 3D API instead of being strongly encouraged to go OpenGL, which they certainly could have done. And the rest is history.
  Re: (Score:3)
  Uhhh...GLIDE stomped the living shit out of OpenGL and as far as I know there wasn't any "MiniGL" at the time, because even at that point in the game Kronos was dropping the ball when it came to OpenGL by focusing more on CAD than gaming. This is the same problem Linux has, where the kernel devs bend over backwards to rush out a fix for some tiny server issue while the desktop suffers from shittier and shittier performance, its kissing the ass too much of the ones cutting the checks.
  But I had both the Voodo
  Re: (Score:3)
  GLIDE stomped the living shit out of OpenGL and as far as I know there wasn't any "MiniGL" at the time
  GLIDE was basically a hacked-up subset of OpenGL. MiniGL is the name given to the subset, without the GLIDE API weirdness - i.e. the subset of OpenGL that the VooDoo could support in hardware. It was used by games like GLQuake.
  because even at that point in the game Kronos was dropping the ball when it came to OpenGL by focusing more on CAD than gaming
  Kronos didn't exist until about a decade later. Back then there was the OpenGL Architecture Review Board, which was a fairly open process. Vendors proposed extensions in their own namespace (e.g. NV_), once two or more vendors supported the
  Re: (Score:2)
  Literally everything you said in this comment is wrong. The sibling comment to the one I'm leaving now covers most of it. I want to address this though: "But I had both the Voodoo 2 and the Geforce 2 and frankly GLIDE just bitchslapped anything that OpenGL had put out" Frankly, you are beyond fucking ignorant here. I had both a VooDoo 2 and a Permedia 2 and the V2 was slightly faster than the Permedia 2 had dramatically better image quality. You just really have no idea what you're talking about here, but I
  Re: (Score:2)
  Microsoft also had plans for a 3D card (Project Talisman, I worked for Silicon Engineering which was supposed to actually do much of the work under sub-subcontract) and they probably promised big game developers the eventual DirectX-Box, or "Xbox" as it came to be known.
  Re: (Score:2)
  What the fuck is a permedia? Never heard of it, obviously wasn't big because i was building shitloads of gaming rigs at the time and it was all Nvidia geforce 2s and Voodoo boxes, that's all anybody wanted. And GLIDE was a proprietary hacked all too hell bare metal subset of OpenGL but it had about as much to do with openGL proper as Android has to do with a Linux server, IE not much at all. And I apologize if I got the name of the corp in charge of OpenGL wrong but it was a decade and a half ago, the point
  Re: (Score:1)
  What the fuck is a permedia? Never heard of it
  And that is why you should just shut the fuck up because you have no fucking idea what you're talking about. Ever heard of 3dlabs? No, of course you haven't.
  But I'm sorry but while openGL was okay back in the day the bare metal design 3DFX used frankly just smoked it
  That is so much bullshit I have no idea what to even say to you.
  Re: (Score:1)
  Civilization II was Windows only, could run in 3.1 though.
  Re:Isn't it mostly dosbox ? (Score:4, Informative)
  Uh actually, it was released in 1993 for *Mac* only.
  Re: (Score:2)
  According to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], it was released on September 24 1993 for Mac and PC. It's easy to think it was a Mac exclusive, reading that article, as it was programmed with Hypercard and Quicktime, on Quadras. I remember playing it at a friend's house (he actually had a CD-ROM drive), while I was a senior in high school (1993-1994) and his was a PC-only house.
  Those were the days when Mac was easiest to use to write multimedia software, best for Photoshop and barely used by home users.
  Re: (Score:3)
  The problem is we really need a DOSBox for Win9X because frankly there are a LOT of games that won't run in Windows OR Linux anymore from that era. For example GOG sells i76 but frankly its hit or miss, more miss, because the game used a hack that used the CPU timer as an event timer in game and it just doesn't know what to make of anything newer than a non HT P4. I've personally tried all the patches, MoSlo, there are simply several in game events that are impossible to get past, the same holds true for Me.
  Re: (Score:3)
  Escape Velocity Nova seems to work on modern Macs: [ambrosiasw.com]
  Re: (Score:2)
  Escape Velocity Nova seems to work on modern Macs: [ambrosiasw.com]
  Whoops, "almost modern" might be more accurate - it only lists 10.7 support.
  Re: (Score:2)
  Which is about as relevant as noting that Doom 3 runs on Windows 7.
  Re: (Score:2)
  Marathon (Score:2)
  If I remember correctly the game engine for the marathon series has already been open sourced and ported to Linux, you can grab the sources code (and precompiled binaries for OSX and Windows) from bungi's websites and the game files are a free download from there along with numerous mods.Sso I'm not sure how much more easily available they could be as for the others I don't know.
  Re: (Score:3)
  Marathon is available - Bungie released the engine as open source and it became Aleph One [bungie.org]. (I don't think bungie.org is the same as bungie.com, just a very popular fansite for all things Bungie, most popular of which is HBO).
  It's also available for iOS, done with Bungie's blessing back in the day (the base game is free
  Re: (Score:2)
  Question: As someone who hasn't ever played the Marathon series what is good about it, other than it being made by the guys that made Halo? Looking at the screenshots other than the Blake Stone style bright colors it doesn't look any better than DOOM, so what is the appeal?
  Don't get me wrong I love a good shooter even with bad graphics, Redneck Rampage is one of my favs (bought from GOG, check it out if you haven't gotten it already) but that is because it mixes humor, a great rockabilly soundtrack and TON
  Re: (Score:2)
  What set Marathon apart was the level of functionality. It had more functions with keybindings. Also, it had a story. Today, who cares? Play Halo, close enough. It doesn't have the soul, but nobody wants to read through pages of shit in a FPS any more.
  Re: (Score:2)
  Re: (Score:2)
  Or they'd need an API level simulator of classic Mac OS. But there's no preexisting project for GoG to capitalize upon here.
  Re: (Score:2)
  Well... an API level simulator and a PPC and/or 68k emulator. There is a preexisting project, but I doubt apple want to give out the source to Classic, and Rosetta unfortunately.
  Re: (Score:2)
  The PPC and 68K emulators exist already. Sheepshaver and Basilisk. But they require a copy of Mac OS, which would need to be licensed or replaced.
  Re:Isn't it mostly dosbox ? (Score:4, Informative)
  A list of games that work, and how: [gog.com]
  A lot of Wine and open source ports/re implementation of the engines (was it icculus or something that did those?). Not just DOSbox.
  Re: (Score:2)
  It's the same problem the eve guys had, the existing Linux emulation, translation layers and re-implementations are generally better than anything you can do on your own in a reasonable time frame, especially if, like GoG, you're talking about dozens or hundreds of games, so it's a 'we won't do it ourselves but we're not stopping you from using already working solutions' kinda thing.
  Re: (Score:1)
  I really don't see it as a problem for games, especially older ones where performance is less likely to be an issue.
  games aren't going to suffer from being non native in quite the same way as an office app, having pretty much their own interface painted by the game engine.
  Re: (Score:2)
  It's a bit hit and miss. For example, I just finished Broken Sword 4 (released 2007, bought by me from GOG), on OS X with WINE. I use WineSkin, which lets you create
  .app wrappers for Windows programs and easily switch between different versions of WINE. With the latest versions of WINE (on a quad 2.2GHz i7) it is slow and laggy, the CPU is at 100%, and periodically the sound gets broken and you get loud noise from the speakers. With the Crossover games engine (also the open source version, also install
  Re: (Score:1)
  my computer is nearly 5 years old though, I really meant dx7 era games as working and the performance not mattering as much. Though jerking motion probably would happen no matter how much power you throw at it.
  Re: (Score:2)
  gog.com doesn't sell only old games, despite the name. They launched the OSX version of The Witcher 2 among others.
  Re: (Score:2)
  That's because it's the same company that made the witcher and GoG. That was their first big new AAA sort of release. And thus far I think their only one.
  GoG is about good old games, but why give away 30% on your own title when you sell at least some copies through your own store?
  Re: (Score:2)
  Well, lately they also have expanded to new games, mostly indies, but with a few AAA ones like Alan Wake.
  Re: (Score:2)
  Re: (Score:1)
  Re: (Score:2)
  This is true and there is even a list [gog.com] of both those that work in DOSBox on Linux and those that work with WINE so I really don't see what the fuss is about. After all its not like you have to worry about DRM and with the games being...well old, most have been tested and you can always look at the list.
  Although frankly this is what dual booting is made for, even the most rabid Linux users I've talked to admit Windows makes a good gaming OS so why not just keep the install that came with the OEM and have a
  Re: (Score:2)
  even the most rabid Linux users I've talked to admit Windows makes a good gaming OS so why not just keep the install that came with the OEM and have a dual boot? Seems like a no brainer to me.
  I built my PC, you insensitive clod! I have a license for XP and I run an XP VM in vmware player, just upgraded to 5 and d3d support is noticeably better. (Something that was drawing incorrectly is Civ IV is now drawing correctly...) But I don't want to run XP32 on my six-core, 8GB RAM PC with a GT240. I imagine I'll have plenty of problems with early XP32-era games just due to my graphics drivers.
  Somehow I got the idea a long time ago that virtualization was going to allow me to run multiple operating syst
  Re: (Score:2)
  Drinkypoo get a copy of Win 7 Home, makes a hell of a lot better gaming OS. If you don't care for the UI changes XP X64 is still supported and pretty nice, in fact I avoided XP completely by going from 2K to XP X64 (which is just 2K3 workstation) but for games Win 7 rocks HARD. Better memory management, superfetch and readyboost, DX 11, its just a better choice for gaming.
  Although why you'd want to even attempt to run games in a VM is beyond me...is your PC really THAT slow? I have an AMD 1035T with 8Gb of
  Re: (Score:2)
  Drinkypoo get a copy of Win 7 Home
  I am not giving Microsoft my money. XP came with a prior machine.
  Although why you'd want to even attempt to run games in a VM is beyond me
  I don't trust Microsoft to run on my bare metal. I don't want to reboot. I only have 80GB SSD and the rest HDD and it takes too long to boot XP from HDD, and there's no room for it on my SSD.
  BTW if you want a copy for your VM to laugh at Win 8 X64 is just $40 and it'll have the latest DirectX
  Since I don't run Windows on the bare metal, I am not interested in Windows 8. Windows XP runs fine in a VM.
  Now if you'll excuse me I feel like a little Torchlight 2 in Steam
  Fuck buying games for Windows, and fuck Steam twice. I still believe in First Sale law.
  Re: (Score:2)
  Oh good lord step away from the keyboard? do you HONESTLY think you can resell ANY game with an online component anymore? And just FYI but if Steam ever went under, which considering they've doubled their profits every year for 7 years I'm seriously doubting that would happen, but lets say it did...you DO know you can go to Gamecopyworld and just get a crack...yes? No different than you'd have to do with any other modern retail game and at least with Steam I'm paying less than a rental and I'm not ending up
  Re: (Score:2)
  Oh good lord step away from the keyboard? do you HONESTLY think you can resell ANY game with an online component anymore?
  Yes. I don't buy the ones that I can't. Don't be such a bitch.
  And why in the hell are you even playing PC games if you hate MSFT THAT damned much? just buy yourself a PS3 already
  I don't trust Microsoft. That's orthogonal to the issue of hate. Your reading comprehension is for shit.
  There is principles and there is zealotry, try not to let the former become the latter, its not good for you.
  There are people with principles and there are people without. Try not to become the latter, that's how we got EA.
  Re: (Score:3)
  Uhhh...EA is up for sale, proving the free market works. if enough people don't like something, like say Vista or Win 8, it flops and the company has to listen or go under. But with all the hoops you've set up for yourself frankly you need to just stick with Linux, because you are about as much of a PC gamer as someone with an old Win98 box in the corner. You can count the number of games without a tied online component released in the past few years on 2 hands with fingers left over, not that it matters be
  Re: (Score:2)
  And WTF does "trust" have to do with shit? You think MSFT is gonna sneak through your window and beat your ass?
  Are you really this stupid, or are you just trolling?
  So seriously dude just buy a console already although frankly even those are now having DLC and online tied to an account.
  I'm just giving up on virtually all new games. I like old games, so this is a working solution for me. If you want to continue to fund the fucking-over of the games market, that's your prerogative, but fuck you.
  like saying "I watch TV, but only masterpiece theater, and only when its English and only when its hosted by a certain host"...well fuck, you don't really watch TV then do ya?
  Nope, I sure don't. Coincidentally, I only watch downloads and Netflix — actually watching TV is horrible, I don't get any OTA whatsoever, and I refuse to pay a recurring fee for non-a la carte, commercial-laden programming. And I only pay fo
  Bundle (Score:5, Informative)
  The pay-what-you-want is actually only for 20 games, and you have to pay more than the average. The 32 games you get for $35. Just pointing that out, still a pretty good deal. Played Castles last night - exactly as I remembered it, incomprehensible. Might have to read the manual to remember how to get my idiots to actually start building; the music transported me directly back to 1991, though. Love that awesome midi sound.
  Re: (Score:2)
  Have those games been updated to run on 10.8?
  IIR, Apple got rid of some legacy graphics support that those games needed to run (256-color mode, Rosetta support). I'd hate to blow $32 and have a bunch of games that were unplayable and eating up drive space.
  Re: (Score:3)
  As usual, the summary is a bit misleading. The Mac support includes only 50 games none of which are part of the interplay "pay what you want" offering. The two announcements were conflated into one. The real Mac promo is here:
  Mac promo [gog.com]
  Re: (Score:2)
  Ooops, I've found the real announcement too:
  GOG.com goes Mac [gog.com]
  Re: (Score:2)
  Good question. If it works, I'm going to be buying Syndicate. Absolute classic game!
  Re: (Score:2)
  Re: (Score:2)
  Cheers for that.
  Re: (Score:3)
  Have those games been updated to run on 10.8?
  In general, the games never ran and never will run directly under any version of Mac OS X (or even "classic" Mac OS), and hence do not have to be updated. The currently released games fall into four categories:
  Re: (Score:2)
  Re: (Score:2)
  Love that awesome midi sound.
  Does GoG configure Dosbox with Timidity, FluidSynth, or Munt? For good Midi sound on dosbox you either need a good software synthesizer like the above, or a real hardware midi synth plugged into your computer.
  Dosbox does emulate the OPL3 for Adlib/soundblaster compatible FM synth, which is still pretty sweet. IMO, the FM synth in Dosbox is better than some period OPL3 clones, but not as good as a real Yamaha OPL3.
  Re: (Score:2)
  Not actually "pay what you want" for all 32 (Score:4, Informative)
  If you want all 32 games you'll have to pay $34.99. Not bad at all, but not "pay what you want." Also seems to me that there were a lot more games from back in the day with the Interplay name on them, not just these 32.
  Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
  here's a starting point...
  Re: (Score:1)
  It's worth nothing that "pay what you want" doesn't include amounts above $2500.01 either.
  Re: (Score:2)
  No pay what you want is only 8 games.
  More than the average (currently 13.72) is 20 games
  and $34.99 is the full bundle.
  Re: (Score:2)
  Also seems to me that there were a lot more games from back in the day with the Interplay name on them, not just these 32.
  Interplay was also a publisher. Among other things, they published Blizzard's earlier games, such as The Lost Vikings and The Lost Vikings 2: Norse by Norsewest.
  The latter was on the Interplay 15th Anniversary collection in the 90s, but Interplay's then-new owners sold their publisher rights in 2001ish.
  There were also the various Star Trek games, whose license likely ended years ago.: (Score:2)
  No.
  There is indeed a single Linux.
  There's just one X. One kernel. One SDL. Beyond that you might have a couple choices for things like sound or the desktop API.
  It's not quite as bad as or "fragmented" as some people like to make out.
  libvorbis is libvorbis regardless of what distro you're running.
  Packaging is different but that's something you can let individuals handle. Allow Debian or Redhat users the lattitude and they will make their own packages.
  Linux is no more in flux than any other desktop PC
  Re: (Score:3)
  Also, there is NOT only one kernel. Depending on what you are running, it may even be as drastic as 2.4.* vs 2.6.*.
  Re: (Score:2)
  Also, there is NOT only one kernel. Depending on what you are running, it may even be as drastic as 2.4.* vs 2.6.*.
  You mean 2.6.x.y vs 3.6.z right?
  :P I mean, that only spans the last 15 months...
  Re: (Score:2)
  Dude. Please go and speak to a game developer about the screwed up graphics driver nightmare under windows.
  Then realise that the same exists on Linux.
  A lot of effort goes into the Windows + (all the different versions of graphics drivers out there) nightmare. Linux would at _least_ be that kind of screwed up to maintain. That's a lot of manpower for no specific revenue targets. No PHB is going to agree to that.
  Now if Linux had a sane, stable graphics environment that provided the same experience on all plat
  Re: (Score:2)
  Actually the kernel pretty much IS the OS. A lot of distributions throw their own software packages atop that OS but they're all Linux. Same binary format and you can pretty much expect that they're all running an x.org server for graphics.
  Also - many programs already have binary Linux distributions that work on just about any target platform. You just use statically compiled libraries and for the most part you're good.
  Even then, if you want something that even depends on some things within a distributio
  Security vulnerability in static libs (Score:2)
  You just use statically compiled libraries and for the most part you're good.
  Until someone discovers a security vulnerability in zlib, libpng, libjpeg, or one of the other statically linked libraries.
  Re: (Score:2)
  Which would only affect people running that particular application while it was running. At that point it becomes a security issue with the game - not the library. They recompile and issue it along with their standard game patches.
  When a product (or its company) goes EOL (Score:2)
  They recompile and issue it along with their standard game patches.
  Provided that the product's publisher is still in business and has not yet EOL'd the product.
  Does It Include Breakout? (Score:1)
  Does it include Breakout? Super Breakout? [youtube.com]
  Support System Shock II... (Score:2)
  ... and you've got my money. Best game ever.
  Re: (Score:1)
  Look at you, pathetic creature of meat and bones, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors.
  Re: (Score:2)
  SHODAN rocks!!
  Re: (Score:2)
  Have you seen [sshock2.com] ?
  ;)
  Already playing for years on the Mac via DOSBox (Score:1)
  A lot of these games I've already been playing for years on the Mac via DOSBox. Only I'm running OSX 10.4 or 10.5 and GOG requires 10.6.8 or later. What are we paying for again?
  Re:Already playing for years on the Mac via DOSBox (Score:4, Insightful)
  Presumably these would be licensed copies of the games. That and the games packaged in a way that doesn't require torrenting and then fiddly set-up.
  Re: (Score:2)
  First, when you buy the game you get both the Windows and Mac versions, so if you are using an old and unsupported version of OS X then you can still use the Windows installer under WINE and then play the games under DOSBox or ScummVM.
  Second, you're paying for the Mac installer, that comes with DOSBox or ScummVM preconfigured. Several of the games I've already bought from GOG now have Mac versions, and if I want to play them again then I can just grab the Mac version next time, rather than hav
  Maybe I'm confused (Score:1)
  Re: (Score:2, Informative)
  No, it's BSD underneath, but these games are all compiled with Xcode, so it's using the native OS X libraries and API's for everything. While a large amount the architecture of the kernel and BSD subsystem is easily emulated or even mapped to compatible API's under Linux, the native labries would need to be emulated in a similar way to WINE.
  I love GOG! (Score:1)
  Every bit of feedback I've ever sent them has gotten implemented. When first using the GOG downloader I sent them feedback that it's annoying I had to queue individual bonus content pieces one at a time. Few months later they updated and now you can add all bonus content for a game in one click. Later I gave the feedback that for any Dosbox based games they should have Mac versions. Lo and behold, today my purchase of Syndicate I can now download for Mac as well.
  GOG rules!
  Used to be a gamer. . . (Score:2)
  Re: (Score:1)
  Re: (Score:2)
  Small company supports obscure operating system.
  Stop the presses!
  The announced Mac OS X support, not Linux support.
  Oh, I see what you were trying to do there.
  Re: (Score:1)
  Yeah, if you combine the market share of the last three major versions you get something like the market share of Windows Vista. That's not obscure at all.
  Re: (Score:2)
  Small company starts selling old mass-market Mac games which you couldn't otherwise buy any more.
  No, they start selling old mass-market DOS games now also packages with DOSBox for Mac, rather than only with DOSBox for Windows (or with ScummVM for Mac, or with Wine, or in very few cases a native Mac port -- but the last category aren't really old games until now).
  Re: (Score:2)
  Small company starts selling old mass-market Mac games which you couldn't otherwise buy any more.
  Sadly no.
  Old mac games that haven't been ported aren't going to be of any use to owners of modern macs without an emulation soloution. Afaict there are no free clones of classic macos (while there is a free clone of dos) so selling old mac games with an emulation soloution would require apple's coperation.
  Afaict what has actually happened here in most cases* is that GoG has started bundling old dos games with a mac version of dosbox and a mac installer as well as bundling them with a windows version of dosb
  Re: (Score:2)
  Afaict there are no free clones of classic macos (while there is a free clone of dos) so selling old mac games with an emulation soloution would require apple's coperation.
  Apple offers downloads of System 7, that's not the problem. The problem is that the emulator requires a ROM image, which Apple does not offer for download.
  Re: (Score:2)
  Re: (Score:2)
  Unfortunately, there's a slightly bootstrapping problem, because it's a Classic m86K binary, so you need to have working emulation before you can get the ROM.
  I wonder if you could address this issue legally by having a single mac somewhere that does the download and extraction... which file do I download to get a buried ROM image? I actually have a classic mac here, though it might be too old to run it.
  :)
  Re: (Score:2)
  Re:Work on the dropping of Classic/PPC support (Score:4, Interesting)
  As for Linux don't support Ubuntu because of their Amazon betrayal.
  Which physical goods shopping site should Canonical have chosen instead of Amazon?
  Re: (Score:2)
  Anything they have that I'm even remotely interested in can be brought up in DosBox or WINE.
  sure, if you have those floppies hanging around from 1992. if you bought them in the first place.
  Re: (Score:2)
  you have essentially said that they need to produce a product that can compete with free, because if it's cheaper / easier to steal it, you'll do that. it's pretty hard for a company to compete with free, so now you understand why they aren't producing a linux version.
  Re: (Score:2)
  so your rational is they since they are making money, it's okay for you to steal it? or what the heck are you even saying?
  i didn't say anything about industries making or not making money in the face of piracy. i said linux users like you aren't helping your cause, when you clearly state your willingness to steal the software. if i'm a game company, i'm thinking,
  1. if i don't price it how he wants, he's going to steal it
  2. if i don't package how he wants, he's going to steal it
  3. if i don't provide equal su