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General discussionOld games you got running without GOG(41 posts)(41 posts)
(41 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted August 25, 2018
All of them. I only buy games from here because it's the best place to buy them, not because I need help getting them to run.
Posted August 25, 2018
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ArachnosX: Protip: dgVoodoo is magic.
Never liked the voodoo engine as much. For descent 3 I prefer OpenGL

As on what old game that I have working without GOG, I can play Mechwarriors 3 and 4
Post edited August 25, 2018 by zgrillo2004
Posted August 25, 2018
Blade Runner? Great, great, great, greeaaaat game! The best ever as far as I'm concerned :)

The only old game I can think of that I got working outside of gog is Dune 2000, using some fan patch thing. Messed around with some modern dune 2 versions as well, but didn't find the campaigns particularly playable unfortunately.

A challenge for me one day is to get Montezuma's revenge working properly. I tried with dosbox, but it seems as if you have to finetune the settings very carefully to make it playable. Ridiculously difficult game, but dammit, I'm going to finish it!
Posted August 25, 2018
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grimgroove: So, I finally got tired of waiting for GOG to get its act toogether
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Fairfox: ?
arent you bein' a lil harsh?

you think gogie is goin' 2 acquire a gamie with xpired licence how?
It was harsh, there is no denying it.
I don't know how GOG does what it does generally, I just figured they could do it for Blade Runner as well. I read some stuff ranging from source code that's gone missing to licensing issues to I don't know what else people can come up with, but I refuse to believe it's impossible. And if it's possible at all, then I'm expecting to see it here first.
Posted August 25, 2018
Blade Runner isn't too bad, it had Win NT compatibility originally, so I found that it ran without any issues except needing a slowdown program for two parts of the game that are tied to CPU speed. That was on a 32 bit Win system though, you have to do more for 64 bit.

There's never been a game I can't get running in some way. As a last resort I can even use my old Win98/DOS/CRT computer- even has a Voodoo card.

To me the hardest ones to get running are the mid 90's Windows games that use Apples QuickTime player- games like Frankenstein Through the Eyes of the Monster. QuickTime games have to use the version of QT that they come with and no modern drivers exist for 32 or 64 bit systems anyway. They need a real Win 9x PC or maybe a VM.

The next trouble period to me is early 00's. Lots of those don't play nice with 64 bit file systems. Lots of them don't like multicores, and lots of them use copy protection that most modern optical drives can no longer read (so need a No CD patch). Then you have odd games like Neverwinter Nights that uses stuff that is no longer supported in modern AMD GPU drivers and took me 2 days to solve all the issues.

But there is always a way, a PC can run anything digital- you just have to teach it how sometimes. It's only a question of whether it's worth it to spend the time.
Post edited August 25, 2018 by CMOT70
Posted August 25, 2018
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grimgroove: It got me quite excited and I was wondering if any of you have got old gems installed and working on your modern computers, but without GOG's intervention. It could also provide some inspiration for GOG on which games they should work on adding for those not lucky enough toh ave the software on cd-roms or floppies.
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AB2012: Even though I've still re-bought a lot on GOG for convenience / missing expansions, I'd have to say I actually had everything already running. If you know how / where to source "NoCD" patches or can install DOSBox / ScummVM yourself & tweak config files, then it's not that big an issue. There are lots of games I've had to "roll my own installer" / source NoCD's for anyway as they're still not on GOG (eg, Dune, Lemmings, Elite Plus, Heretic, Hexen, NOLF 1-2, Diablo 1-2, Age of Empires 1-2, Freelancer, Prey, Outrun 2006, Operation Flashpoint, and most things on GOG's wishlist including your Blade Runner).

Manually adding old adventure games to ScummVM is a no-brainer and needed for games still not on GOG (eg, The Neverhood). DOSBox defaults work well for most stuff, and manually creating links is as easy as "C:\Program Files\DOSBox\DOSBox.exe" pathtogame.exe -exit -fullscreen as a Start Menu shortcut.

Most CD-ROM games have NoCD's available. Many popular 90s games have been primarily fixed up by modding community (eg, Thief 1-2 / System Shock 2's "NewDark" / Tafferpatcher, Deus Ex's "Kentie's Launcher", etc). Other games actually run better in community made source ports vs GOG's default DOSBox package (eg, GZDoom for Doom 1-2 or Quakespasm for Quake 1).

Even with the GOG versions, some games still need patching for further bug fixing (eg, Morrowind Code Patch / Unofficial Bug Fixes) or adding widescreen, eg:-

- Commandos Behind Enemy Lines widescreen patch

- For Serious Sam FE & SE, go to install\scripts dir and edit PersistentSymbols.ini. Edit / add the lines:-
persistent extern INDEX sam_iScreenSizeI=(INDEX)1920;
persistent extern INDEX sam_iScreenSizeJ=(INDEX)1080;

- Sam & Max Seasons 2 & 3 are in widescreen, but Season 1 isn't. However, there's a TellTale Widescreen Patcher here that adds W/S to S1.

^ Just 3 examples of dozens of games where GOG doesn't add any widescreen patches, only compatibility patches. So if you want widescreen, you still need to edit them yourself. WSGF (WideScreen Gaming Forum) is the best resource for this stuff. Just click "GamesDB" and search.
That's very interesting, thanks. Loving the widescreen-links!
But I guess it needs no explanation I do not have the knowhow many of you seem to have, so that "if" you started with is a big, fat "if" in my case that sadly remains in the hypothetical. I got lucky that for Blade Runner some nice fella made an installwizard that is completely foolproof and that I still had the physical disks. I remember that backl in the day I tried fiddling with virtual drives and some stuff I don't even remember the name for which were supposed to be a work-around for not having the cd-roms, but I never got any of that stuff to work correctly and honestly, it seemed quite fishy to me legally speaking.
Posted August 25, 2018
I went through a migration process of disk imaging every disc I had, finding nocds or patches,and effectively getting them working. There are a couple which refuse to work on win 10 Call of Juarez for instance. And the nocd for you are empty keeps getting flagged, it in the vast majority it is done now.
But let's be thankful beamdog are here to enhance things for us.
Posted August 25, 2018
GameCopyWorld - for No-CD cracks/patches when DRM is the problem. Most old games work fine on modern Windows, but DRM like StarForce, SecuROM and SafeDisc are the problem, so basically the old "cracks" are now unofficial "patches" for modern systems.

dgVoodoo 2 - when DirectX is the problem (for DirectX 8 and older)... Nocturne, Mobil 1 Rally Championship, LEGO Rock Raiders, Splinter Cell 1/2, Extreme-G 2...

WineD3D - when DirectX is the problem (for DirectX 9)... Starship Troopers, Beyond Good And Evil

nGlide - when the game uses Glide API for rendering... Starshot Space Circus Fever

DOSBox - old DOS games

It would be easier to list games I couldn't get running, for example the King Kong game which uses StarForce DRM and it was never properly cracked, so it's unplayable on my new computer.

One game that was hard to get working is LEGO Rock Raiders, just look what all you have to do (I actually wrote this):
https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Lego_Rock_Raiders#Installing_and_running_the_game_on_modern_Windows

I recently installed Windows 98 and XP on my 2005 PC in case I find a game that wont work.
Post edited August 25, 2018 by antrad88
Posted August 25, 2018
I used small programs called Real Alternative and QuickTime Alternative to replace Real Player and QuickTime Player respectively.
Posted August 25, 2018
Done this many times already. Obviously DOS games aren't any problem (most of the time) thanks to DOSBox. But I've also managed to get a crapload of Windows games running.

More popular games tend to have community patches which make getting them to run a walk in the park, e.g. the Command & Conquer games, Silent Hill 2, Blood Omen, Quake, even the somewhat less popular Battle for Middle-earth had a nice community patch on ModDB.

I've found that the vast majority of older games don't run on out-of-the-box on modern systems because of unsupported graphics libraries, which can usually be fixed with wrappers like Aqrit's ddwrapper, dgVoodoo 2 or nGlide (the latter being also commonly used by GOG).

Another typical problem are 16-bit installers, e.g. in case of pretty much all early Windows Sierra titles. For that I use VirtualBox running Windows XP. Rip the game to an ISO, mount it on VirtualBox, install, copy the installed game to a shared folder where your host system has access to them and often the game will already work. If not, the wrapper stuff mentioned above will usually do the trick.

Oh yeah, and for many adventure games you can resort to ScummVM which has the big advantage that sometimes it will fix issues that were present in a game's original version and include other improvements.

So yeah, while there are some really problematic games where I have to thank GOG for doing the job for me, usually I've been able to do it myself when a game wasn't on GOG yet. Admittedly I discovered many of these methods by studying what GOG does and applying these things to games not on GOG.
Posted August 25, 2018
Any DOS game with DOSBox.

Drakhan: Order of the Flame (needed to get a fan patch to get past a part that kept crashing)

I have a CD of Fire Fight that I haven't been able to get to work. Found a link to a patch in a 7 year old blog post on a blog discontinued 4 years ago but not sure if it's safe...
Post edited August 25, 2018 by kalirion
Posted August 26, 2018
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kalirion: Any DOS game with DOSBox.

Drakhan: Order of the Flame (needed to get a fan patch to get past a part that kept crashing)

I have a CD of Fire Fight that I haven't been able to get to work. Found a link to a patch in a 7 year old blog post on a blog discontinued 4 years ago but not sure if it's safe...
I got Drakkhan: Order of the Flame working as well with that patch. I remember playing the game on my last PC before I knew about the fan patch. The only way I was able to get past a particularly infamous crash was to swap an older graphics card from an even older pc into my last computer, which worked like a charm but was a pain in the ass.
Posted August 26, 2018
I guess I could give an example: Fragile Allegiance did not install correctly in DOSBox so I had to manually copy the files from the cd to the game's folder on the hard drive whereafter it worked beautifully.

"Tetracorp is very pleased with you...."
Posted August 26, 2018
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CMOT70: But there is always a way, a PC can run anything digital- you just have to teach it how sometimes. It's only a question of whether it's worth it to spend the time.
Not to mention that time Jeff Goldblum took over an alien spaceship with a Mac.
Posted August 26, 2018
Alien Logic. It was pretty simple process, made a custom dosbox config file for it.
Biggest issue was that like the Mechwarrior 2 games, Alien Logic uses Mixed Mode for data files/soundtrack on all one CDROM, and the soundtrack files need to be present so the game runs correctly.
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionOld games you got running without GOG(41 posts)(41 posts)
(41 posts)