MeleeMonk
Cartoon Pony Wrangler
Part-time gamer, full-time environmentalist, and member of PAPO (People Against Palm Oil)
Posts: 3,651 
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Post by MeleeMonk on May 20, 2020 3:21:27 GMT
After getting fed up with having no easy way to play all of the retro PC exclusives that aren't available digitally and won't run on Windows 10, I went out and bought a refurbished 32 bit Acer Aspire laptop with Windows 7 from my local Radio Shack. I'll post the exact specs sometime, but I know for sure that it has 64 MB of dedicated video memory and graphics acceleration of up to 1GB, although for the sake of performance I probably won't play games requiring anything more than 64 MB, cuz it would turn into a slideshow.  The Aspire series wasn't designed specially for gaming so they don't have a true graphics card like gaming laptops do, but mine gets the job done nicely. Off the top of my head, the other specs are 4 GB of RAM and a dual-core processor that's something like 2.4 or 2.5 Ghz. Good enough for the games I want to play. What do you guys think? Here's the problem: I want to test my physical copy of Far Cry, but in order to do that I first have to enable the game's Safedisc DRM by manually starting a driver via my system's command prompt. This is the command I have to enter:
Once I do that, the game should run. But seeing as how I have never used command prompts before, I just don't feel comfortable making attempts at starting the DRM's driver without hearing the advice of wise and venerable pub mates like Cervantes or Armored Core Raven, who have both forgotten more about computers than I will ever know.H E L P P L E A S E!!! |
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MeleeMonk
Cartoon Pony Wrangler
Part-time gamer, full-time environmentalist, and member of PAPO (People Against Palm Oil)
Posts: 3,651
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Post by MeleeMonk on Jun 1, 2020 4:41:03 GMT
After doing some digging on the web, I finally found enough information on Windows 7's command prompt and managed to successfully start the DRM driver the other day! I tested my only Safedisc game (Far Cry) and lo and behold IT WORKED!! I tested it again today and I've noticed some differences between the 32-bit version of Far Cry and the 64 bit version; There seems to be a slightly lower enemy count in the original 32-bit version and there are some minor visual differences like the main menu screen being a still-image, seemingly less choices for player skins in multiplayer, etc. Interesting to compare the two versions of the game.
Anyway, I'm so happy that I now have an easy way to play older physical PC games. No more help is needed. Please ignore the original question I asked in my OP and feel free to comment on my new laptop in you guys want to.
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Balder
Supreme Overlord
Trying to cut down the amount of movies I watch
Posts: 6,821
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Post by Balder on Jun 1, 2020 12:18:40 GMT
Windows 7 is a pretty good operating system that supports most games released earlier. I remember having huge problems with people using Windows 8 when we had computer LANs back when people had either one of the two.
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Bogard
Night Raider
Posts: 584
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Post by Bogard on Jun 1, 2020 14:43:24 GMT
I've been curious about this for a while. What's the best PC for retro emulators for say the PS1 and earlier?. And does the Windows 10 even run retro emulators?.
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Cervantes
Off-Brand Transformable Robot
A former Incompetent Evil Commander (XP: 2423)
Posts: 2,818
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Post by Cervantes on Jun 1, 2020 16:30:03 GMT
I've been curious about this for a while. What's the best PC for retro emulators for say the PS1 and earlier?. And does the Windows 10 even run retro emulators?. As the best emulators are the ones that are up to date, a Windows 10 PC is actually the best option in this case, since some emulators might even take advantage of things like DirectX12 and all the big current ones (the ones that have better accuracy and support modern controllers) are designed with Windows 10 in mind, so some of them are less compatible with Windows 7 or previous OSs. I was recently trying new emulators, like ReDream for the Dreamcast and Retroarch (and various of its cores) for everything else, including PS1, and they are highly optimized and very easy to use. I certainly recommend them - both recognize automatically Xbox controllers, have easy to understand menus and (depending on the cores used with Retroarch) are very accurate to the original systems. I've played Soul Reaver (Dreamcast) and Mega Man Legends 1&2, and I didn't notice any errors, they were very faithful. In any case, for 8/16-bit consoles there are emulators for just about anything - if your toaster has a screen, then there's probably an NES emulator for it, so i doesn't really matter what PC you are using. |
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Bogard
Night Raider
Posts: 584
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Post by Bogard on Jun 1, 2020 17:08:18 GMT
I've been curious about this for a while. What's the best PC for retro emulators for say the PS1 and earlier?. And does the Windows 10 even run retro emulators?. As the best emulators are the ones that are up to date, a Windows 10 PC is actually the best option in this case, since some emulators might even take advantage of things like DirectX12 and all the big current ones (the ones that have better accuracy and support modern controllers) are designed with Windows 10 in mind, so some of them are less compatible with Windows 7 or previous OSs. I was recently trying new emulators, like ReDream for the Dreamcast and Retroarch (and various of its cores) for everything else, including PS1, and they are highly optimized and very easy to use. I certainly recommend them - both recognize automatically Xbox controllers, have easy to understand menus and (depending on the cores used with Retroarch) are very accurate to the original systems. I've played Soul Reaver (Dreamcast) and Mega Man Legends 1&2, and I didn't notice any errors, they were very faithful. In any case, for 8/16-bit consoles there are emulators for just about anything - if your toaster has a screen, then there's probably an NES emulator for it, so i doesn't really matter what PC you are using. Oh sweet. Thanks Cervantes. Some times I'm on the look out for a PC just for emulation purposes but mostly find windows 10 and for pretty cheap as well but was worried if it was even good at running emulators because I'm aware that the system runs quite a bit differently to the previous models. But this is very reassuring. Then Windows 10 it is. |
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Cervantes
Off-Brand Transformable Robot
A former Incompetent Evil Commander (XP: 2423)
Posts: 2,818
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Post by Cervantes on Jun 1, 2020 22:52:19 GMT
Bogard - The limitation that you'll find with Windows 10 is if you want to play older pc games in their original releases, as was MeleeMonk's intention. The GOG/Steam releases of those games are usually patched to work with W10, but the original discs very often have compatibility problems. So, if you are looking for emulation, new games and older games on GOG/Steam, Windows 10 is great and you can go with it; for emulation, I even think W10 is the better choice. If you want to play older PC games, especially in their original releases like MeleeMonk, then 7 is more compatible.
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MeleeMonk
Cartoon Pony Wrangler
Part-time gamer, full-time environmentalist, and member of PAPO (People Against Palm Oil)
Posts: 3,651
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Post by MeleeMonk on Feb 16, 2021 2:52:35 GMT
 Regarding Far Cry, this is what the game looks like when you play it on an ordinary laptop with no dedicated GPU like I did. Most of my playthrough looked like this (all the outdoor levels, anyways). It was as frustrating to navigate as it looks. It made the second to last level (where you have to leap over rivers of lava) impossible to finish because I couldn't see the lava. That's the problem with games that extensively utilize pixel shaders; they only look right if your rig has a GPU. |
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Cervantes
Off-Brand Transformable Robot
A former Incompetent Evil Commander (XP: 2423)
Posts: 2,818
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Post by Cervantes on Feb 17, 2021 9:06:48 GMT
MeleeMonk - Haha, that's certainly a different look for the game!
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The Aspire series wasn't designed specially for gaming so they don't have a true graphics card like gaming laptops do, but mine gets the job done nicely.
