🚀 go-pugleaf

<tim.ma...@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:8f8f667f-eca1-482b-b372-9978bf390cba@googlegroups.com...
I have the original disk of the game I found in one of my father's old 
programming books. I am eager to try it out (I have never played any 
warcraft games in my life, was going to mark this as my first.), however 
whenever I open the game from DOS, the screen just shows a bunch of crash 
results. The disk is somewhat beat up a bit, but only one scratch. What do I 
do?

She (probably) no can take it Mon Kapitain , or you can try and jump through 
a lot of hoops to maybe get it working.
A lot of older games have clocking, memory and video problems with newer PCs
   it is running on a machine 1000 times faster, usually a bucket load of 
things happen in the wrong timing order, or the memory management is just 
not supported
And just to clarify that World of Warcraft=WOW=war-crack is the online game 
based on the Warcraft stand-alone games.
If you want WOW you can play the first 20 levels free, but no auction house 
or trading,
    (gratuitous car analogy) it has no windscreen, only 3 tyres, and only 
first gear
just download from Blizzard
and kiss your life away
https://us.battle.net/account/creation/wow/signup/
there are different servers for US and EU
[ this may be redundant information, but better too much than not enough ]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-11-10-want-to-play-the-old-warcraft-rts-games-on-a-modern-computer
We're fans of Warcraft 1, Warcraft 2 and Warcraft 3, and we'd love to replay 
those games for sure."

Warcraft: Orcs & Humans launched in November 1994 on PC, and launched the 
universe that eventually spawned the World of Warcraft MMO. Warcraft 2: 
Tides of Darkness launched a year later in December 1995, again on PC. These 
games are available to play on modern PCs, but require nifty workarounds.

Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos (July 2002) and its expansion The Frozen Throne 
(July 2003) are available to buy and do work on modern PCs.

Am 17.11.2013 03:41, schrieb tim.ma...@gmail.com:
> I have the original disk of the game I found in one of my father's old programming books. I am eager to try it out (I have never played any warcraft games in my life, was going to mark this as my first.), however whenever I open the game from DOS, the screen just shows a bunch of crash results. The disk is somewhat beat up a bit, but only one scratch. What do I do?

You probably need DOSBOX to get an old DOS game to run on a nowadays 
operating system.
http://www.dosbox.com/

"Michael" <Conjure...@t-online.de> wrote in message 
news:l69vjc$c6h$1@tota-refugium.de...
> Am 17.11.2013 03:41, schrieb tim.ma...@gmail.com:
>> I have the original disk of the game I found in one of my father's old 
>> programming books. I am eager to try it out (I have never played any 
>> warcraft games in my life, was going to mark this as my first.), however 
>> whenever I open the game from DOS, the screen just shows a bunch of crash 
>> results. The disk is somewhat beat up a bit, but only one scratch. What 
>> do I do?
>
> You probably need DOSBOX to get an old DOS game to run on a nowadays 
> operating system.
> http://www.dosbox.com/

But if they haven't played before it probably isn't worth the effort.

[ in general for 20 year old games  you once played ]
It used to run in probably 320x240 , maybe 640x480, maybe on a high end $500 
14 inch, on a 33 MHz pc with a 80 Megabyte drive and 2M of memory   and it 
was magnificent , compared to anything else that was around.

in your memory   The game is 7680x4320 100hz  64 bit with glowing golden 
pixels
                              well worth the $3000 a decent PC cost back 
then to run it ($7500 in todays money)
the reality             gremlins must have erased it and substituted this 
chunky scratchy clunky 8/16 bit dreck


The whole point of the graphics is to distract you until the mind control 
locks in, then it could just as well be alpha text and stick figures. So 
what will todays killer game and graphics on $3000 hardware look like in 
20years? :-) 

On 17/11/2013 8:45 PM, | || ||| ||||| || | wrote:
> "Michael" <Conjure...@t-online.de> wrote in message
> news:l69vjc$c6h$1@tota-refugium.de...
>> Am 17.11.2013 03:41, schrieb tim.ma...@gmail.com:

>> You probably need DOSBOX to get an old DOS game to run on a nowadays
>> operating system.
>> http://www.dosbox.com/
>
> But if they haven't played before it probably isn't worth the effort.
>
> [ in general for 20 year old games  you once played ]
> It used to run in probably 320x240 , maybe 640x480, maybe on a high end $500
> 14 inch, on a 33 MHz pc with a 80 Megabyte drive and 2M of memory   and it
> was magnificent , compared to anything else that was around.
>
> in your memory   The game is 7680x4320 100hz  64 bit with glowing golden
> pixels
>                                well worth the $3000 a decent PC cost back
> then to run it ($7500 in todays money)
> the reality             gremlins must have erased it and substituted this
> chunky scratchy clunky 8/16 bit dreck
>
>
> The whole point of the graphics is to distract you until the mind control
> locks in, then it could just as well be alpha text and stick figures. So
> what will todays killer game and graphics on $3000 hardware look like in
> 20years? :-)

Cleaning out the junk I found some old games
Dune, WCI and III, civ, dungeonkeeper
and gave DOSBOX a try
it really is very good
with some tweaks a lot of these old favourites kinda worked.
By the time of WC2 it even had some self setting of soundcards.

Usually tuning so as not to fly off the map in 0.01ms was the major 
problem , sometimes sound , sometimes mouse but mostly they were 
workable and DOSBOX works fine on win 64bit.

Many had checks and the manuals long ago turned to mouse nests but a bit 
of google turned up old prints and cracks.

If you hanker after the old stuff you -could- give it a go
BUT
unfortunately...apart from Hack which still runs in win64 anyway they 
really are nothing like the memory
In fact most are really pretty dreadful
It isn't the graphics, it is that mostly they are just so unergonomic
click to select, click to move, minimal options, groups,waypoints,
they are pretty much straight down the rails
a zerg, a build, a case of RSI

Your memories do the games the justice they deserve for the service they 
gave at the time. Trying them now puts them hopelessly out of context.
If you must then DOSBOX is useful if a bit tweaky, then again the games 
used to be very tweaky on many systems anyway.

In the meantime I have been enjoying hack, at the moment I play it more 
than Planetside 2, at least I last more than a minute and for all the 
graphics it makes just as much sense :-)
2.5MB vs 12.5GB
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetHack

There really hasn't been that much change apart from the graphics, and a 
bit more ergonomic. The bags are still too tiny, but at least Hack 
simulated slowing down if you tried to carry a horse in your backpack :-)