Is Vista going to kill the art of "Retro-gaming"?

Malachi1975

As the titles implies, I am curious.

    For those of you not familiar with the term, "Retro-gaming" simply means exactly what it sounds like; playing older games. Let's say you get the urge to bust out your old Half-life 1 discs and give it all a go again, perhaps you miss playing Dungeon Keepeer II so you give it a whirl. Whatever game you may be craving, it's the same. I can thinking of several games dating back to 1997 or so that I still enjoy playing. However, is Vista on friendly terms with "retro-gaming"? It's starting to look like the answer may be a resounding no.

    Okay, so any of us who have been gaming on our PCs for any decent amount of time have encountered backwards compatibility (BC) issues. We can remember the days when we could no longer play our favourite DOS games like X-com or Syndicate Wars. Generally, though, these compatibility issues came around with either a completely new OS system (ie- DOS to Win 3.11 gave us the GUI) or they occur over a good deal of time. Surely I can understand why I have issues playing Total Annihilation on Vista, it's 10 years old. Nonetheless, I am seeing a growing trend with Vista that it has many more BC issues than Win98 or XP did. Running Vista with a DX10 video card I have had issues running Total Annihilation, Diablo II, Homeworld 2, Emporer: Battle for Dun, and a few others. Generally, it's either a DirectX dll issue or an issue with the overly Draconian DEP (Data Execution Prevention) tool in Vista.

    Now, when it comes to games I have owned for nearly a decade I can turn the cheek and look away a bit, but when it comes to games like Battlefield 2 that is a whole other story. At first I was wondering if I was the only person having these issues with BF2 until I did some research and saw an alarming number of reports where people where having the same issue I saw; start the program, get the splash screen. fade to black, welcome back to your desktop. After fiddling around with the program a bit I came to find that Vista was having a problem with the rendDX9.dll. I figured I would give it a go and install DX9c on the computer. Oddly enough, DX9 and DX10 can be installed on the same machine as they are wholly difference beasts and one does not overright the other. No go, the game still crashed. This is a problem people are facing with BF2142 as well. There have also been several reports of problems with Vista and Lord of the Rings Online, Halo 1, Doom 3, and earlier Counter Strike.

    Now, at first I would want to lay blame on my BF woes squarly on EA's poorly structured shoulders. Let's all recall how many problems BF2 had wen it first came out and how many of them were still around up and until patch 1.3. However, if other games from other developers are having problems then the common variable in that equation starts to become Vista. Again, while I can understand games that are several years old having problems with Vista I am a bt diconcerted when more recent games get the micro-Shaft.

     With this growing trend, and no sign of a real update to Vista's compatibility, I am starting to wonder if Vista is going to kill the art of "Retro-gaming" altogether. I am even more concerned when it is more recent titles having issues. Should we really be forced to wait for MS to rectify these problems while we sit on games that were purchased none too long ago? Compound this fact with the press information that a "new" OS from MS will hit Q4 2009 and I am really starting to wonder what Microsoft is thinking (other than the obvious pocket padding techniques).

    Right now it seems that DX10 is the only good thing going for Vista. Is that enough to really justify the upgrade knowing you may lose access to some of your hardware and software? With Alky Porject working on a DX10 port to XP should anyone really bother updating? Vista might be fine for someone just buying their first computer and someone who is just beginning ther gaming hobby, but what about the veterans?

    Just a little food for thought I guess (and a minor vent of my frustrations with Microsoft yet again).

   

n25philly

All my old games play on Vista without a problem.  Many of them enhanced because of better resolutions and being able to now use widescreen resolutions.

Malachi1975

 

Originally posted by n25philly


All my old games play on Vista without a problem.  Many of them enhanced because of better resolutions and being able to now use widescreen resolutions.

   

 

    Are you playing with a DX10 Video Card as well or only using Vista and DX10? Also, I can't imagine ALL of your old games are giving you better resolutions and widescreen resolutions as many older games didn't have widescreen supports and/or had resolution caps. Retro back to Starcraft and you will find that 680x400 and 800x600 resolutions to choose from base. Going to something not quite as old, Gun had no true widescreen resolutions out of the box.

    I suppose it's a matter of how "old" your old games are. However, Battlefield 2 and 2142 are newer and you can search their respoective forums and communities and see that a plethora of people are having issues.

 EDIT- Now that I thought about it, how is Vista changing the resolution for your games? That's part of their program, not the OS. Unless you changed monitors as well...

n25philly

Originally posted by Malachi1975


 
Originally posted by n25philly


All my old games play on Vista without a problem.  Many of them enhanced because of better resolutions and being able to now use widescreen resolutions.

   

 

    Are you playing with a DX10 Video Card as well or only using Vista and DX10? Also, I can't imagine ALL of your old games are giving you better resolutions and widescreen resolutions as many older games didn't have widescreen supports and/or had resolution caps. Retro back to Starcraft and you will find that 680x400 and 800x600 resolutions to choose from base. Going to something not quite as old, Gun had no true widescreen resolutions out of the box.

    I suppose it's a matter of how "old" your old games are. However, Battlefield 2 and 2142 are newer and you can search their respoective forums and communities and see that a plethora of people are having issues.

 EDIT- Now that I thought about it, how is Vista changing the resolution for your games? That's part of their program, not the OS. Unless you changed monitors as well...

I really don't know how it does it.  I go into options for games like alpha centauri and the widescreen resolutions are there.  I'm not saying that all old games run perfectly, I just haven't run into any that have posed any problems yet. 

Pr0ph37

There are issues with this kind of stuff and not just in gaming.

There've been articles in the news about information storage not being able to keep up with the constant format changes and Microsoft being appauling at reverse compatibility doesn't help.

One hope for retro gaming is the grown of browser based stuff.

I'm increasingly finding loads of classic games on there, that and fans creating emulators. This might be the answer.

Malachi1975

It's really funny that you mention browser based games. As of late I've actually been finding REALLY old games that I used to play on my Amiga and Commodore (ie- Wings of Fury and Leather Goddesses of Phobos are two)

I didn't mention all the flash drive problems that people have been having with Vista. I remember the birth pains from Win3.11 to 95, but they seem to pail in comparison to the issues we're dealing with brought about by Vista. I'm running several OSs in my household network and it's just insane the compatibility issues Vista has.