Back around 2020 or so I wanted to play old games because I only had an underpowered laptop that could barely play modern games.

One I downloaded off MyAbandonWare was this shooter from 2003 called Devastation. It’s alright, but more I played it when I was younger and always wondered what happened to it.

On my old laptop it always crashed on startup and I just couldn’t get it working. I could open the level editor and that was about it.

Recently I downloaded it again onto a new laptop I put Linux on and tried a few different configurations. I heard how WINE can be better than Windows for old software so I decided to give it a shot.

Eventually I used Bottles with a gaming configuration set to Windows Xp.

I tried Devastation with that setup and it worked. I still have an issue with the game being in the top left corner and not taking up the full screen, but it’s playable.

I have a top spec gaming PC now running Windows 10, but there are things this Thinkpad can do that my big PC can’t.

  • Malix@sopuli.xyz
    0·
    7 hours ago

    Wine is kinda magical. I really like this old 16bit Windows 3.x game “Castle of The Winds” (topdown, turn based, roguelike) which doesn’t run on any 64bit windows as is (though, you CAN, with https://github.com/otya128/winevdm, but iirc it was a bit finicky).

    Wine runs CoTW fine, seemingly.

    • eerongal@ttrpg.network
      0·
      6 hours ago

      windows can still play castle of the winds? i play it all the time. In fact, i just booted it up again a moment ago to make sure it didnt break recently or something. I dont remember ever having any issues playing it, and ive played it off and on for decades. In fact, googling real quick, it looks like my abandonware even has a “easy installer” for it.

    • thingsiplay@beehaw.org
      0·
      6 hours ago

      I didn’t know WINE could do that and play Win3x games! For anything Windows 3.x and DOS related games, I would have used DOSBox emulator. I use it for DOS and even Win98 games, and have to setup it for Win3x yet.

      Sidenote: BTW I have looked what the game Castle of the Winds is about. Man its from Epic. This company was such a cool company back then.

      • Malix@sopuli.xyz
        0·
        6 hours ago

        TBH, I kinda do prefer to run the game on Win 3.1 I have installed in my dosbox (and neatly transport the whole “C:” around my systems with Dropbox sync :D), as the UI of CoTW gets kinda too small without pixel doubling/tripling - and afaik that’s one thing Wine doesn’t do.

        Sidenote: BTW I have looked what the game Castle of the Winds is about. Man its from Epic. This company was such a cool company back then.

        published by Epic, but not developed by them. Anyhoo, they were cool once upon a time. :)