Help: New PC to play old games & DOSbox perf. discussion

[Bon.Scott]

Hi gang,

Help needed from a newbie!

I'm planning on buying a new PC to run some old games (namely Dungeon Master(s), Bulder's Gate, Might and Magic, Icewind Dale, etc.) and also use as a media center.

Is there anything i need to take into consideration with the PC specs? Will i be able to run these games on a new machine? After doing some research majority of these games seem to run OK on XP, is the operating system my only concern? Or can a machine by over spec'd for some of the golden oldies?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Bon
Ps. Any other games you can recommend that I might enjoy please sing out!

Edit - Thought i'd update the title incase the Dosbox discussion was of interest to others!

[beowuuf]

There are programs like DOSbox that allows the games to run. Look to the DMII forum for links. Not sure of the state of this programme, but any new machine should run it fine. I'm not sure how DOSbox handles sound. It might be you need to buy an old sound card from somewhere - so your computer would need a PCI slot.

I'm not sure how good Win 7's compatibility mode is, I assume it should handle anything that worked under XP fine.

Oh, there is a 'games like DM' forum at the very bottom for some hints. I think Eye of the Beholder and Knightmare were two DM-likes missing from your list


Welcome to the forums btw!

[Ameena]

Hey, welcome .
From the games you've listed, DM can be run from one of the clones (CSBWin, RTC, etc), DM2 runs fine in DOSbox (I've played it myself), dunno about Might and Magic since it depends which one you mean - I've played VI just fine on this computer (Vista) but if you mean the original I've never even seen that so I dunno - DOSbox again, maybe, if it's really old? Icewind Dale should run fine - I've had that up fine on this computer. Dunno about Baldur's Gate but I think that should run okay too - I think my dad was playing it on his computer (also Vista) not so long ago. DOSbox is definitely an emulator worth downloading (it's free in case you're not familiar with it) to play old games - I've played stuff like Llamatron, Frontier, Lost Eden and of course DM2 on it with no problems. The only one I couldn't quite get to work was the original LBA, which kept crashing after the intro logos had come up .
Another emulator that's good is one called SCUMM VM, I think, which is for running those old point-and-click adventures - I played Day of the Tentacle on it, as well as both the Simon the Sorcerer games.
I think the best thing you can try for now would be to try playing some of these games on your current computer (from the sounds of it you have one, anyway), either by themselves or through one of the aforementioned emulators or by some other method, and if they don't work maybe then consider trying something else. Maybe you can mention specific games here if you're having trouble getting them to run, and some of us may know solutions to get them to work .

[Jan]

Hello, Bon, and welcome!

I would recommend playing the Ultima series (it will take you some time if you start with Ultima I, lol). If you're a fan of old games, I mean very old games, you must play the original Zork series (Zork I to III, text-based adventures, fascinating gameplay), then of course Fallout I and II, and don't forget all the adventures done by Ron Gilbert for LucasArts/Games, like Monkey Island, etc. Then, of course, there are dozens of excellent "Quest" adventures made by Roberta Williams for Sierra (like Space Quest, Police Quest, King's Quest, Hero's Quest, etc.). And Dune I was my favourite game too.

Hey, thinking about it, there are hundreds of fantastic old games, you must specify your request, or we'll flood you with games' names!

Most of these games can be played through DOSBox, as others said, or with SCUMM VM (adventures), or even directly from XP. You must try it. Check http://www.abandonia.com/ for details.

[sucinum]

You need mainly a really good CPU, because that's what is most needed by media players and also by DOSBox. My good old P4 for example is too slow to properly emulate Lands of Lore in DOSBox. That would be a AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE or an Intel Core i7.

If you don't have any modern game you really want to play, you can buy some cheap GPU (Radeon 5770 or such) and replace it, once you change your mind. Also 4 GB RAM will suffice, unless you want to edit videos or stuff. You can also easily upgrade lateron.

[Bon.Scott]

Hi,

Firstly thanks for the welcome(s)

Ultima, Eye of the Beholder, Monkey Island, ah there's some memories thanks for the heads up on the others I haven't played as well!

Regarding the machinery, my original idea has been vetoed by the Mrs, so i'm now looking at 'living room' friendly PC's (amateur i know)!

Do you think the Acer Aspire Revo R3610
http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/12427273/ ... :Computers

Would handle the aforementioned games? And/or does it have enough juice to run dosbox? I'm guessing it would but just to be on the safe side!

Thanks again

Bon

[Trantor]

Welcome to the forums! I'm no computer expert (anymore...), but I am pretty sure the machine you listed is very capable of running Dosbox.

As for old games from "back in the day", there are way too many to list them all. Just some names that haven't been written down yet: Bane of the Cosmic Forge (aka Wizardry 6), Pool of Radiance and other AD&D games, Amberstar, Wasteland.

I'm glad that Jan mentioned Zork. There are some other text adventures made by Infocom that I like even more, mainly The Lurking Horror and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (if you like the book by Douglas Adams, you will love the game, it is even funnier in parts!).

[sucinum]

To be honest, i doubt that will be comparable. While the other stuff suffices for older games, the CPU is really weak. It's ok if you can play the games directly, but might be too slow for emulating.

[Ameena]

Does DOSbox really need a lot of computer power to run it then? You know you can increase the speed of it, right? Most games I try to run tend to be very slow and jerky but I press errm I think it's Control+F11 six times and that ups the speed to where it's smooth and perfectly playable. I didn't have any troble on the old compute either, but I dunno what sort that was. It has Windows ME and we've had it since about 2000/2001. I played DM2 and Frontier and Populous II and stuff on there no problem .

[sucinum]

I know that, but emulating a faster DOS-machine eats up CPU power like nothing. Lands of Lore for example needs a 486 with 40-50 Mhz to run smooth and properly and i wasn't able to emulate such a "fast" CPU with my P4 (3200 Mhz -.-). Even with frameskips I had lagging sound. And the CPU in the Acer Inspire (see above) is even slower, especially since DOSBox will use only one core. Many classic games have far lower requirements though, Eye of the Beholder will run on 386 which you can emulate easily.

The Intel Atom has other strenghts, especially a very low power consumption (like 10% of a real CPU), but it lacks in raw power. A lot.

There is of course still the option to set up a real DOS, but you need some ancient drivers for sound card and mouse (and compatible hardware) and have to fiddle with autoexec.bat and stuff.

[Gambit37]

Lands of Lore for example needs a 486 with 40-50 Mhz to run smooth and properly and i wasn't able to emulate such a "fast" CPU with my P4 (3200 Mhz -.-). Even with frameskips I had lagging sound.

Are you sure you have it setup right? I can play LofL perfectly well with no sound problems on my PC which is getting on for 8 years old! And it's nowhere near the power of a P4!

[ian_scho]

In DOSBOX you can increase the CPU cycles... (CTRL F11/F12 increases/decreases the CPU cycle).

[Ameena]

Yeah that's what I do - plenty of games run slowly (Frontier, Pagan, Populous...actually maybe they all do, I can't remember) for me on DOSbox, but pressing Control+F11 six times is enough to bump up the speed to what it needs to be. You can increase both the speed and the frameskip with different controls - it's explained in the ReadMe I think, or in the FAQ on the website...or maybe both, I forget now - it's been a while since I installed DOSbox and I've not played it for a while. But I do still need to each the highest promotion and Elite rating on Frontier so I'm sure I'll get back to that at some point. Plus it's fun to get zillions of enemy ships to spawn by flying close to a secret base and then watch all the fireworks when I use my Energy Bomb

[sucinum]

Are you sure you have it setup right? I can play LofL perfectly well with no sound problems on my PC which is getting on for 8 years old! And it's nowhere near the power of a P4!

Actually not, but this has a lot of obscure settings in the .ini I don't have any clue about. Especially the first part, [sdl], is a complete riddle for me.
At about 15000 CPU cycles my CPU is at the limit, if I increase that further, nothing else happens and I even get overheat warnings. Surely possible that I emulate too much useless stuff which drains performance, but I tried a lot without success. Possibly it's something i set up in windows or some piece of hardware (maybe my X-Fi)...

Oh and if your CPU has 2 Ghz or more (I had an Athlon XP 2400+ before 8 years ), it still emulates faster than the mentioned Intel Atom.

[Lunever]

According to the authors, current state of the art machines will emulate a 486 fluently. For a game like dungeon master this is absolutely sufficient, for later games this proves difficult. DosBox offers soundblaster 16 sound, and several other old sound cards too, so having sound and midi usually isn't a problem anymore. The current version also seems to get various screen resolutions handled well. Still, I wish I found a way of getting dungeon master sound without dosbox.

[RobH]

Anyone else use D-Fend Reloaded as a DOSBOX front end? It makes configuration easier.

http://dfendreloaded.sourceforge.net/

[Bit]

Oh, I could kiss them - my notebook won't launch old pieces of the DJGPP-compiler-system, because it says that fullscreen mode is not available. DOSbox makes it - the RHIDE runs.
If I want to make a quick program, I still prefer this compiler and this shell, because any adjustment is made in seconds, when I have to run through the menues of MSVC again and again. And - I do love the old MS-DOS font.