A thread for anything and everything x86 gaming and x86 gaming related. Hardware, software, configuration, it all goes here. Real or emulated. CP/M, DOS, Windows 3.x, 9x, NT, 2000, ME, XP, etc. Talk about what you are playing, what hardware you have, tricks you've figured out, etc.Was digging through Windows games prior to the year 2000 on abandonware, saw a lot of JP and Russian games. Pic related caught my eye and I gave it a download. Works just fine on Windows 98SE, doesn't need JP locale installed or anything. Called Black Magic. On the main menu I saw the Ghost In The Shell guy's name on it, so I think it might be connected to Black Magic M-88. Seems to be a good and autistic mech TBS game so far, but I'll see how it goes.Useful Links:WinWorldPC - A large library of OS's and software for x86 hardware, including every revision of DOS and Windows 1.x-3.x. Also has a lot of software for both, as well as serials for just about everything available for download.>https://winworldpc.com/homePhil's Computer Lab - Some guy's blog that has a lot of downloads for drivers and useful software and tools for DOS machines.>https://www.philscomputerlab.com/Hiren's Useful DOS Files - Hiren of Hiren's Boot Disc fame has a collection of useful DOS drivers and tools on his website along with the DEVICE strings needed to make the drivers function so you don't have to dig around for a readme. Includes just about every major CD-ROM driver and various USB drivers for making USB 1.0, 1.1, and even USB 2.0 flash drives work with DOS.>https://www.hiren.info/downloads/dos-filesSimTelNet FTP Archive - XBOX Heug archive of DOS, Win3.1, WinNT, Win9x, and WinXP files, programs, freeware, shareware, and stuff you just can't find anywhere else. Also has a lot of junk from the era, so you'll have to dig to find anything good. Check the index.txt files for descriptions of what the files are.>https://ftp.sunet.se/mirror/archive/ftp.sunet.se/pub/simtelnet/
>>12865971Useful Links pt 2:MDGX - A 90's style site full of info about configuring DOS/Win9x and lots of downloads and links. The design is sadly the worst of the 90's style, and lots of links are long dead, but plenty of good info and programs.>https://www.mdgx.comMultiboot Guide - Guide to making a bunch of OS's boot and run off of the same HDD using hidden partitions and a boot manager.>https://www.goodells.net/multiboot/Windows Update Restored - A mostly complete restoration of the old Windows Update websites/services that existed for Windows 95-XP.>https://www.windowsupdaterestored.com/Windows Quick Install project - A linux-based installer to quickly put Windows 98SE or Windows ME on a machine with a bunch of updates and drivers.>https://github.com/oerg866/win98-quickinstallTotal DOS Collection - Useful for 86Box, PCem, and real hardware. They try to get every single revision and patch and expansion that exists. The most recent set on the Internet Archive is uploaded by GGG in parts. Not sure of the exact version he uploaded, but it was put up around 2023 so it's far more recent than the version 13 or 14 that comes up on google.>https://archive.org/details/@ggg_ggg894eXoDOS - Useful for DOSBox. Tries to get the final release of every game working under DOSBox flawlessly. Comes with games pre-setup with config files for DOSBox to make them run as well as possible. They have torrents on their official website.>https://www.retro-exo.com/exodos.htmleXoWin9x Vol 1 - Like eXoDOS, but for Win9x. Vol 1 covers games from 1994-1996, so you get a lot of Win3.x releases in there as well, that would run under Win9x. Uses a combo of DOSBox and 86Box unlike eXoDOS, depending on the game.>https://www.retro-exo.com/win9x.html
i love 86box so much. sometimes i'll just boot it up and not even play anything and just think how cool it is to be able to emulate windows 98.
I can't decide if I enjoy Civil War Generals 2 or not.While I do greatly enjoy the combat system and how positioning and gang-banging an enemy group is good strategy, I really dislike how putting a group of soldiers behind the frontline and having them rest causes hundreds of soldiers to magically join the group. Unless you hunt down an enemy unit to extinction, or surround them enough so when you take their hex they are forced to surrender, the AI will just park them and regen them to full power. Knocked an incoming infantry force of 4,000 down to 500 by nailing them with artillery, the AI just sat them back then nightfall happened the next turn so they got 3 free healing turns. By sun-up, they were back up to 4,000 strong and now sitting right on top of my artillery.The control point system can be a pain as well.>smash entire enemy side, all their forces are in full retreat>after battle report shows my side as having a minor defeat, since my units didn't touch the magic point locations quick enough to offset the fact the AI started with 9 out of 12>even though I had far less casualties, wounded, and captured a lot more supplyThe representations of the battles also leave a bit to be desired. Decided to try Bull Run, to see what would happen if the Union didn't wait for the Confederacy to send in a bunch of reinforcements first. Rebels had more troops in the field at the start of the battle than the Union side, so you're already outnumbered before the reinforcements arrive. Once they arrive, the north is horribly outnumbered, despite the real battle ended up having an equal number of troops fielded. They wanted to push the south winning that battle so hard they threw historical accuracy in the trash.I did just play 3 hours straight. So fun yet frustrating for all the wrong reasons.
>>12865997Crazy how many new features are getting added every year too
Progress on the next Windows games pack is slow, but steady. While painstaking, I've decided to leave nothing to chance and just reinstall everything from scratch. As can be seen from the screenshot, I'm going with an entirely different build, and so far the going's good. This machine is capable of using Pentium II, Celeron, and Cyrix III CPUs, from as low as 66 MHz all the way up to 700 MHz (though only the Cyrix CPU goes that high - the Mendocino Celeron goes up to 533, and the Deschutes Pentium II tops out at 450). My PC can just barely handle 133 MHz, though its sweet spot is probably 100 MHz.I also shifted toward the baseline Voodoo 3 1000 instead of the Banshee, as not only is it a bit faster and likely doesn't lose out on any compatibility, but the same drivers will likely also work on the faster Voodoo 3 models if you wish to use those instead. I went with the PCI variant, as from what I understand there's no real advantage to using the AGP version, and in fact may slow things down.And, as you'll notice, I have indeed gone with a separate partition for installing most applications and games, so as to keep the main Windows installation lean and pure. This has so far been a good idea, as Windows still boots really fast even at low CPU frequencies, with nothing weighing it down, and it makes managing game installations easier than before for me.
>>12866235Oh, and by the way, you'll notice the shell looks closer to the standard Windows 98 one, rather than the stripped-down one from Windows 95 that was used on the previous packs. After extensive testing, I've determined using the middle-of-the-road "chubby" Windows 98 shell, which still strips out the Internet Explorer integration and Active Desktop shit, has very little noticeable impact in performance, and not only does it look nicer, but it bestows some nice functionality and QoL as well, so I decided to go with it for this next pack (the full Windows 98 shell, by comparison, does result in a noticeable impact to performance). The only bad thing about it, unfortunately, is that wallpaper selection is still as limited as it was on Windows 95, meaning you can only select .bmp files as wallpapers, and the Display properties only gives you the options to Tile or Center, not Stretch. Now, it IS possible to Stretch, but it requires going into the registry for it, as far as I can tell. Plus! themes don't seem to have this limitation for some reason, however.
>no link to previous thread
>>12865997>>12866194Development has ramped up over the last few months, too. They just got ATI Rage emulation, which is pretty cool, even if most people will likely still stick to Voodoo cards. The big one will be Riva TNT emulation, I think, but I'm supposing that's still a ways off, since Nvidia, as always, has kept its inner workings under wraps, so the whole thing has to be reverse-engineered from scratch. I understand the PCBox fork has made some strides, however.
OP here, can't post from my computer, apparently my ISP has been range banned for abuse? Not gonna waste my time trying to hunt down a mod on irc so I can play mommy may I, so I guess I'll see you folks next thread, whenever the range ban is lifted. First time posting from a phone, how do people stand this shit?
86 box really has developed nicely. I remember last time I played around with it, I decided my real computer was just about suitable to emulate no more than a pentium 133 and win95. But playing with it again recently I could probably get away upgrading to a ~300 cpu and win98, i think.
Is there ANY possible way to play old DOS games with modern game controllers? There's a bunch of DOS platformers I want to play but using keyboard for those kinds of games is pure cancer. Or are you just limited to what drivers you can get from peripherals that were around at the time?
>>12866968>modern game controllersDOSBox Pure/Pure Unleashed. Those were made specifically for playing with gaypads (though you can still use the keyboard and mouse).
>>12866968I know dosbox staging has key rebinding with controller support. There's also joy2key, xpadder, steaminput. You could even use retroarch. I mean, I want to be helpful but that was a borderline stupid question that's asking for the kind of spoon feeding that's a red flag for your ability to handle retro pc gaming at all.
>>12866891There was a nasty issue with the dynarec, inherited from PCem, where certain disk I/O access operations resulted in frequent slowdowns while doing shit as simple as opening a Windows Explorer window. That issue finally got fixed just the other month, making using and navigating Windows feel nicer than ever.
>>12867027>stop talking about DOS gaming in the DOS gaming thread!faggots like you need a severe beating
>>12867105What the fuck are you talking about
>>12867173It's either a moron or a ragebaiting bot. I can no longer tell these days.
Anyone here know anything about using utilities like Fastvid to boost VGA performance in DOS? I've been reading about it, and supposedly it makes DOS games (especially late ones using hi-res graphics) perform a lot better, but it requires a Pentium Pro or higher. Has anyone tried it?
>>12867314Yes, yes (you) are.
>>12867673Yes it works, although I tend to play those later games within windows 98 anyway which already enables write combining etc.
>>12866843I look forward to the day when 86box supports all the old proprietary 3D API's. I know VooDoo is the big player and most games supported it if any 3D API, but it would be nice to be able to play around with the other 3D API's on a game-to-game basis.
>>12868117Probably the most interesting would be Nvidia's NV1 card, which IIRC renders using quads, similar to the Saturn, and had a few Saturn game ports supporting it.
>>12866843>Development has ramped up over the last few monthsPic related is whyThis is the lead dev by the way
Do you make batch file menus to launch your games? I've been on a DOS gaming kick recently, more than usual, so I wanted a quick way to launch games. Used to use D-Fend Reloaded years ago or just start games from the command line, but the GUI no longer works with Staging.Been working on this menu for a week or so now. While working on it I found out that you can actually navigate these choice command menus with arrow keys and some others>Insert R>Home G>Page Up I>Delete S>End O>Page Down Q>Up H>Left K>Down P>Right MTried to find info on this on the Internet but it doesn't seem to be common knowledge, or perhaps it's a quirk of DOSBox. Either way, you need to use the /s switch on the choice command to enable this. The arrow keys output capital letters so with /s you can use the other keys to choose games. What this allows me to do is a menu with multiple pages and a "setup mode" so I can quickly load the setup or install exe to change sound or control options, all by simply using the arrow keys.It's a surprisingly good system for managing games as many games need custom options. The batch file can load these changes on the fly and I can have all the configuration in one place for all games, along with comments on why I chose certain options.Just offering some inspiration and tips if you want to make something similar.
>>12869062They appear to be using it wisely, then, as a tool to facilitate and accelerate development, as it should be. I see no qualms with this, so long as the code remains open to testing and review before getting pushed.
>>12869065That's pretty good, anon. I myself have been mostly using LaunchBox for MS-DOS, which I like because it makes adding games easy, and it also gives you quick and easy access to the games' config/setup utility. You can also sort games by genre, year, etc, but I haven't bothered to fill in the information to make use of that. Screenshot's not mine, but it's what it looks like.
>>12866187I still haven't cracked Bull Run yet, but I did just have one hell of a successful battle at Fredericksburg.Moved all my cavalry up north while creating an artillery line in and around the city, and had most of my troops dig in. Managed to bait the rebels into attacking into the artillery, then pushed in once their numbers were weakened. Swung the cavalry south across the battle-lines and started picking off Confederate artillery which was mostly undefended. Worked well enough to break the defensive line near the city, and I rushed everyone to the wall. Managed to pinch off nearly half of the Confederate army units against the wall and crushed them into dust. Then I turned my full attention against the remainder in the south until I ran out of turns. Didn't lose any units, only some leaders and they are interchangeable so why do I care.Lost about 15,000 in deaths and wounded VS the AI losing 70,000. Think I'm ready to take on the campaign.
>>12869897Ok, I'm starting to be convinced that the game is programmed to make the Confederacy win Bull Run no matter what you throw at it.>charge 2500 people at 700 on any other map>they break and run>charge 2500 people at 350 on Bull Run>they hold their ground and kill one of my leaders, somehow wiping out 1250 people and only losing 75There is RNG, then there is absolute bullshit. It's to the point I'm starting to think the best possible strategy at Bull Run as the Union is to just stay away from the southern army and camp out to maximum force, then avoid the enemy until time runs out. You'll suffer a loss due to control points, but at least you won't get slaughtered by the CPU demanding you lose.
>>12869062oh... well that's disappointing. guess I'm going back to dosbox pure unleashed
>>12869065>Do you make batch file menus to launch your games?I wish I could do that on Linux. Steam doesn't let you make shortcuts to alternate launch options and sometimes games with DLCs launch them that way and it sucks that I have to go into the game's properties in order to switch. I recently found out how to make the launch options redirect the executable so if I was able to make a selection box then I could have it do that instead.>>12866968honestly I just use steam input with Dosbox pure unleashed. been working great on my steam deck.
>>12866843
>>12871263Damn, those are the models just before the first Radeon, right? This would, in theory, make the Fury MAXX the new most powerful card supported by 86Box, unless I'm mistaken.
>>12871236I bet you could make a selection menu inside dosbox itself. Batch scripts are based on old school dos commands, right? Just treat the autoexec at the end of dosbox.conf as a mini .bat . It might not be appropriate for a large amount of unrelated games, but could work well for the mechwarrior 2 trilogy for example.
>>12871414The /vr/ DOS Pack, which you can find on every Doom Thread OP, does something like that, actually.
>>12866286Previous thread:>>12824756Decided I want my 4th CF card to be Win98SE Japanese language edition-DOS/V. Next day I get off I'm going to see about using an old IDE HDD to install the JP language version of Win98SE. CF cards don't seem to play nice with the HDD-install method when installing to the same CF card the source files come from, but using the CF card as the source to install to a HDD should work fine. Then I can use some partition managing magic to move the OS over to the CF card it will live on. Found a Win9x .iso for Hylide 1-3 that has what appears to be the original versions and some 16-bit style remakes, but it only works properly in JP language, so the fun begins.Black Magic is cool so far, but the interface is a pain. Left click to do just about everything, and it's real-time. You give an order to move, and you watch your unit move while you can give orders to other units while enemy units walk around. Only when bringing up the order menu or the right-click system menu does the game pause the action. It makes trying to move your team around and fight somewhat complicated. Also I couldn't figure out any way of using your weapons on your hardpoints, thankfully you can use the Exchange command to shuffle your gear around. Missions appear to be loooong. I just killed about 20 soldiers and my team still hasn't taken down all enemies outside of the warehouse on the starting mission, much less inside the warehouse or the boss mech. One neat feature is you can go with light equipment and use the spare weight capacity to armor up your mechs, which is effectively giving your troops more health. You can bring the grenades and repair kits, or give your mech twice as much health/armor.
>>12871236>>12871414Yeah, it runs inside DOSBox. DOSBox provides a set of basic DOS commands (echo, choice, if, goto, and some others) which are enough to make a menu.
>>12871232If it means anything. PCem is still being worked on, very slowly though as the current maintainer (who as far as I know is not a mentally ill man in a dress, but possibly just a regular mentally ill man) has an actual job as well having to maintain an Xbox emulator on top of that.
>>12871232>>12872525I get the concern, but what exactly is the problem here? It's not like they're entirely vibecoding pull requests and committing them willy-nilly. They still review them, check the code to make sure it conforms to their standards, and test before committing.
In fact, this PR here will be the one to watch and will serve as a test to see what they do and where they stand:https://github.com/86Box/86Box/pull/8281It's pretty much entirely vibecoded from the looks of it, and the guy whose original code it was based on has come out and outright stated the PR is garbage. If they commit it as is, I will share your disappointment.
>>12871414>>12871948I could, but that's not what I'm doing.
>>12872895demolished that spic's ass
>>12873143Or you could just write a shell script
>>12873364yeah that's most likely what I'm gonna do
>>12871046Finally managed to crack Bull Run.I ended up using the same strategy I used for Blackburn Ford, where I was similarly outnumbered. Instead of trying to take a good fight with the enemy, I just setup my artillery on high ground, and used my infantry as blockers while artillery pounded on the incoming infantry. Once they got too close, I packed up and moved back and setup again, then moved my infantry back while pounding the enemy from my new position. Rinse, repeat until I was almost in the corner of the map, then I finally wore down the Confederacy enough that I could bum rush them and start pushing them back with a LOT of favorable battles my way. Went from looking like a draw at turn 40 to Minor Victory at turn 48. By digging in and having my infantry rest and restock most rounds, they kept their numbers up enough to keep the Confederate zerg rush at bay. They would still try to rush 1,000-2,000 people into my 4,000 strong dug-in stacks, but they didn't stand a chance.Left my lone cavalry unit behind enemy lines to rush in and grab victory point locations once they left the area. He ended up having to dance around an enemy cavalry unit twice his size, but he did a good enough job that I had about 70% the victory points from control areas compared to the Confederacy even though I was slowly retreating the entire battle. Towards the end he managed to sneak in and start smacking around the enemy HQ unit, leading to them ending the battle with 1 dead and 4 wounded leaders. That's some quality skirmishing right there. MVP squad of the battle as far as I'm concerned. Once I start the campaign, they're the first unit I'm giving better equipment to.
>>12866235do you think Grim Fandango can run on your previous setup? not sure myself how good the voodoo banshee is at full 3D games.
>>12873920I didn't think to try it out, as I never played it myself, but looking at it, it seems like it should run fine. And it can even be made to run entirely on the hard drive, too. I think I'll be checking it out in that case for the next pack.
Well, I can't speak as to the old pack, but Grim Fandango works perfectly on the new one. I even got it working completely off of the hard drive with hardware acceleration and all. It's a big one at 1.2 GB, but I'd say it's definitely a shoe-in for the pack. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
>>12873983>>12875184good to hear. going to try it out soon before halloween comes.>even got it working completely off of the hard drive with hardware acceleration and all.what's involved to get that to happen? are you looking up old no-CD cracks? using AI? or you know enough C/C++/whatever or whatever to patch it yourself?
>>12875661No lol my first resource for that is always the PC Gaming Wiki. They're kinda cucks in that they won't link to unofficial cracks, but some games do have documented workarounds that don't involve those, or sometimes the devs themselves release patches that remove whatever DRM or disc checks that were originally in place. In this particular case, the wiki had all the information needed (had to copy the data files from both discs, then I had to add a registry key that enables Developer Mode, which removes the disc check), so it was easy. Some games don't have any such documentation, however, and may involve dicking around with .ini files or the registry, and in the worst cases a crack is necessary, when available.
>>12873596And I've begun the full Civil War campaign.Minor victory at Blackburn Ford lead to the game giving me the 5th alternate Bull Run map. Which was just a different layout of where the units started. Setup artillery and skirmish line on the big empty flat hill between the two towns, and waited. They came rushing in, and got chewed up by my artillery. By turn 30, they were trounced and on the run. Spent the remaining 78 turns chasing them around and taking shots at them. In the end, only 4-5 enemy units hadn't managed to flee the battlefield or get captured, and they were trying to run hard.Walked away with enough supply to do some massive upgrades to my troops weaponry. All cannons have been upgraded to the most powerful, and all units stuck with the 2nd worst rifle have been upgraded to 5th worst or better, and my lone cavalry unit got upgraded to the best repeater available. Funny part is after handing out twice as many kills and wounded, and capturing 2,000 and making 28,000 abandon the cause, and having a massive amount of captured supply compared to the Confederate army, it still called it a minor victory for the Union. Union army sitting strong and barely any losses, Confederate army torn to shreds and forced to retreat, minor victory for Union. Right.Then the game made the mistake of asking if I wanted to go to Kernstown or Shiloh next. Kernstown was already an easy win with default gear, it was a complete and total stomp out with better rifles and cannon. Managed to make the entire enemy army turn tail and flee before turn 18. Dumped me into McDowell Alt 5. HQ and three infantry were on the other side of the enemy army, and all my artillery starts off deployed on low ground. Only 20 turns allowed, but I managed to do some good damage before then. Now I'm in the Battle of Front Royal Alt 4.4 infantry units, 4 cannon, 1 cavalry, VS 8 infantry, 2 cannon, and 4 cavalry. Can't even outrun all the cavalry.
Performative zoomer LARP general
>>12876875I see no way of pulling any sort of win or even a draw in Front Royal. I've tried a few different strategies, movements, nothing works. No matter what I do, I'm outnumbered by cavalry that rides right past the artillery and chews up my troops in no time, and if I try to shoot at them with the artillery, that just gives the infantry a chance to catch up and crush what remains. Best I was able to do was run away while trying to take pot shots at the cavalry, but still took a slight loss.Then I got to Winchester. 2-3x the infantry, and 4-5x the artillery I did. Even doing my best to fight a retreating battle, I still got stuck in the corner in the last few turns and they forced half my units to surrender. Major loss. Shit was even worse than Front Royal. Next battle is at Cross Keys, and I outnumber the south to a severe degree. Time to get revenge.
