OT: I've Done It!

[CaptSopwith 26]

European Air War was great. Also 1942: The Pacific Air War by Microprose.

 

 

I never played 1942 PAW, but I've always heard it spoken of reverently in flight sim circles. It's also remarkable how similar their intro videos are. I think the EAW developers really wanted to keep the emotion and spirit of its predecessor alive. I really miss Microprose. Looking through the old collection, at least half of the old games are MPS titles.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eu1p-DIQIZA

[Javito1986 14]

Javito...This 'Gog' site...does it offer it's games as all working in Windows 7?...I would so love to play 'Under a Killing Moon' again (sigh)

 

 

 

 

Yes indeed! They all work on Windows 7. GoG is easily my favorite site for games ever.

[CaptSopwith 26]

Is the SDOE based Fighter Squadron WWI in there? It's free.. FS-WWI

 

IIRC there's an Austrailian website that has the original Parsoft SDOE game in a downloadable .iso so you can pick up the rest of the new old mods ongoing for SDOE.

 

Ooo, now this is interesting. It looks like they have a method to install FS-WWI that doesn't even require the original SDOE. This might be the avenue I choose to take. I remember reading a lot about SDOE FS-WWI back in the day... I think even Delphi had a Forum for it that kept popping up as a suggestion for me based on all of the Red Baron forums I was visiting over there.

[CaptSopwith 26]

Well, you can add MiG Alley to the list. Runs a bit choppy at times (when didn't it? lol) but it looks great. I really can't believe this keeps working!

[Lewie 7]

Ooo, now this is interesting. It looks like they have a method to install FS-WWI that doesn't even require the original SDOE. This might be the avenue I choose to take. I remember reading a lot about SDOE FS-WWI back in the day... I think even Delphi had a Forum for it that kept popping up as a suggestion for me based on all of the Red Baron forums I was visiting over there.

 

Get the third option .exe download and all of it's add-ons, and check out the forum, because there's new stuff afoot.

 

It's not OFF, but it isn't the the old SDOE either, there's been a lot of recent improvements.

[UK_Widowmaker 571]

Captsopwith

 

I am a big fan of FSWW1...and you can indeed play without SDOE!

 

check out ArgonV...he's on the forum, and is the developer...lovely chaap..and he'll help you with it

[Lewie 7]

Captsopwith

 

I am a big fan of FSWW1...and you can indeed play without SDOE!

 

check out ArgonV...he's on the forum, and is the developer...lovely chap..and he'll help you with it.

 

ArgonV is one of the best! Consider joining the forum as he's most active there. But also consider getting the free Aussie DVD .iso of the old game, ( it's listed in the Fighter Squadron Forum) as there are several WWII mods in the works right now,, and (aherm,,) my Pioneers of Flight, sort of "Those Magnificent Men" mod which will have blimps, balloons, and blunderbusses, and many old rickety sub 50 mph top speed early aviation crates.

[Javito1986 14]

God I loved MiG Alley. Rowan was one of the great flight sim developers. That spring campaign was so hard though. I remember I'd get to about mid February and have to quit because I had no planes left. But I had a great time with it, I especially loved flying flak suppression in an F-86 Sabre over Pyongyang while other squadrons were keeping MiGs off the B-52s at altitudes unheard of to my little Royal Flying Corps pilot in OFF

[CaptSopwith 26]

Alright gents, here is the final tally.

 

All told, I cannot believe these games installed so smoothly, with so little work. Getting games like Red Baron to run took less effort on this machine than they did on the original Dell rig I ran it on in 1998. The only casualties in my collection were: Worms Armageddon, Need For Speed High Stakes. That's it. Everything else is there and I've added the ARMA2 Demo and FS-WWI for good measure. The collection now stands at 54 games, according to Windows. What you don't see are the DOS Box games I added. They are: Wolfenstein 3D (plus 5 expansions and custom versions of the game), Doom, F117A Stealth Fighter, World Circuit, SeaWolf, SimCity Enhanced, Star Wars: Rebel Assault, Wings of Glory.

 

The ARMA2 demo is quite interesting. I think these so-called "niche" games, as the gaming media likes to refer to them as, are going to be right up my alley. Speaking of Alleys, MiG Alley is also up and running successfully, again with almost no effort - and certainly a lot less than my Windows 98 days. Flight Simulator 2004 has also been added. It recently turned buggy with my installation of IE9 Beta, but after doing some research and trying a fix that solved a previous conflict with IE7, FS2004 is now fully functioning again.

 

I haven't calculated the hours of gaming I've collectively installed on this machine, but I would think it would take years to actually play through everything. Even OFF would take that long - if I tried to fly with every squadron included. P4 will long since be out by the time I finish that list. In short, I don't know how I did it (I'm pretty sure it wasn't me), but this was the most sublimely set up PC I've ever had. I'm going to image the drive, sit back, and enjoy. I'm glad you guys have enjoyed reading along with me - this was the best use of a few sick days, ever. Cheers!

Edited February 18, 2011 by _CaptSopwith

[UK_Widowmaker 571]

You're gonna have to do something about the Grand Prix Legends Icon!!!

 

(Hidden and Dangerous is a classic!!)

Edited February 18, 2011 by UK_Widowmaker

[Rugbyfan1972 1]

CaptSopwith,

 

I see you have NFSPU installed and running in windows 7 (32 or 64 bit)?

 

The reason I am asking is I have tried to install and run it successfully on win7 Ultimate 64-bit, and it worked in that the game ran fine in evolution until I got to the 356 Carrerra B, at which point it keeps crashing on the Normandie track near the start on either the 2nd or 3rd right hand bend.

 

Is this a problem with NFSPU in general and if so how do you solve it?

 

I had it previously installed on my XP machine (what a nightmare to get running, on win7 it was install the game and it was up and running), and it had various points when the game would happily crash/lock-up.

 

Thanks

Rugbyfan1972

[UK_Widowmaker 571]

CaptSopwith,

 

I see you have NFSPU installed and running in windows 7 (32 or 64 bit)?

 

The reason I am asking is I have tried to install and run it successfully on win7 Ultimate 64-bit, and it worked in that the game ran fine in evolution until I got to the 356 Carrerra B, at which point it keeps crashing on the Normandie track near the start on either the 2nd or 3rd right hand bend.

 

Is this a problem with NFSPU in general and if so how do you solve it?

 

I had it previously installed on my XP machine (what a nightmare to get running, on win7 it was install the game and it was up and running), and it had various points when the game would happily crash/lock-up.

 

Thanks

Rugbyfan1972

 

Dont take this as a stupid question..but you did run as admin, and compatability mode?

[CaptSopwith 26]

@Rubyfan: I haven't played very far into career mode. I've installed a few enhanced patches and there was a modded .exe file I found that solved a few problems PU developed with high CPU's (these included incredibly ugly low res textures and the Parkinson's hand issue when your driver shifted gears). So far it runs smoothly. I've started evolution mode and bought my first car and I haven't seen any problems yet (knock on wood).

 

I do run the game with administrator privileges granted but that's it. I should also stress heavily that I'm running Windows 7 Pro 32bit - which likely makes a difference with these Windows 98 era games. Hope this helps!

[Rugbyfan1972 1]

Dont take this as a stupid question..but you did run as admin, and compatability mode?

 

UKW,

 

No offence taken, I run everything as administrator (I think, if you know differently please share, I will not take offence) as that is the only account on my computer, also I have tried it in windows 98 compatability mode as well as the standard win7 mode. I have not checked the run as administrator box if that is what you mean.

 

Now I think about it had various lock-ups when I was running a win98 machine from 2000-2004 due to the paint scheme that I adopted for the cars (lime green), that problem disappeared when I left the cars on there default colour schemes.

 

Also another problem that I found which was due to the keyboard driving controls I originally used (Q,A,O & P) was that the P key would cause the game to pause for a second and then carry on driving as if nothing had happened.

 

CaptSopwith, I will be interested to see if you have any similar issues as you are playing through the early evolution mode.

 

Thank you both for you help on this matter so far, I do not have the game installed at the moment, but I will install it in the next day and report back after trying the administrator mode and win98 compatability.

 

Thanks

Rugbyfan1972

[carrick58 23]

Does anyone know "SABRE ACE - Conflict over Korea" ?

I used to play it for a while and found (back then) it looked quite good.

 

I liked Sabre ace too. The only problem was u couldnt land. The airstrip was too short. On the plus side was the navy jets Would love to see the old games updated and brought back on line instead of the C%$# we get these days with buggies Beta Version Silent Hunter 4comes to mine

[Wayfarer 5]

Mig Alley runs just fine in W7_Ultimate 64 and Nvidia card. The BDG patch adds full Trackir functions and quite simply reinvents the sim.

 

plug_nickel

 

 

Now, our new laptop has W7 ... I wonder?

 

I confess that when I first beheld the back of the MiG Alley pack and realised you could go after B29s in your MiG something clicked in my little head and I really wanted that game (no offence intended to any B29 crew I hasten to add!) . The PC we had wouldn't run it but eventually I bought it anyway for fear it would disappear before we got a PC that would cope. When we finally did, it had xp and the game wouldn't run; I could have cried!

After researching into the small hours, however, I realised there was a patch and was saved ... and took the regular mid game crashes philosophically.

 

I also liked Rowan's Battle of Britain. When you saw the German bombers advancing en masse, in column like the Old Guard, and the fighters started to manouever above them, and you knew that in a minute they would be after you - it was very atmospheric.

 

Did anyone play B17: 'The Mighty Eighth' much? I also found that quite exciting, when you were under seige from the fighters. Then a couple of Me 262s would appear streaking along and you knew you had virtually no chance of hitting them but just had to keep ploughing on and hope for the best. I haven't ever tried loading that onto our latest PC so I don't know how it would handle Vista.

[Rugbyfan1972 1]

CaptSopwith & UKWidowmaker,

 

I have as you suggested tried NFSPU in win98 compatability mode and with "run as administrator" turned on, it will not work in win98, but it will in both XP SP3 and vanilla win7 with "run as administrator" turned on.

 

Also it crashes to desktop when I am in the 356A cup at the Normandie track on the first right hander when I am taking my normal line into the corner (my right hand wheels just clipping the grass verge), I know from previous experience that it does this with other cars later in evolution mode as well.

 

If either of you can offer any further advice (or links to patches to solve these problems) it would be greatly appreciated.

 

I am running it with the cd on the drive,

 

Thanks

Fenwick

[Lewie 7]

In CaptSopwith's screenshot's of his desktop I'm noticing the Win7 shield over some of the game icons, I'm assuming this is Windows running the game in administration mode?

 

Why is Redbaron3D not marked with the shield?

 

I've installed FS-WWI on my wife's little Acer netbook and it has this same icon, it's always asks if you want to allow the game to make changes.

[CaptSopwith 26]

UKW,

 

No offence taken, I run everything as administrator (I think, if you know differently please share, I will not take offence) as that is the only account on my computer, also I have tried it in windows 98 compatability mode as well as the standard win7 mode. I have not checked the run as administrator box if that is what you mean.

 

Now I think about it had various lock-ups when I was running a win98 machine from 2000-2004 due to the paint scheme that I adopted for the cars (lime green), that problem disappeared when I left the cars on there default colour schemes.

 

Also another problem that I found which was due to the keyboard driving controls I originally used (Q,A,O & P) was that the P key would cause the game to pause for a second and then carry on driving as if nothing had happened.

 

CaptSopwith, I will be interested to see if you have any similar issues as you are playing through the early evolution mode.

 

Thank you both for you help on this matter so far, I do not have the game installed at the moment, but I will install it in the next day and report back after trying the administrator mode and win98 compatability.

 

Thanks

Rugbyfan1972

 

Well, I have some disappointing news... I think NFSPU is a loss. I ran through a few races to see if the game worked when I installed it and everything seemed fine. But it seems I have the same issues you experienced - regardless of what Windows 7 settings I have checked. My crash comes later but on the same track, Normandie. Every time the game locks, flashes black, and crashes to the desktop. I've tried every setting I can think of but to no avail. Looks like it's just a no-go with Windows 7.

 

Which is interesting... out of four games that refuse to work on Windows 7, three of them are EA brand NFS titles: Need for Seed II, High Stakes, and Porsche Unleashed. The other game is Worms Armageddon.

 

Again, not really a major loss. Frustrating though, to be sure. Hopefully the rest of the collection is okay.

[CaptSopwith 26]

You're gonna have to do something about the Grand Prix Legends Icon!!!

 

(Hidden and Dangerous is a classic!!)

 

I know! No matter what icon file I assign to the .exe, the Games window just will not display it correctly! Computers... I swear.

[UK_Widowmaker 571]

I know! No matter what icon file I assign to the .exe, the Games window just will not display it correctly! Computers... I swear.

 

Yes, that happens to me too...often, windows downloads an icon out of the blue..and assigns it.

[Herr Prop-Wasche 7]

Oh noes! Not Worms Armageddon!

[Olham 164]

Worms Armageddon was great! Remember the "Sheep Bomb"?

 

Edited February 20, 2011 by Olham

[Javito1986 14]

I'm resurrecting this epic thread because I have been one busy little bee lately. I have a pretty hot wife but really this is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

RETRO GLORY COMMENCE!

 

More will be added soon as I download and play them.

 

[stefnuts 0]

Hi  everyone,

 

I need help with viewing my plane in Mig Alley.

 

I've PM'd some of you for help.

 

I don't want to see this flight sim go down in smoke.

 

Thank you for your assistance!

Stefnuts