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File: 33d1e22b363349d⋯.png (134.56 KB,420x420,1:1,fada832efa4598fcbbb49b408c….png)

Windows retrogaming Nodev 09/02/17 (Sat) 07:20:27 08405a No.29425

I realize this is more of a /tech/ thread, but since the Stallmanist screeching would blot out anything to do with Windows or gaming, and /v/ are too technically illiterate, this seems like probably the best board to ask.

The state of emulation for early Windows games is simply atrocious. The booter and DOS eras are pretty well covered, and of course nearly all Win ≥7 games still work under Win 8/10 with minor tweaks at worst, but the 95/98/ME era is utter disaster, and the XP era, especially the transitional early XP era, verges on impossible.

MS's official hypervisor environments don't support hardware 3D, WINE on Linux varies from flawless to complete joke, and emulators like PCem or QEMU are primarily for DOS with very limited support for Windows or the era-specific graphics/audio hardware used by period games. This leads to my question.

Would it be technically feasible to greatly extend the backward compatibility of modern PCs by combining DLLs and other components of WINE, plus perhaps even (stock or modified) components from older versions of Windows, and a decent configuration interface, into a WINE-like solution to run old games well on newer (≥7) installs of Windows?

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Nodev 09/03/17 (Sun) 20:14:27 d4c1dd No.29431

For Win 95, some of the forks of DOSBOX may get you going. I personally have no tried to do 3D Windows gaming in DOSBOX. I have gotten Windows 98 installed in DOSBOX, and it was a pain in the ass.

See, for example: http://dosbox95.darktraveler.com/index.html

Again, I haven't tried to do so and don't know how good these are.

As for the early Windows XP era, try hitting up pawn shops to acquire real hardware?

> emulators like PCem or QEMU are primarily for DOS with very limited support for Windows or the era-specific graphics/audio hardware used by period games

I've ran both Windows 95 and Windows 98 in QEMU. The biggest problem with Windows 95 era gaming is that you don't want to emulate Windows 95/98/etc: you want Windows, a hardware configuration that can run your game, and the drivers Windows needs to use the hardware. It's the hardware emulation that is the hard part. You're not going to be able to pull that hardware emulation out of WINE or older versions of Windows: it needs to be created.

Finally, have you tried WMware? They supposedly now offer a free version for non-commercial use.

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Nodev 09/03/17 (Sun) 21:36:25 08405a No.29432

>>29431

>It's the hardware emulation that is the hard part. You're not going to be able to pull that hardware emulation out of WINE or older versions of Windows: it needs to be created.

My thinking on this was along the same lines as shims like nGlide or ALchemy, where modern hardware can be used to create an LLE stand-in for old hardware, especially in such a way that old limits (higher resolution and bit depth, for instance) can be seamlessly bent in some games.

Also, there are already some fragmentary efforts to port pieces of WINE and Mesa, with encouraging results for some games, though configuring such solutions for any given game is very ad-hoc.

>Finally, have you tried WMware?

VMware primarily targets D3D9 & OpenGL 2 okay-ishly, D3D8 is extremely flaky, D3D7 and under completely unsupported, OpenGL 3 is also unsupported. Same goes for VirtualBox. Xen & KVM have alpha-quality graphics acceleration for a handful of *N*X guests.

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Nodev 09/08/17 (Fri) 21:56:11 a4baf2 No.29459

>>29425

>but the 95/98/ME era is utter disaster

From what I'm hearing, the most recent versions of ReactOS can run Windows 9x games quite well. Possibly better than WINE can. It still has trouble with XP compatibility and anything post-XP is near impossible to run (unless it's Skyrim or some indie game).

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Nodev 09/12/17 (Tue) 01:44:58 e22220 No.29467

File: aaba3fee1e1669e⋯.jpg (36.73 KB,1440x1080,4:3,maxresdefault.jpg)

>>29425

>Would it be technically feasible to greatly extend the backward compatibility of modern PCs by combining DLLs and other components of WINE, plus perhaps even (stock or modified) components from older versions of Windows, and a decent configuration interface, into a WINE-like solution to run old games well on newer (≥7) installs of Windows?

/tech/ here. Possible for a genius with access to the write tools/code/documentation? Yes. Feasible? Esp for someone around here? Hell no. It's not like you can just copy and paste DLL files and things just work automagically.

I assume you grew up through that era and aren't like 14 right now. Remember what a pain in the ass it was to get shit working? Windows 95? Do you remember setting IRQ settings in BIOS? Loading custom autoexec.bat files just to play your favorite games? Getting a game that just worked after install was like a second Christmas. And that's when Windows itself wasn't busy shitting the bed. My point is, problem #1, you're emulating an old, shitty environment designed to run on a lot of different hardware and it never did that 100% successfully even back in the day.

Windows 98 was no better, "plug and play" my ass. ME was a disaster. Imagine trying to write an emulator for a Nintendo system with random hardware from that generation AND Nintendo continuously releasing patches/drivers/hot-fixes, etc because you can plug just about any peripheral you can think of into it. Yeah. That's a can of worms alright.

Then we get into the various video card companies that have come and gone since then, all the hardware you're covering from 95-XP, and all the drivers, DirectX versions, shaders, feature sets, etc, etc, etc. I mean...damn man, that's a 'lot of shit.

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Nodev 09/30/17 (Sat) 19:59:58 3d8d4b No.29529

>>29425

>The state of emulation for early Windows games is simply atrocious.

The main reason why is due to hardware acceleration from that era

Almost all DOS programs used a software renderer to render all of their graphics

It's worth noting that when a game from early Windows doesn't work it's usually because it's relying on some depreciated API or a driver that isn't present. Like I remember No One Lives Forever has this issue where the game suddenly goes to 15 fps whenever you scope in with the sniper rifle because the devs used an older version of Direct X to draw graphics on the screen.

A lot of these problems are fixed by using wrappers and programs that emulate old hardware like dgvoodoo. But that's the biggest reason why emulation of old Windows is much harder than DOS which is comparatively simple.

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Nodev 11/30/17 (Thu) 21:40:26 d2b61c No.29989

File: 1be9b5153ba291a⋯.jpeg (113.91 KB,1024x680,128:85,sadsnail.jpeg)

Do you think we will ever have decent enough x86(_64) emulation on non-x86_64 hardware to run maybe 50% or more of Windows programs in the future? Or do you think we'll never escape the hell that is x86(_64)?

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