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.
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.
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.
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.
published by Epic, but not developed by them. Anyhoo, they were cool once upon a time. :)
edit: apart from nostalgia trip, I would say you don’t need Win 3.x if you already have Win98 set up in dosbox - should run all 16bit windows apps from stone age just fine as is.
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.
I tested the game quite a bit and found it not working, and after some digging around I found some tidbits that 64bit windows’ lack the old systems to run 16bit apps.
Kinda sounds like the installer supplied winevdm or similar with the game. Pretty nice of them, tbh.