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Steam - am I doing it wrong?
Posted: Sat Jan 04, 2020 9:39 pm
by Ascender
I've been on a bit of a nostalgia-trip recently and bought a few games from Steam for pennies. I had wrongly assumed that if Steam was selling them, they would have been tested with Windows 10 and "guaranteed" to run. Nothing could be further from the truth and I've ended up being transported back in time and having to fiddle about with all sorts of compatibility settings in an attempt to get stuff to run.
I'll just setup an XP VM, that should help.... Except Steam won't run in such an old OS.
Am I missing something here? Is it really just hit and miss as to what games will run and which ones won't? Or is Steam an added complication and for older stuff I should just search for copies under the banner of abandonware?
Re: Steam - am I doing it wrong?
Posted: Sat Jan 04, 2020 9:49 pm
by RobYob
I never come across anything from Steam that wouldn't run. What are your trying to play?
Re: Steam - am I doing it wrong?
Posted: Sat Jan 04, 2020 10:11 pm
by Ascender
RobYob wrote: ↑Sat Jan 04, 2020 9:49 pm
I never come across anything from Steam that wouldn't run. What are your trying to play?
Yesterday's challenge was Commandos : Behind Enemy Lines.
After running a couple of fixes which were suggested on their forums, I got it running once. Changed screen resolution and it just went to a black screen and wouldn't start again.
Semi-related, they're also still selling the Half Life series for Mac, but its 32 bit so won't run on Catalina. No mention of this when you buy it.
Want to try Command & Conquer next...
Re: Steam - am I doing it wrong?
Posted: Sat Jan 04, 2020 10:13 pm
by integrale_evo
I bought carmageddon and carmageddon 2 in the Christmas sale as a bit of a retro trip. Both work fine on my windows 10 machine, no issues with sound, graphics or game pacing.
My only issue is neither will work with a gamepad, they want an old fashioned joystick, and playing with keyboard isn't much fun.
Re: Steam - am I doing it wrong?
Posted: Sat Jan 04, 2020 10:31 pm
by Mito Man
I’ve played through all the original GTA games on Steam and they’ve worked no problem.
Re: Steam - am I doing it wrong?
Posted: Sat Jan 04, 2020 10:33 pm
by RobYob
Ascender wrote: ↑Sat Jan 04, 2020 10:11 pm
RobYob wrote: ↑Sat Jan 04, 2020 9:49 pm
I never come across anything from Steam that wouldn't run. What are your trying to play?
Yesterday's challenge was Commandos : Behind Enemy Lines.
Ok that's quite a step back in time, oldest thing in my library is Deus Ex.
Re: Steam - am I doing it wrong?
Posted: Sat Jan 04, 2020 10:45 pm
by Simon
Silly question, but have you run the old Directx9 web installer? Despite it shipping with W10, I've sometimes found updates needed in the Dx9 installer that aren't natively there.
Re: Steam - am I doing it wrong?
Posted: Sun Jan 05, 2020 11:36 am
by Ascender
DirectX seems to come up a few times, I'll try that today.
Good to hear the Carmageddon games run well, they were on the list!
Re: Steam - am I doing it wrong?
Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2020 9:23 am
by ZedLeg
The mobile version of Carmageddon that came out a wee while ago also works really well. Was a nice wee nostalgia trip.
Re: Steam - am I doing it wrong?
Posted: Wed Jan 08, 2020 11:17 am
by integrale_evo
The graphics look a bit less eye bleeding on a tiny mobile screen, but at least they include the 3dfx version for smoother textures.
For some reason steam won't recognise my retrobit sega Saturn pad, even though windows 10 sees it as a sega controller.
Discovered the per game customisable controller settings in steam though so have assigned buttons on my 360 pad to mimic keyboard keys, just need to work on the layout as annoyingly i can't seem to get the analogue triggers to work as just on/ off buttons and it's not very comfortable trying to use the shoulder buttons as accelerator / brake. Still nicer than using the keyboard though.
I still have my original disks somewhere and my 1998 vintage pc componants, still fancy doing a retro build but doubt I'd ever get any actual use out of it.
Re: Steam - am I doing it wrong?
Posted: Wed Jan 08, 2020 2:49 pm
by Ascender
I forgot how many hours of my life I'd lost to Carmageddon, will download that tonight...
Re: Steam - am I doing it wrong?
Posted: Wed Jan 08, 2020 2:51 pm
by Ascender
integrale_evo wrote: ↑Wed Jan 08, 2020 11:17 am
The graphics look a bit less eye bleeding on a tiny mobile screen, but at least they include the 3dfx version for smoother textures.
For some reason steam won't recognise my retrobit sega Saturn pad, even though windows 10 sees it as a sega controller.
Discovered the per game customisable controller settings in steam though so have assigned buttons on my 360 pad to mimic keyboard keys, just need to work on the layout as annoyingly i can't seem to get the analogue triggers to work as just on/ off buttons and it's not very comfortable trying to use the shoulder buttons as accelerator / brake. Still nicer than using the keyboard though.
I still have my original disks somewhere and my 1998 vintage pc componants, still fancy doing a retro build but doubt I'd ever get any actual use out of it.
I think that's the "best" solution, to do a retro build, but I guess that's a very slippery slope! It also seems to be big business now, or certainly a scene which is on the rise, the effect of which is that people are charging silly money for stuff on eBay.
There's obviously been spectrum emulators for the iPad for years, but having a decent gamepad has transformed the experience and I've enjoyed playing stuff like Skool Daze on it.