A bit of background: my parents found our old Compaq Armada 1700 running Windows 2000 and asked if I wanted it. It has no modern networking adapter but I was inspired by an Eposvox video a few months ago to make a child friendly PC with classic games and edutainment functions
Today I attempted to put some classic games onto it by installing on my Windows 11 gaming PC and copying the game files from my gaming PC. I tried Star Wars: Rebellion but I got an error. Just for the heck of it, I decided to copy my GOG installer to the Armada to see if it would work. THOSE MAD LADS MADE THE INSTALLER COMPATIBLE WITH WINDOWS 2000
The game installed perfectly with no issues whatsoever. However, upon launching, it threw a .dll error. It turns out the installer packages a Vista .dll for compatibility. I asked Claude about the error and got a suggestion to rename the file extension for the file calling the Vista .dll since the native Windows 2000 compatible .dll was in the same directory. I renamed the file AND THE GAME LAUNCHED AND PLAYED PERFECTLY
GOG is amazing and will never cease to amaze me
TLDR: my mind is blown that an installer that works on Windows 11 is able to work and install a game on Windows 2000
Ever since external server browsers went out of fashion, I miss being able to monitor the multiplayer activity of all of my games in one place.
Since I've been running some dedicated servers for Unreal Tournament and Quake 3, I always wanted a way to just monitor them all in one place like GameSpy3D allowed you to do. So I wrote a classic-style server browser for modern Windows called LameSpy. Check out the video demo and the website if you are interested: https://lamespy.org
Ok people are gonna get mad at me here, but I don't know if I'm asking in the correct place. I assumed someone in here may have had similar problems with other older games.
Not sure what type of laptop it is or like if it tells you somewhere in a file or whatever, sure it will, it's hp, windows 10, about 12 years old. I don't even know if I'm asking this in the right place, dunno how Reddit works. Was like completely computer illiterate until a week and managed to download FIFA 06 and extract it and mess around with voodoo and direct x settings to get it to run smoothly but I can't get the game to recognise my Xbox controller, plugged in my usb, the laptop recognises it because I've also installed retroarch and play Amiga and n64 games with it so it definitely works on the laptop. If I've asked in the wrong place or anything like that, please direct me where to go instead of just getting raging at me, I'm new here dunno how it works and people on the internet are mean 😂chat gpt had me in a devdata folder messing around with controller names but that didn't work and now it's advised downloading some programm that supposedly helps old games recognise your controller or something? I have no idea what I'm doing here, any help or advice would be greatly appreciated, thank you.
Hi all. Long time lurker of this kind of nostalgia, first time posting something of my own.
When I was a teenager in the nineties I ran a board called Roller Software HQ BBS here in Sweden, FidoNet 2:205/431 if that means anything to anyone still. What I remember most from those years is the door games. On my board it was mostly Usurper and Barren Realms Elite, and also Falcon's Eye and Solar Realms Elite. People would call in every evening just to play their turns and read what had happened to them overnight, and I was one of them on other people's boards.
I've wanted something like that again for a long time, so over the last week or so I built a game in that spirit. It's called Candledeep. You don't need a BBS or a client for it, you just open a terminal and type
and your SSH key is your account. There's also a page at https://candledeep.com that shows who's on and how to get in, if you'd rather look before you connect.
The idea is that you get one candle a day and go down into a pit under a town, and when the candle is burnt out you're done until the next morning. So a day of play is maybe ten or fifteen minutes. There are six classes, gangs that fight over the buildings in town, a yard where you can fight other players' characters while they're offline, robbing people who sleep in doorways, and a morning news sheet that tells you what happened while you were away. That last part was what I loved most about the old games so I wanted it in there. It's drawn in ANSI at 80x24.
A few things I should say up front.
It is not a classic door with a drop file. It runs on its own little server and you reach it over SSH, so you can't install it on your board. I know some of you will ask that first. If your BBS software can launch an outbound ssh from a menu that might be a way to offer it to your callers, but I haven't tried that myself.
It's for adults. The language is rough, in an old-fashioned swearing kind of way, and there's drinking and drugs in it, like Usurper had.
I also want to be honest that I didn't write the code by hand. I designed it, made the decisions and have been playtesting it with a few friends, but the programming was done together with an AI (Claude). I know opinions on that differ, and I'd rather say it than have someone feel tricked later.
It's still early. Right now it's me and a handful of friends on a small VPS, and I'm sure there are things that are confusing or unbalanced. One friend told me after his first day that he had no idea what he was supposed to do, so there's a walkthrough for new characters now. I'd really like to hear what people who actually remember these games think, including what feels wrong.
Thanks for reading, and thanks to everyone who keeps this scene alive.
I'm looking to research a few items and I just had my most complicated save file get ruined by autosave.
So I'm looking for a game intensive save file for a project. Complex with 100+ stations many AI Ships, ect.
I thought I'd try this as opposed to spending days recreating my old setup. If you share please either have your ship in the Complex Sector or leave comment where so I can navigate there for load testing.
If your playing on a modern-ish high clock, high core count CPU this would be preferred given how single threaded the game is.
Я собрал себе комп для ретро игр установил на него windows 7 32-bit,и осталось установить драйверы и все остальные программы,но у меня возникли с этим трудности,так как этим я до этого момента не занимался,если не тяжело то подскажите мне пожалуйста.
Я собрал себе комп для ретро игр установил на него windows 7 32-bit,и осталось установить драйверы и все остальные программы,но у меня возникли с этим трудности,так как этим я до этого момента не занимался,если не тяжело то подскажите мне пожалуйста.
Agent 47 is back in business. We kick off our Hitman: Blood Money walkthrough with the training mission, Death of a Showman, infiltrating an abandoned amusement park to take down Joseph Clarence. Executed cleanly with zero damage taken.
🎮 Hitman: Blood Money
🎯 Mission: Death of a Showman
💥 No Damage
If you enjoy the run, leave a like and subscribe for the rest of the campaign!
This pack is a simple of a "click the button and the game just works" version of the classic experience as I could manage, using CnC-Ddraw and Userpatch to get the original executables playing nice with Windows 10/11.
However, the multiplayer functionality while possible with IPX wrappers or VPNs was less than ideal.
I'm developing a DirectPlay shim, based on Wine's DirectPlay replacement code, to interface with AoE2. The idea is that it sends the initial connection handshakes to a web-hosted PHP server, which the DirectPlay replacement then takes over and handles connections peer to peer.
It's probably a little early to share, but I'm hosting it here:
it currently supports Windows 10/11 and works with AoE2-C's Userpatch, but I'm working on a version that will work with vanilla Windows 9x operating systems and unpatched copies of the game.
The only notible new feature is a lobby password system that is handled entirely from the DirectPlay shim, so you have the option to have a web hosted game that isn't open to the entire Internet.
The hope is to keep things as simple as possible and not reinvent the wheel (I know there are better ways to play this game online with HD, Voobly, DE, etc) but to just give just enough modernity to the old classic game to stay online for LAN and Internet games.
Open to ideas, suggestions, etc. Thanks for hearing out my ramble!
I hope this is the proper subreddit for this question.
My wife recently got a new laptop. It's a Ryzen 5 7430U, AMD Radeon Graphics (that's it, no other model number) and 16GB RAM. We're trying to get Saints & Sinners Bowling running on it. It runs fine on the desktop PC, but when it starts up on the laptop, the screen goes garbled. We've tried compatibility mode from 98 to 8.1 and just about every other compatibility option with no luck.
We have both an original CD from twenty-some years ago, plus a digital download from GameFools. GameFools support wasn't able to help.
I'm convinced it's not the laptop itself or compatibility, but the video drivers or related. I downloaded the latest drivers from AMD (dated May 2026) but no change. Looking for any suggestions to get this working.
A while back I was looking for a backup graphics card for testing purposes, and stumbled upon a cheap R9 280X locally. I have a bit of nostalgia for it, having had one around 2014/2015 up until I upgraded to an RX 480. I used it mostly on Windows 7 though. I had always though that it was not compatible with XP, and only recently found out that it's supported by official iCafe drivers.
This put the idea of building an XP machine into my head. I already have the 280X and also found an Antec P280 for that mid/late 2000s aesthetic (though it actually released later), as well as my old G.Skill DDR3 sticks (2x4GB and 2x8GB, both DDR3-1600). Now I have a decision to make on what platform/board/CPU to use.
I'm not really concerned about period correctness, and would actually prefer something that would just breeze through XP-era games.
I'd prefer something that has official XP support. I'm not totally opposed to using patches/modded drivers though as long as they are stable.
I would like to use a PicoIDE at some point so that I don't have to muck around with virtual drives. So having an IDE port would be ideal, though not an absolute requirement if adding one via PCI/PCIe is an option. I was considering USBODE, but the Pi Zero 2 W is pretty much unobtainium right now, and the old Pi Zero W is almost twice the price of the 2 W in the places where it's available.
I want an X-Fi of some sort for EAX5 support.
With these in mind, here are my options:
Asus H97M-Plus and i5-4590: I already have these from an old system. However there's no official XP support. I do see people installing XP on Haswell systems though. Are there any known issues (e.g. stability) using this?
Gigabyte GA-G1.Assassin and a Nehalem i7: I can get these locally for fairly cheap. The main reason I'm looking at this is that this specific motherboard has an X-Fi chip for integrated audio, and looks like it might even have higher quality audio caps than the actual X-Fi cards. I can get it for cheaper than the cheapest X-Fi Titanium I'm seeing on eBay too. Has anyone tried this board or any similar boards with X-Fi built-in? Do they work just as well as the X-Fi cards? I'll be using the SPDIF optical out in either case, so hopefully potential electrical noise will not be a concern. I've also always wanted a motherboard with those overkill heatpipes, though I could do without the gun designs.
An LGA1155 motherboard and an i5-3470. I have an i5-3470 here somewhere, and these have official XP support. Some motherboard models have IDE, but are hard to find.
An LGA775 motherboard and either a C2D E8400 or C2Q Q9550. I already have the two Core 2 CPUs. Most of these motherboards still have IDE. Are these fast enough for late XP-era games?
And lastly, if I go for a board without IDE, do add-in PCI/PCIE IDE cards work well in XP? I don't need to boot off of an IDE drive, I just want to use it for a PicoIDE. On local online shops, I see PCIE cards with Jmicron chips, and PCI cards with Via chips. There was also one PCI card with an ITE chip.
hey everyone, i recently brought an old hcl laptop back to life and installed windows 7 32-bit on it
i'm trying to turn it into a little retro/old-school gaming machine and i'm looking for legit sources/sites where i can find old pc games, demos, freeware, abandonware/community patches, old software, etc.
mainly looking for stuff from the 2000s-early 2010s, especially like need for speed games
gta
horror games
racing/driving games
old indie games
old windows 7 compatible software
old game patches/fixes/mods
i'd really appreciate trustworthy archives, official old releases, preservation projects, or community-maintained sources that are still accessible in 2026-27
also if you know any old websites/forums that are still active and useful for windows 7 gaming, drop those too
I've been trying to get Eagle Watch working with GOG's version. I've followed instructions and got the disc content, copied it to C:\TEMP and got it to install.
I try and launch Rainbow6MP.exe and I get: The code execution cannot proceed bacuse WINMX.dlll was not found. Re-installing may fix the problem".
Obviously I tried re-installing and starting from scratch with no joy. I also tried jus renaming winmm.dll. That stops the error but the program doesn't launch. It just sits there in processes.
In both cases I've tried launching in various compatability modes and as an administrator.
I'd rather play the original instead of the Black Ops 2 version which I know is out there so any help would be appreciated.
