WC on a mac

D

DeFrancoj

Spaceman
Hello everyone:

I am kicking myself because I just bought a mac. I said to myself, "I'm playing games less and less nowadays, and my iPod works so well..."
I didn't realize that I could soon be playing WCP multiplayer!

So,
its a brand spanking new Powerbook, but unfortunately it is one of the models powered by a PowerPC.

What are the odds that I can get WCP to run well in a windows emulation on my mac? Anything I should know?

Thanks for your advice, folks.
You can reach me at jim.amberger@gmail.com.
Hopefully we'll be wasting bugs together pretty soon.
 
What computer did you have before? Prophecy doesn't require much by today's standards. Any five or six year old computer would be fine for it. I don't know anything about Mac emulation software, but there are a buch of general Mac applications that attempt to emulate a regular Windows environment. I'm not sure how well they'll handle the 3D needs and whether they'll be powerful enough to do it or not though.
 
hey thanks for the response. I see that you're right about Prophecy running on my old computer or a windows box on the mac. But after all the incredible things going on in the WC universe that I've just been reading about on this site, I'm sweating about getting something like Nexus or the Hi-res/multiplayer patches for Prophecy to run!
 
Yeah, it's worthwhile to get a setup to run old WC games just because there's so much to play, either just counting the Origin WC games or the fan projects alone. Supposedly there's a DOSBox for Mac that would help you run the earlier games. In your case, just buying an old Windows PC might be best for Prophecy.
 
The fact is that I'm in Hungary right now, separated from my old computer and on financial ground that, while secure, does not lend itself to purchasing gaming computers. Had I started coming to this site a month ago, I wouldn't have bought a mac at all!

Now that I'm in my current situation, I started looking into emulators and all that. There are plenty of free Linux emulators/layers and from what I can gather (I know nothing about this sort of thing) I'll get the best performance running stuff on a Linux plat (e.g. WC Saga, for which a Linux port is promised, see my post on the issue in the WC Saga forum), since Linux can run natively on PowerPC architecture.
Are there any Linux ports for Prophecy or SO, that I might get to play: a) the multiplayer patch, b) the two add-ons for SO
(god, there's so much flying to do, I can't believe it)
Or can those add-ons be used with Flight Commander's Linux port?

There are surely too many people to ever thank individually for all of the advice, software, and camraderie that is found on this site, but I'll do my best: thanks for the tips.
 
Nope, Flight Commander is completely separate, and I doubt any WC Saga linux port will ever be made. Linux is for servers and hobbyists. It probably isn't in any position to help you here. Prophecy and Secret Ops are just for Windows. The "gaming computer" necessary to play what you're looking at doesn't have to be expensive though. We're looking at something from like 1999-2002.
 
ok so, (and trust me, Ive been trawling these forums trying to feel out a consensus), what version of windows should I run/emulate??

thanks so much. I just started playing Unknown Enemy and I love it.
 
Macs are about to move to intel, so it's too bad you just purchased a ppc. If somebody wants to buy me a mac development machine, I'd probably be able to do the port :) .
 
Mincemeat said:
In my opinion Windows 98 SE is the best OS for the old Origin games.
Click to expand...

What benefits would Windows 98 have over Windows XP? A modern computer with XP can run all the Windows games, plus emulate the DOS games with DOSBox. With Windows 98, you'd need a bunch of various legacy drivers and software supporting a DOS installation as well. If you're going to do that, you might as well build a full computer around DOS with the specialized hardware that the specific games want. If the question is what version of Windows to use, a new computer with XP makes it much more convenient to play more Wing Commander games.
 
The thing 98 has over XP is it isn't quite as bad, when it comes to memory footprint. XP tries to do everything, and it shows in it's memory requirement.
 
That might be a valid point in general, but it doesn't have any impact on how any Wing Commander games would perform. And I don't think 98 is all that much more easy on the memory proportionately to the standard amounts on systems that were common when it was in use. In 1999-2000 you might have had 64-128 megs of ram, and the operating system could get by on perhaps 16 megs. Today you have 1-2 gigs, and XP eats up 128-256 megs of that. Obviously much more, but we have much more in total, and still, not of any relevance to running WC games.
 
yes, but if it's a question of which version to emulate on a mac, with the intention of running the fan projects based on SO and FS2... the memory footprint could be a relevant issue???
(Again, I know nothing about anything....)
 
ChrisReid said:
What benefits would Windows 98 have over Windows XP? A modern computer with XP can run all the Windows games, plus emulate the DOS games with DOSBox. With Windows 98, you'd need a bunch of various legacy drivers and software supporting a DOS installation as well.
Click to expand...

Why would I be unable to run DOSBox or VDMSound under 98SE?
There really isn't a reason to switch to XP as far as WC is concerned. Actually - some WC games work better in 98 (KS for example...)

There really isn't much reason at all besides some companies simply forcing their software to not run on 98 anymore.
 
DeFrancoj said:
yes, but if it's a question of which version to emulate on a mac, with the intention of running the fan projects based on SO and FS2... the memory footprint could be a relevant issue???
Click to expand...

No, not really. The bottleneck is going to be processor speed and 3d hardware acceleration capability. There's much more memory to go around than is an issue here.

cff said:
Why would I be unable to run DOSBox or VDMSound under 98SE?
There really isn't a reason to switch to XP as far as WC is concerned. Actually - some WC games work better in 98 (KS for example...)

There really isn't much reason at all besides some companies simply forcing their software to not run on 98 anymore.
Click to expand...

KS has issues in both 98 and XP. The point is that there's no reason to go with 98 over XP, and the general stability and hardware compatibility enhancements in XP make that more ideal. Any computer powerful enough to emulate the stuff we're looking at would have come out well after XP became standard. It's not a matter of switching to XP. You'd have to actually search out a copy of 98 to put on your new system if you wanted to run that. Nobody who is asking this question has an old copy of 98 sitting on standby. There's just no circumstances where anyone asking what OS to do this with would use anything but XP.
 
Again, my main concern is not the DOS games. It's stuff like Standoff and (this may be a longshot) Nexus. I need to know whether i should try running Win98 or WinXP on an x86 emulation. I have copies of both. (I know not to try Win2K!)
 
It probably doesn't matter too much either way. If you can find a copy of Windows 98, it probably will use less resources as Shades said. Both Standoff and Nexus work in 98, though some other newer stuff might not. Newer games will just compound the resource problem however. Unfortunately, trying to play games on a Mac is generally a losing proposition.
 
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