Morning all! Sun's out, too! Must be the first of the annual three days of Spring... Just a quick one - found some of my old DVD games in the cupboard and fancy revisiting them at some stage, but quite a few are keyboard and mouse only (Far Cry, Painkiller etc.). Since I'm in it for the fun and not to twitch-compete (not to mention never really getting to grips with the keys being all over the place), I'd rather use the gamepad. Found this a while ago but never got round to checking it out - has anybody used it and is it any good, specifically for any of the older titles?
It's very good when I used it many many years ago and it was free. But I thought there's modern free alternatives? Most popular came to mind is Steam Input?
Aha! Cheers wyxy - spent some time yesterday digging into that as wasn't aware, good shout . Only question though - if these are all on DVD, do I just install them outside of Steam, then "add a non-Steam game to library" (or whatever the option is at the bottom, where you'd normally add a license key), then apply the controller layout that way so Steam can see the titles? I didn't get around to trying that yesterday but can obviously give it a shot.
Yes, install normally and add to Steam as non-steam game. Then on the game screen, towards the right there is a controller button. Press that to configure Steam Input.
Right. Managed to get to this stage, but I cannot get the bl00dy game to launch, whether from within Steam or from the install (which admittedly is on a USB external drive, but only because Game Pass and other Steam titles do often launch from there) or the DVD itself. Used setup.exe to install it, tried running it from the install location, then tried running it from Steam (but obvs pointing to the same install location, so that was probably a given fail), tried running FarCry.exe from the DVD as above but no dice, tried running FarCryAutoCD.exe from the DVD which gave me this: ...from which every option seems to work except Play. Have got compatibility settings set to Win XP SP3 because that's what it worked on before, plus Run as Admin ticked. Anyone got any ideas?
I always found compatibility modes an impenetrable and arcane area of blind guesswork, but w7 SP1 was usually my go-to due to directX support or something. What does the main .exe in the install directory do when you try to run it? Just nothing at all, or blank screen, or a few seconds and then c2d? edit - if you don't mind spending a few quid, it might be worth checking out the gog.com distro of this title and trying to figure out what they've done differently. I had this with Star Wars Episode 1 Racer recently, off the original disc it simply won't work and the Steam copy is also reportedly very hard work, but the gog version just ran straight away. Not sure what they did but they clearly knew what they were doing.
Hmm. Don't know actually - I'll fire it up later and post back. Even your comment is in more depth than I've ever undertaken before! This is why a lot of my early gaming years were either Amiga or console-based - they just work. I did look up Far Cry (plus some others, Painkiller etc.) on GOG and Steam recently, before deciding to just use my discs but I wasn't going to pay what they were asking when I owned the bl000dy things already. Might have another look and bookmark them for a sale. Let me come back on that one...
Depending on space and surplus hardware, you could go for the absolutely tried-and-true route to reliable XP gaming, which is just to build an old Windows XP, Vista or 7 32-bit rig from spares. I keep meaning to do this because I've a shelf full of XP-era titles that are a pain to get working now. If you get something 2013ish like an old corporate tower, stick a modest graphics card that overlapped XP support in it, and install 32-bit Windows Vista or 7, almost everything just works out of the box. I clung to a 32-bit backup PC for ages because it has 16-bit emulation built in for 90s games. I'm not very well versed in the technical aspects of why an older operating system like Vista or 7 runs XP games better than 8 onwards - you'd think it wouldn't matter, since they all have XPSP3 compatibility mode presented as an option. But...something something, DirectX, something something libraries. Oh, make sure you've manually installed all the Visual C++ redistributables and DirectX 9.0c and turned on .NET framework 3.5 (in the Windows Features section of the legacy Programs & Features) btw, I've found some old software and games mysteriously fail to work if some of these things aren't manually done, either because they were present by default on XP or were installed by the game installer but that part of it is broken and no longer installs correctly.
I actually have one of these for music! Only reason it's offline at the moment is because I cannot figure out why it refuses to display anything since a couple of "upgrades". It's running a QX6700(??) and I think (without looking) an Asus P5Q Deluxe or something similarly funky but without onboard graphics, so now I'm trying to figure out whether it's the GPU (560Ti from memory) or something else that's causing it to not play nicely. Aha! This may be A Thing...good shout, sir... PS. I wrote this latter bit last night when I was trying to "alleviate my issues" but if I have installed it, then I surely cannot find it. So I'll probably end up with two versions. That will then probably conflict or something and we'll find that out later: > Interesting. Took a few efforts to get the disc running but when it did, it just gives the option to Install, not Play. So I've installed to C: (now that I've cleared some space on there...) EDIT: Have now ended up with this selected: Does that look sensible or have I given myself a Blighty wound here?
I've only ever done the 'basic' install, where it blocks in the tickbox for the .NET 3.5 category; I've absolutely no idea what those other bits do, if anything! Probably you just opened a bunch of vulnerabilities, they turned this stuff off by default because it was a major outstanding source of exploits, but hey - Microsoft Defender is consistently getting 100% in antivirus benchmarks, so who cares. Once the game's installed properly it wants to be the FarCry.exe on the computer, not the one on the disc, that you apply compatibility settings to. Running the launcher from the disc, or from the PC, and hitting 'play' just runs that one anyway. I think the one on the disc just exists to be copied to the hard drive during installation.
