Thread:Deathstalker666/@comment-1496755-20180827202615/@comment-1496755-20181120071953

It takes just one good night's sleep to restore my good mood. Even better if it's a week or two.

We can easily ignore the cosmetics, but most modern gamers are crazy about them. It's like vanity elevated into a ritual. I suppose this is yet another example of the generation gap phenomenon - we are part of a gaming culture that didn't care about this sort of thing.

Oh, if there were any strategy guides for Aftershock (or even Q2), it would have been really cool to see what they'd say. "Army Hell has the same geometry as Spelunking, but watch out - the walls are in a different hue of brown! Don't be caught off guard by this! You have been warned!!!" And the Dark Hour strategy guide could rectify the confusion with the pack' story about rescuing soldiers by adding this important bit of plot - "Turns out they've all gone mad anyway, so just shoot everyone, yay!"

Some people are shocked indeed. "What do you mean there isn't an unskippable 10-minute cutscene at the start of the game?!?" A modern player would either find an old game boring (the lack of random cosmetics may have a part in this) or an exotic experience that is worth trying out, but not really going in-depth. There are just a few rare cases that genuinely like the old stuff and try to get more involved with it.

Well yes, there were several cases when old game predicted something, more or less... I've also experienced a few eerie game-related coincidences over the years. (shudder)

Of course you'd say that - you're an Armagon atheist! But hey, at least you'll be playing some quality levels for a change. And you could start from scratch, if you really feel like it - the old walkthrough might mysteriously disappear or something. It was probably censored by those new EU policies ;)

We'll figure something out, fear not. We've dealt with worse before - we're hardened veterans who laugh in the face of adversity. I guess I should feel blessed that my neighbors are semi-deaf elderly ladies who don't make noise and can't really hear my own noise.

Heh, I know those old operating systems can be quirky, though they aren't really THAT unstable. The only time I've had a corrupt installation was with an experimental Windows ME machine, which isn't really surprising, considering ME's numerous problems and driver incompatibilities. My experiment is going pretty well, and so far this seems to be a significantly better way of playing several older games than using workarounds (Red Alert 1, for example). There are also a few titles that do not exhibit any noticeable difference in quality between running in PCem and running with workarounds (Diablo is an example - it runs just as well on my main OS, as long as there is a DDraw wrapper present). And then, some of the heavier stuff actually runs worse in PCem, and thus it is better to play it with the workarounds (Diablo II most notably - I can use a Glide wrapper in my main OS, which gives better graphics and performance overall). So it's all a matter of experimenting and seeing what stuff is better played in emulation, and what should be kept the way it is. At any rate, PCem is very useful for installing stuff - DOS installers that are sensitive about the date/time modified of certain files (DOSBox changes those) or Windows installers that are 16-bit (quite a few of them in the mid-1990's). Before, I had to use my old laptop for this sort of activities, which was quite a hassle. Now it's a much smoother process.

Yeah, it is the only way to run certain old software. Even if ap rogram is 32-bit, it could still require some ancient DLL's or DirectX features that are long gone in contemporary operating systems.

Sadly, I don't know enough about mods and models to help you here. The only thing I can think of is to keep trying... maybe you'll blunder into it ;)