Back around 2020 or so I wanted to play old games because I only had an underpowered laptop that could barely play modern games.

One I downloaded off MyAbandonWare was this shooter from 2003 called Devastation. It’s alright, but more I played it when I was younger and always wondered what happened to it.

On my old laptop it always crashed on startup and I just couldn’t get it working. I could open the level editor and that was about it.

Recently I downloaded it again onto a new laptop I put Linux on and tried a few different configurations. I heard how WINE can be better than Windows for old software so I decided to give it a shot.

Eventually I used Bottles with a gaming configuration set to Windows Xp.

I tried Devastation with that setup and it worked. I still have an issue with the game being in the top left corner and not taking up the full screen, but it’s playable.

I have a top spec gaming PC now running Windows 10, but there are things this Thinkpad can do that my big PC can’t.

  • Malix@sopuli.xyz
    4·
    10 hours ago

    TBH, I kinda do prefer to run the game on Win 3.1 I have installed in my dosbox (and neatly transport the whole “C:” around my systems with Dropbox sync :D), as the UI of CoTW gets kinda too small without pixel doubling/tripling - and afaik that’s one thing Wine doesn’t do.

    Sidenote: BTW I have looked what the game Castle of the Winds is about. Man its from Epic. This company was such a cool company back then.

    published by Epic, but not developed by them. Anyhoo, they were cool once upon a time. :)

    edit: apart from nostalgia trip, I would say you don’t need Win 3.x if you already have Win98 set up in dosbox - should run all 16bit windows apps from stone age just fine as is.