myk
Posts: 14801
Registered: 04-02 |
Dr.K. said:
I have the following problem:
My sons an I love playing the "old" DOS-DOOM. Until now they have used and "old" PC (233 MHz) running Win98SE and three old laptops (486DX2) running Win95b (no soundcard but the speaker allow shooting and other sounds - no music but this is o.k.) and playing DOOM with multiplayer via LAN. No problem, DOS-DOOM did not need so much ressources.
Now one lapop is dead and they have bought a new PC (2,6 GHz) with WinXPHome. But now DOS-DOON does not run on this PC because of the missing "real" DOS (DOS-Box).
I have tried to solve this with using e.g. DOSBox but this does not work because it is not possible to establish a LAN (IPX)-connection outside of the PC.
Then I have tried the several ports.
At first I tried DOOMsday. Fine, fine, nice resolution and graphics, smooth and fast running - but it needs 3D-hardware-acceleration and the other PC/laptops (esp. the laptops) does not has and so DOOMsday does not run on the other PC, it does not crawl - it is similar to still motion. So no multiplayer is possible. I also tried to run DOS-DOOM on the other PC and DOOMsday on the new&fast PC but is was not possible to establish a LAN-connection between them - the DOS-DOOM-PCworked together but did not get contact to the DOOMs-day-PC and vice versa.
The next was using DOOM95. Some say it is garbage but the tests I did were o.k. Anyway: DOOM95 is running on all PC and although the graphic is much worse than at DOOMsday. Multiplayer was possible - but DOOM95 wants/needs a soundcard to generate any sound and the laptops do not have a soundcard. On the other side there seems to be no way to use only the speaker and generate the simple shooting- and smashing-sounds as with DOS-DOOM (which would be sufficient). Also ist was not possible running DOOM95 and DOS-DOOM together in a LAN - the DOOM95-PC does not get contact to the DOS-DOOM-laptop and vice versa.
The main issue here is that the older computers need PC speaker sound, which is not supported by released-source-based engines, as that feature was part of the propietary code by Paul Radek that never made it to the released source of Doom, plus that even though on Windows XP Doom will run, it will have certain issues, including the lack of IPX connectivity.
You can't use different engines together, and even different versions of the same engine will likly not work or have issues while networked.
Using Doom on Windows 98 I did manage to play with someone on Windows XP that had Windows 98 on top of it with virtual PC, but it often became laggy as virtual PC used resources like a dust devil.
The dual-boot option for the new system seems like the only reasonable solution unless you can somehow add cheap sound cards to the laptops.
With the dual-boot option you could get the DOS version running again, and with the added sound cards, a light Windows version instead (like Doom95, WinDoom, etc.)
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11-07-05 16:50 
