MS Vista

[spikeman_uk]

I just upgraded to MS Vista. While it does have some useful new features, it's causing havoc with my wi-fi setup and DOOM. With Doom, a message pops up saying it can't find DPLAY.DLL and the game terminates.

For anyone else having this problem, there is a simple solution. just go to www.dll-files.com, download DPLAY.DLL free of charge and install it in your windows/system directory. Easy!

If anyone else is having problems with Vista, I'd be interested to know.

Cheers!

[KuriKai]

lol. Windows!

[Sigma]

Until Microsoft or the game developers/publishers release patches or other updates, gaming on Windows Vista is stone cold as far as I'm concerned. There have been thoroughly documented problems with nearly every game I own, some of which resulting in the game being unplayable.

Moving from a completely capable OS to Windows Vista seems ridiculous. Windows Vista does indeed have some nice features and looks "pretty," but that alone barely justifies the price to upgrade, much less upgrading with a plethora of problems.

[+Acyclitor+]

most retail games of the direct x9 generation i'm sure will see better performance on vista once software manufacturers release patches and hardware manufacturers release drivers.

i'm worried about all my old or open source games though!*cry*

[MR_ROCKET]

Blah more upgrade more code, more code more upgrade.
Now we have to port games to windows like linux?

[Sigma]

I'm not sure to what extents all of these claims are credible, but ZDoom/Doom (Ultimate, Doom II, Final Doom, etc.), Quake, Quake II, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom 3, Quake 4 and Prey all have problems with Windows Vista. Well, actually, ZDoom/Doom, Quake, Quake II and Wolfenstein 3D are supposedly unplayable. I have read various accounts that listed Doom 3, Quake 4 and Prey as unplayable as well, but have chosen to disregard them because others haven't (though even those that can play them still complain about problems). As far as the ZDoom/GZDoom is concerned, perhaps Graf Zahl could comment on this.

I've been poking around tech support forums regarding other games, such as Sid Meier's Civilization 4, F.E.A.R., Half-Life and Half-Life 2. F.E.A.R., Half-Life and Half-Life 2 are much the same story with Doom 3 and Quake 4. Unplayability, frame-rate issues, freezing, no sound, no video, stuttering, et cetera. The only account I've read regarding Civilization 4 is that the game will not even attempt to load (it repeatedly gives a disc not found error). This problem was actually reported by Gamespot.com.

Furthermore, by no means do the problems stop there. There are problems with a huge amount of 3rd party software; DVD decoders, players, message clients, et cetera. PowerDVD apparently will not work either.

On the other hand, once everyone spends some good money on compatible (good) hardware and Microsoft and game developers/publishers release patches and/or updates, Windows Vista does actually look quite promising. These problems are to be expected (unfortunately) and thus is the price paid for early adoption.

[+Acyclitor+]

WINE for windows vista *knownot* ?

[Sigma]

A great number of patches and updates have sprung up for Windows Vista in the last day or two. It would seem most games are now playable. I am still concerned about a few however.

[KuriKai]

WINE for windows vista ?
I did read that they want to make wine run on WinXP, when they start working on directX10. So that people don't have to upgrade to play the new games

[FATAL]

Haha, I bet we'll have people running windows emulators to run Dosbox to run dos games.

[Jimi]

After reading this thread, Windows Vista seems like a big failure for Microsoft :P

[g6672D]

The games that have problems for me:

Halo and Half-Life 2: Occasional missing walls and items.
GZDoom and Doom Legacy: No OpenGL or very very slow OpenGL.
Quake4 and Doom3: Crash

Some could be because I'm using an ancient graphics card that uses a Windows generic driver. But they worked in XP with the NVidia one.

On the other hand, Wolf3D works fine minus Adlib sound. Magic Carpet 2 without sound. Dungeon Keeper 2, TES3, UT2004 and jDoom work with no problems. BF1942 also worked.

Slowdowns I haven't noticed at all. Though they were sometimes slow to begin with. :) I haven't tested much else yet. But I like the product so far.

My main concerns with this are the pricing (could be over $700 AUD for Ultimate Retail) and EULA. And the defectivebydesign tag.

[CrazedImp]

Vista Ultimate retail price is $750AUD, well $748 or something but there's no need to be specific. :p

But WindowsXP wasn't all crash hot either when it first came out, so Vista is no different. Give it a month or two and most everything will work just as well or better than it does on XP.

[FATAL]

I trust these lies not!

Or at least it will take longer than a few months.

[CrazedImp]

I did say most everything. ;)

[Tchakkazulu]

Haha, I bet we'll have people running windows emulators to run Dosbox to run dos games.

Quoted for truth.

[+Acyclitor+]

But WindowsXP wasn't all crash hot either when it first came out, so Vista is no different. Give it a month or two and most everything will work just as well or better than it does on XP.i hope so, but i'm dubious.

[Looney]

We are testing the full version at the shop.... So far I will stick with XPPro for at least the next year. *yuck*

[rustyslacker]

Hey Looney:

PLAZ :p

Anyway. I'm not upgrading. I'm cheap and I have lots of games to catch up on first. And if Vista's not curing the massive headache I have now, I'm not buying it.

[Raptor Jesus]

Haha, I bet we'll have people running windows emulators to run Dosbox to run dos games.
When I first got my hands on Virtual PC, I used it to emulate a Windows XP machine on my Windows XP computer xP. It was pretty weird. I was playing Minesweeper in an emulated windows xP.

I'm going to wait at least a year, if not more, before I even think about updating to Vista. I really see no point in it now. Everything I want works good on XP so why upgrade?

[+Acyclitor+]

i might use vista when i build a new computer which i plan to do end of this year - i'll have to watch how this whole backwards compatibility thing turns out.

[Warhorse]

Hmmm...I've been running Vista for a few weeks solid - work and fun, no real problems. Actually, after getting used to Vista's speed and graphics - I'm finding that XP is slow and flat. I think that Vista more closely represents the level of technology that I would expect by now from MS. Unfortunately, it will take a while before the whole of venders catch-up, but they're coming fast.

Vista is faster than XP on a 32bit processor, and I also have 32bit Vista running on a Pentium D - which is way sweet. I've got Doom 3 and Quake 4 on VU 32bit with no problems, thus far. I think one problem that MS faces with Vista is hardware requirements - users will try to get by with the minimum hardware, which will definately lead to a poor user experience. Without the hardware, you can't get the user experience that MS is shooting for. Luckily, all of my machines have nothing lower than a base score of 4.6. The only exception would be my faithful Linux box - which just sits there and gives MS the finger.

Except for my Doom 3 affinity, I'm not a big gamer. I heard that Warbirds 3 is great on Vista, so I think I'll give that a try as well. *kewl*

[Rekrul]

I think one problem that MS faces with Vista is hardware requirements - users will try to get by with the minimum hardware, which will definately lead to a poor user experience. Without the hardware, you can't get the user experience that MS is shooting for.

Remember the good old days when the OS was written to serve the hardware instead of the hardware being bought to serve the OS?

[RobotDevil]

Short and skinny, from my end anyway. I've been using Vista x64 for a while now and have had NO problems running games (other than some issues with Vavoom running Strife, but you get that on XP too). All my games are completely playable and at comparable frame rates to my XP machine (which has almost identical specs). I find most of the difference to be on games that support dual-core processors, these run MUCH smoother on my Vista than on my XP machine. I agree that driver support is somewhat lacking, but lets not forget the OEM's fault in that. Vista was done in November (RTM on like the 16th or something) and the SDK was sent to most major hardware OEM's but nobody used it, they kept developing drivers to work with the beta/RC1 clients. Anyway, here's a list of games that run on my PC with no compatability mode (other than the x64 emulating the x86 on it's own):

Battlefield 2 (v1.41)
Far Cry (v1.0)
Freelancer (v1.0)
Warcraft III (v1.0)
Blade of Darkness (v1.2)
jDoom (Hexen, Doom(s), Heretic)
Shogo (v1.0)
CS:Source (v-whatever)
Tsunami 2265 (v1.0)
Dungeon Lords (v1.0?)
Lord of the Rings Online (beta)

As you see the list is quite long, don't let Vista complaints discourage you from trying, some of the older Win9x based games took some, ah, "creative" installations but they work just fine. No random crashes or anything. And the list I have yet to test is about 55 games long (yes, those are retail CD's for all of 'em).

Just thought I'd let you know it's not quite as bad as you have heard.

[Harry]

Damn, I even scrapped the idea of getting Vista x64 because I read a review that said it was even less compatible with everything than the x86 version :\ Oh well..