Computer Games - MS Vista ready

[Doug_Tipple]

I bought my wife a laptop computer for her birthday. She enjoys playing simple board games on the computer, so I thought that I would go over to Best Buy, where I had purchased the computer, and pick up a suite of games that would be compatible with the new Windows Vista operating system.

The computer comes with the standard card games and several other trial games, but the trial games, such as scrabble, have all expired. Other than downloading the individual games at an inflated price from the computer manufacturer, I want to purchase a CD of games designed specifically for Vista. Even though the Vista OS is the only operating system that Best Buy sold in the store, I was surprised when the salesperson told me that they did not carry such software that they would guarantee would be compatible with Vista without having a downloaded patch. A Google and Ebay search, as well, did not yield a satisfactory answer to my question.

My question is: Why is it so difficult to purchase a suite of simple board games that are designed to work well with the Vista OS? Any suggestions for suitable software?

[fearfaoin]

Vista is very, very new. Small game designers haven't had time to release
stuff that is specifically for Vista yet, and the margin on those games are
way to low to expect anyone to do it soon. If you buy a game that requires
DirectX, it should work OK for Vista, though. I've had to put a couple things
in XP compatibility mode to make them work...

[Whistlin'Dixie]

I was actually wondering the same things, as I bought a laptop today for my college bound son (at Best Buy!) and heard the same story.

M

[mukade]

I am staying away from Vista at least until the first service pack is released.

I was in charge of a large computer network during the Windows 95 release. I recommended we wait to update, but my boss wanted the newest technology as soon as possible.

Of course it was a disaster.

Since then, I always view Microsoft official releases as open beta tests.

Mukade

[mutepointe]

plus the price drops after awhile. remember when dvd players cost something like $1000? i'm going to wait to get an iphone when the are free when you open a checking account at the local bank.

[peeplj]

Vista isn't turning out to have much in the way of bragging rights for Microsoft.

The news broke not too long ago that M$ was including license sales to OEMs in its Vista sales numbers--subtract that, and it really doesn't seem to be catching on too quickly.

Also recently, the few games which are out that are Vista-specific were cracked to be able to run on Windowx XP...there may one day be Vista-specific game code written, but evidentally it hasn't happened yet.

The good news is that, with the exception of sound, just about every game that runs on XP will run on Vista, only a bit slower.

Sound can be a problem, as one of the ways M$ tried to bulletproof the draconian DRM in Vista was too remove all hardware acceleration for sound cards. If your game uses OpenAL sound (most don't), it should run fine.

If your game uses DirectSound or EAX, unless you have one of the few high-end cards from Creative that can use the Alchemy wrapper, your game will run but with no sound.

I have legal licenses for both XP and Vista and dual-boot. There are things I like about Vista--it boots very fast compared to XP, and the user interface is great eye candy--looks almost as good as Linux.

Stability seems good.

The downsides: slower performance on games. Driver support for older hardware is actually worse than Linux: abysmally bad. Support for the (non-USB) game port / MIDI port has been removed, which for some musicians can be a real headache.

And of course, strong DRM limitations on digital media. That is what Vista was actually created for...along with its "tilt bits" which by design lock up the system if it thinks you are trying to bypass the DRM code.

I'm dual-booting and learning Vista because I more or less have to: I'm in the industry, so like it or not, I need to stay current.

If it weren't for that, I doubt I would have ever loaded it on my computer.

--James

[Innocent Bystander]

Dear Doug,

Like the others have said, Vista is too new. The manufacturers and designers haven't had their hands on it long enough to produce any nicely compatible games.

I suggest "Sold-Out Software". I've been buying their products for a while.

"Sold-Out Software" is a British company that buys the rights to games which are just fading from their fashionable appeal. You can get a copy of "Worms Armageddon" for Five Pounds (say Ten Dollars American) whereas, when it was a shiny new product it was selling for Seventy Pounds. Ditto for Warcraft two. Of course, fashionable gamers and little kids (of all ages) will have nothing to do with the old stuff. But there are true gamers that know the difference between a fashionable shoot-em-up and a Good Game.

They are so cheap that I don't worry about buying a stinker. And some of them do stink. But they have their own appeal. You may well be able to buy Worms Armageddon through them. I commend it. It may not be you or your wife's thing, but it is excellent for amusing visiting children.

To give your the flavour: one I bought recently is "Bicycle Games Compendium". It's a bunch of board games, card games and gambling games from Microsoft itself. I never saw it on the "best-sellers" list, and I can see why. One I like to play is Cribbage. The "Bicycle" version of Cribbage does not stop the score at 121, but keeps on scoring. It means the loser can win on their dozy computer version. But despite that irritation, it's fun to play.

I *think* Sold-Out Software has Scrabble. It certainly has Monopoly. I've played both these games on computer, and I would not chose to do it again.

The other thing to beware of is the platform. Sold-out Software still sells "Worms 2". I don't know WHAT platform this still plays on. Maybe Windows 3.1. Just keep an eye out for stuff that is TOO old. But, as long as there aren't too many graphic short-cuts, many games will play on an advanced platform. I mean, games meant for Windows 2000 will still (mostly) play on Vista. The exceptions tend to be fashionable shoot-em-ups, which use idiosyncracies of the operating system to increase the apparent speed of the action.



Another alternative is Multimedia Fusion. This *was* "Click-and-play". It's a European "make your own games" environment. It comes with half-a-dozen that you can adjust to your own amusement. It's not cheap, but if you like thinking about games design without getting too far into the nuts and bolts of it, this is for you.

Hope you find what you are looking for.

Cheers,

Fred

[Tyler]

There are things I like about Vista--it boots very fast compared to XP, and the user interface is great eye candy--looks almost as good as Linux.

I'd take exception to this, james. I have a P3 system running XP pro that boots as fast/faster than my brand new Vista pc.
I turned all that gorram eye candy off and I run Vista in Classic View mode, as it eats up less memory for chite I just don't need/care for.
The one (ONE) improvement I can agree that Vista has over XP is that new start menu. I like the root/tree menu design versus that silly expanding menu.

Stability seems good.

You mean, you haven't had yours go into panic mode once a week for no apparent reason?

The downsides: slower performance on games. Driver support for older hardware is actually worse than Linux: abysmally bad. Support for the (non-USB) game port / MIDI port has been removed, which for some musicians can be a real headache.

And of course, strong DRM limitations on digital media. That is what Vista was actually created for...along with its "tilt bits" which by design lock up the system if it thinks you are trying to bypass the DRM code.

I'm dual-booting and learning Vista because I more or less have to: I'm in the industry, so like it or not, I need to stay current.

If it weren't for that, I doubt I would have ever loaded it on my computer.

--James

When I went to get a new laptop, the only place I could find that would give me an option of whether or not I wanted Vista was Dell. They'll load your pc with either XP or Ubuntu in place of Vista (they say they've gotten enough complaints about Vista to warrant not making it a mandatory feature).
Personally, I don't care for Vista.
Takes up too much memory, takes up too much disk space, does little or nothing useful in addition to what XP did, is not more secure than XP despite what M$ Fanboys say(especially since you can make your XP system as secure as you want with add on software, Vista not so much), suffers from a bad case of program bloat, has all sorts of add-ons and wing-wangy widgety things that I don't want nor do I need but cannot remove, it goes into nanny mode whenever it performs a function using non-M$ software, and the open source programs are some of the only ones that run well with Vista thanks to the efforts of the programmers out there who keep em up.
Too much, too soon with too little practical design and not enough actual R&D into what people are really going to use.

jsut MHO of course

[Denny]

it goes into nanny mode

[Anglorfin]

Meh yeah I could go on a whole shpeil about Vista too but you guys have pretty much covered things. If there's one thing I hate about M$ in general it's that the newer the OS the more they feel they have to baby you through every little thing.

I hate eye candy and excessive prompts or just a cluttered UI scheme to begin with, which is something M$ loves to give me. So as far as "user friendliness" goes Vista just looks like a kindergarten classroom. Which means I'll be smacking my shins on every little chair and desk in the room while trying to get from point A to point B.

Bah I wanted to avoid that . .

Anyways another option is to find a site online that offers free games using Macromedia Flash or Java or something. I used to use Yahoogames to play Chess. I know they have a bunch of conventional board games and a lot of other simple games that people can play with each other.

[Tyler]

I hate eye candy and excessive prompts or just a cluttered UI scheme to begin with, which is something M$ loves to give me. So as far as "user friendliness" goes Vista just looks like a kindergarten classroom. Which means I'll be smacking my shins on every little chair and desk in the room while trying to get from point A to point B.

That has to be the most wonderful and most beautiful description of Vista I've seen to date!

[fearfaoin]

I'm curious, how does everyone else pronounce "Vista"? I seem to
lapse into "Spanish mode" and say "VEE-sta", which makes people
look at me weird. Is there an official Microsquish stance? I've never
heard it spoken on commercials or anything, just seen it written...

[hathair_bláth]

The other thing to beware of is the platform. Sold-out Software still sells "Worms 2". I don't know WHAT platform this still plays on. Maybe Windows 3.1. Just keep an eye out for stuff that is TOO old. But, as long as there aren't too many graphic short-cuts, many games will play on an advanced platform. I mean, games meant for Windows 2000 will still (mostly) play on Vista. The exceptions tend to be fashionable shoot-em-ups, which use idiosyncracies of the operating system to increase the apparent speed of the action.

As far as the older games go, I've recently discovered that many of them were designed to run on Windows and DOS. So if you want to play one of the older games, all you have to do is run something like the DOSbox emulator or follow a few simple steps to set up a DOS prompt, (I know this works in XP. I don't know about Vista), and viola! early-to-mid 90s computer games at your fingertips.

I was trying to figure out how to run Caesar 2 (and oldie but a goodie ) on my laptop and discovered there's a whole subculture of DOS junkies out there.

[djm]

I'm curious, how does everyone else pronounce "Vista"?

Vista (a view, a prospect) is a normal English word. Both vowels are short, so "vis" in vista is the same as "vis" in visit.

djm

[I.D.10-t]

I wonder if some of the XP ported games on Linux Game Tome work. Enigma and Nethack are usually dounloaded to the computers I use.