The group is a bit smaller these days, just one buddy. We’re doing some XP gaming. I got Battlefield 1942 running here, with the Battlegroup 42 mod. My Dimension E510 can really handle up to BG42 version 1.35b, but apparently they aren’t hosting that on ModDB anymore. I had to find it on some shady ancient Russian file hosting site. But I got there in the end.
This is the first time out for my Precision 690, I’ve been working on it for about a month. I rescued it from a rage room, it was going to get beat to scrap. I asked, and they gave it to me! I swapped the single Xeon 5160 for Xeon 5355’s. 2gb of ram for 32gb. The crappy display adapter for a GTX 980TI. It is an XP era powerhouse. I have not gotten XP x64 running on it yet, but it’s running Mint 22.1 like a champ. I put an XP theme on it until I can dual boot the real thing. I am super stoked this thing is running. Mint might be the better option for it, actually! Good 32bit compatibility with Wine and Lutris, and full use of the 32gb of ram and 8 cores.
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I played so many hours of the Desert Combat, Battlefield 1942 mod.
Desert Combat was so good man. So much time spent as a kid trying to master flying helicopters in it.
It’s crazy that this mod is kind of the foundation of the entire modern Battlefield landscape seeing as its devs got hired by DICE for Battlefield 2.
May I join?
I’d love to let you, but I keep my XP machine gapped from the internet. You in the greater Detroit area? Lol
Secretly, I was hoping you’d ask that question … But about my middle-of-nowhere village on the opposite side of the country.
Maybe another game, another time, online.
Having grown up in the middle of nowhere, I feel you.
Maybe! It would actually be pretty neat to get a group of Lemmings together for some online gaming.
Is Synergy still a thing? You could still fake LAN some older games through online.
Wasn’t Synergy the software that let you use one mouse and keyboard between multiple computers? Not like a KVM but with them running seamlessly side by side.
I would think older games could be tricked into believing they were on a LAN using a VPN.
Yes, they totally can. My brother and I have played Battlezone II over LogMeIn Hamachi. That was probably 8-10 years ago, is there a better free VPN these days?
Yes pls
It was a lot of fun. We really wanted to play some CoD United Offensive, but I just could not get that to install on Lutris. There must be a trick to it. My long-term goal is to get XP running on The Beast, but until then this is what I’ve got.
I also could not get Mod Manager 5 for Battlezone II to run properly in Lutris, either.
Thanks for the memories!
I worked for DICE Canada, on the Battlefield 1942: Secret Weapons of WWII expansion, and Battlefield: Vietnam. And a little bit on the BF2 Special Forces expansion. I love that people are still playing the classics.
No way!! Really? That is so cool. Man, Secret Weapons and Vietnam were amongst our favorites. We never played vanilla or Road to Rome. Vietnam was really, really good. I actually installed everything from my original discs I got freshman year of college! You worked on a huge part of my college experience, and some really great memories with my brother. I made friends in my dorm I still have to this day. Thank you.
My pleasure! We had a great time with Vietnam. I still work with some of the people who were on that team – different company, but still. Gamedev is a tiny world.
