Talk:System Requirements
The Geek: Sorry about the DOS 5.2 thing... I meant DOS 5. And I just realized it might be running slowly because of DriveSpace... I'll turn DriveSpace off and see if that makes any difference.
Moving[edit]
The Geek: Suggestion, maybe this page should be moved to "System Requirements" and have a message added, e.g. "There are no set system requirements, however here is a list of tests performed and how the OHRRPGCE performed" or something like that. Then this page could redirect there.
Bob the Hamster yeah, I think that is a good idea.
The Geek: OK, I'll see if I can figure out how to move a page, then how to redirect one...
The Geek: Yay, it sets up the redirect automatically! Just wondering, how does one go about adding something to the menu on the left? Methinks this should be there.
Mike C. You can't. Only Sysops (i.e., James, me or TMC) can. But, I think it would belong better on the Downloads page.
The Geek: OK then. And I guess it doesn't really need to be on the sidebar, I was just thinking of the fact that the first thing I look for when I'm investigating a new program is the system requirements.
Mike C. Ah. My strategy is to download first, and if it doesn't work and/or is for another platform altogether, I blame microsoft.
The Geek: Understood. I guess my reason for always checking the system requirements is I've downloaded so many programs that need more video RAM or a certain framework... it's sooo annoying to download a 20Mb package on dialup and then find you can't run it.
Kizul Emeraldfire: I've been running the Windows OHR on a Pentium III 650MHz, Windows 98SE computer with 192MB of RAM and it seems to go fine — though, I admit — I haven't tried any heavily-plotscripted games like Baby Bob the Hamster yet. I've pretty much just been using the OHR to make my own games with (my current project is T.M.N.T.: The RPG). :)
Rewrite[edit]
Bob the Hamster: Okay, so in the rewrite, I claimed that Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux are the best-tested operating systems, which is true from mypoint of view, but I would like to update that to reflect the operating systems used by the other devs and by our more prolific power-users.
S'orlok Reaves: For what it's worth, all my OHR work is done on Vista. But, I only develop tiny games, which I use to test compatibility between the Standard OHR and the OHRRPGCE FMF.
Windows 98[edit]
Bird: Despite living in 2016, the new OHRRPGCE still works on Windows 98. The up-to-date version "callipygous+1" can be run with KernelEx, an unofficial update to Windows 98. This provides some system files from newer Windows systems, like the required PSAPI.DLL. Computers without system modification can still run the previous version, "beelzebufo" from 2013. I'd also say, that the system requirements for the OHRRPGCE are lower than Pentium 3. It works on a 400 MHz Pentium 2 from the last century. That old machines don't die that fast, you know. They are simply functioning, as they never did anything else.
TMC (talk): Cool! Thanks for testing. Does gfx_directx work? Do many programs work on Win98 with KernelEx added? It's not easy to maintain compatibility with Windows versions before XP, because the winapi docs never say whether a function existed before XP or 2000, and sometimes seem to list Vista+ as required when it exists on XP/2000. psapi.dll is only needed for one function, GetProcessImageFileName, which is used for checking whether multiple copies of Custom are running at once. I think that function is only a convenience wrapper around loading and querying modules in a process, so it could be replaced with more complicated code using GetModuleFileName. But I'm not keen to spend time on it.
- It's been a few years now, but I definitely remember the OHRRPGCE working (to an extent) on a computer even slower than the 400 MHz one mentioned here -- my dad's desktop is running Windows XP and only has something like a 233 MHz processor, not sure exactly what kind (not sure if it's a Pentium 2, 3, or what.) Not sure if this has changed with more recent versions, but I was able to use Custom.exe just fine on that computer. Game.exe was so slow it was virtually unplayable, though (in battle mostly; I wonder if games with the speed stats set absurdly high might have less of a problem?) I'll have to try testing it out on that computer again whenever I end up back there again. FnrrfYgmSchnish (talk) 16:23, 28 June 2016 (PDT)
- TMC (talk): I remember that back when the OHR was still DOS-only, even on a (I think) Pentium 4 battles with 8 large enemies would run really slow. The Windows/Freebasic port ran a lot faster, and later I sped up the drawing code further. So I wonder which version you were running. I would now expect battles to run faster than a typical map with a few layers.
Bird: KernelEx brings a handful of programs to life under Windows 98. The biggest success for me was to download a Youtube video in 2014 with SMTube and watch it with SMPlayer. Some internet capable games like a current version of Counterstrike 1.6 and Clonk Rage (little German sandbox game) are also very playable. These programs don't work without the extensions on normal Windows 98 computers.
So let's take a look at the gfx_directx compatibility. Here is the result when playing a new game made with callipygous:
OHRRPGCE callipygous 20160404.7901 gfx_directx+sdl+fb/music_sdl FreeBASIC 0.23.0 (08-14-2011) Win32 32-bit exepath: C:\WINDOWS\DESKTOP\VOIDPYRAMID, exe: C:\WINDOWS\Desktop\voidpyramid\voidpyramid.exe Runtime info: music_sdl, SDL 1.2.15, SDL_Mixer 1.2.12 Windows 4.10.67766222 (98) 06-30-2016 21:44:37 Initialising gfx_directx... ! gfx_Initialize()... Adapter: NVIDIA RIVA TNT (Deutsch) Driver: NV4DD32.DLL IDirect3DDevice9 object failed to be created! Possibly lack of hardware support. Errorcode:-2147024882 Initialising gfx_sdl... <rest of log is skipped>
Oh, that RIVA TNT is from 1998! It's not capable of Direct3D 9+, so says dxdiag. My Windows 98 uses gfx_sdl and gfx_fb. It's not a big gaming machine, so probably better graphic cards do match gfx_directx requirements.
What do you think, which is the biggest memory consuming OHR game at the moment? Windows 98 performs well on a Pentium 2, so let's see if it can handle the fattest fish in the sea!
TMC (talk): (Sorry for the slow response.) Neat! I should have guessed that such an old GPU wouldn't support DX9. I have a RIVA TNT2 in storage, which does run gfx_directx if I remember correctly. I'm surprised you could play a youtube video, I seem to remember that it wasn't even possible to play .mp3 files without stuttering on a 166MHz Pentium 1. I still have a few of those old 486s and Pentium machines in storage, but don't have a keyboard with an ATX connector...
If you want to try something that's both really CPU and memory intensive, try a scripted game with lots of slices. Game:Bell of Chaos and Game:Don't Eat Soap are examples of games which run slow in places (e.g. lots of bubbles), but for consistent slowness, I imagine you will only get about 4 FPS in Fridge Racer. But the fact that games like that are slow isn't too interesting; maybe try something like Festivus, which draws a lot of backdrop graphics to the screen, which could also be really slow. As for "biggest" OHR RPG, there is no contest at all: it's Powerstick Man, Extended Edition. Which, errr... isn't available for download. Something like Dungeonmen is also a big RPG.
Bird: My answer may sound irritating. If you play these heavy OHR games on an old machine, you don't recognise that they are lagging. There must be the comparison of these games on a modern computer, to see how the games are meant to be played. "Bell of Chaos" and "Don't Eat Soap" have some slowdowns, but that doesn't affect the playability. "Festivus" was definetly slower when walking through the labyrinth, but I expected this was part of the game! It's a tour through a shopping mall, so why would you go fast... apropos fast, "Fridge Racer" was the game, that changed most through playing it on the Pentium 2. This game gets very slow, however after getting the car to a higher speed, you get what the challenge of the game should be. But it's so easy to finish the distance in time, as the timer runs much slower! So we have some timing issues here? Last but not least it was "Dungeonmen" that took me 15 minutes to download (33 MB). After the tea was ready, I got a fine working RPG with nothing to criticise performantly. I would conclude that the minimum system requirements for the OHR lay near 400 MHz. The technical demanding games are not the old style RPG, for which the OHRRPGCE is known. "Fridge Racer" is an exception, as it's a pseudo-3D racing game. Newer games will come, that might bring this Windows 98 thing to heat up a bit. Older Windows computers still would be interesting, so I'll keep an eagle eye on that.
