Armchair Dragoons Forums
Wargaming => Sci-fi & Fantasy Warfare => Topic started by: bayonetbrant on October 14, 2021, 06:53:57 PM
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#TBT - a throwback AAR of the old Shattered Union digital game
https://www.armchairdragoons.com/articles/aars/classicsu/
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Nice! I'd completely forgotten BC did an AAR for that one. I almost picked up Shattered Union on a couple occasions, but never actually did so.
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Be prepared to test it. I can't recall what I had to do but I tried to play this recently and it gave me some problems. It's just old. But, it's still a fun game to play.
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Yeah, I saw a lot of comments/complaints on Steam that the game doesn't like to run on anything newer than XP, or perhaps Vista. Pity.
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Again, another reason to keep some old XP hardware around. Some 98SE as well... and maybe even a decent 17 inch CRT. One with a Trinitron tube would be nice...
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I knew I should have kept that CGA card.
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Would emulation solve this problem? Probably not for Steam; however, if the game became available on GOG, or if someone had an original CD, I wonder if that would help?
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Would emulation solve this problem? Probably not for Steam; however, if the game became available on GOG, or if someone had an original CD, I wonder if that would help?
That might do the trick. You could set up a Win 7 PRO virtual machine using something like Virtualbox. Shattered Union was released at the tail end of the Win XP era and 7 PRO has built in XP compatibility and (as far as I know) you can still use Steam with it. I don't think Steam will work with an actual XP VM. Just be careful going online. Make an image of your Virtual machine right after install and if you do get a virus later it will be confined to the VM. Delete that and reinstall from your earlier image.
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That might do the trick. You could set up a Win 7 PRO virtual machine using something like Virtualbox. Shattered Union was released at the tail end of the Win XP era and 7 PRO has built in XP compatibility and (as far as I know) you can still use Steam with it. I don't think Steam will work with an actual XP VM. Just be careful going online. Make an image of your Virtual machine right after install and if you do get a virus later it will be confined to the VM. Delete that and reinstall from your earlier image.
It was the "going online" part which concerned me, so learning it is possible is interesting. I've only played around with VM and often thought it would be a good solution to play games newer than DOS, yet old enough that they won't run on modern operating systems. DOSBox seems to work well for what it does in regards to DOS. I know of Oracle's VirtualBox and VMWare. Are these two the best, or is there another you recommend?
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I've only dabbles with VMs a while back and currently don't have any set up so I'm sure there are others who have more practical advice. I did, however, just get an older Dell gaming laptop recently on eBay and do plan to try installing a VM or two (Win 7 pro and maybe Win98SE?) after I've gotten it's Win 10 all updated. I'll let you know how it goes.
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Looking forward to learning how it goes. Fingers crossed it is a positive experience. :fingerscrossed: