Back around 2020 or so I wanted to play old games because I only had an underpowered laptop that could barely play modern games.
One I downloaded off MyAbandonWare was this shooter from 2003 called Devastation. It’s alright, but more I played it when I was younger and always wondered what happened to it.
On my old laptop it always crashed on startup and I just couldn’t get it working. I could open the level editor and that was about it.
Recently I downloaded it again onto a new laptop I put Linux on and tried a few different configurations. I heard how WINE can be better than Windows for old software so I decided to give it a shot.
Eventually I used Bottles with a gaming configuration set to Windows Xp.
I tried Devastation with that setup and it worked. I still have an issue with the game being in the top left corner and not taking up the full screen, but it’s playable.
I have a top spec gaming PC now running Windows 10, but there are things this Thinkpad can do that my big PC can’t.
I’m pretty sure compatibility mode in Windows hasn’t actually done anything after Windows 7. There were a few games and programs I had running on Win7 using the XP compatibility mode, but using the same setting on Win10 did nothing.
Windows 10 also seemed to be the time many games started needing community made patches to run even if the game worked fine on 7.