How to play old games.

Alain De Vos

Alain De Vos

I want to go back in time even if i'm old. Playing.
-Heretic
-Prince of Persia
-Lemmings
Best way to do this on Freebsd.
Even Quake 2 . This might be modern :)
 
Try Dosbox-Staging
https://www.dosbox-staging.org/

pkg install dosbox-staging

From my cheat file:

= DOSBox-Staging
- Warnings: DOSBox-Staging seems to change FreeBSD's keyboard layout while running.
Keys: Fullscreen: Alt + Enter
Commands inside Dosbox-Staging:
- On Z:\ prompt, write: intro for Help.
== CONFIG FILES: GLOBAL AND LOCAL.
- The idea is to use 2 config files. One is global and general, the other is specific for each game or app.
- Change or create the files using vim editor or any text editor.
== GLOBAL CONF
- Use general configs for the PC. The software and specifics for each game or app are configed in a local file.
- Default configuration for DOSBox-Staging is found on
$HOME/.config/dosbox/dosbox-staging.conf
* To mount a directory by default at startup, find [autoexec] entry and write.
[autoexec]
# Each line in this section will be executed at startup as a DOS command.
MOUNT c /home/user101/Emulators/myDOSBOX/myC_directory
C:
CLS
# You can also set this up on a local config file (Recommended to use different directories as C: mounts if you have enough storage).
== LOCAL CONF
- Put this config files in a local directory where you will store games and applications installers.
- Run local conf files with a script on the same directory as the conf file. The script must be simply:
dosbos-staging -conf doom.conf.
- For example: doom.bash and doom.conf will be located on the GAMES directory. MASTER_DISK will be mounted as C when you run doom.bash. Install CD-ROM will be disk E:
mount c /home/user101/Emulators/DOSBOX/GAMES/MASTER_DISK
mount e /home/user101/Emulators/DOSBOX/GAMES/CD-ROM_ISO
[AUTOEXEC.BAT]
SOUNDBLASTER=ETC ETC
PATH=ETC/ETC
CLS
C:
== LOCAL CONF SAMPLE
# I use this conf file inside a directory with subdirectories named "A", "C", "E" for floppy, main and CD-ROM.
# This goes in a file for example mydos.conf
# Then you use it with command: dosbox-staging -conf mydos.conf
[autoexec]
# Each line in this section is executed at startup as a DOS command.
IMGMOUNT a ./A/floppy.img -t floppy
IMGMOUNT e ./E/SIMTDOS.ISO -t cdrom
MOUNT c ./C
SET PATH=%PATH%
C:
CLS
== MAKE A FLOPPY DISK IMAGE FILE
# Make a MS-DOS floppy image file that can be read by Virtualbox or DosBox-Staging
* These steps will provide an empty floppy img file, and you could add files to it.
* As root:
mdconfig -s 1440kb # Create a temp filesystem with floppy capacity
newfs_msdos -f 1440 md0 # Give MS-DOS format to temp filesystem
dd if=/dev/md0 of=/home/usuario/floppy.img count=1440 bs=1024 status=progress
chown usuario:usuario /home/usuario/floppy.img
mdconfig -du md0 # Destroy temp filesystem
== SOME IMPORTANT POINTS
- Install Windows 3.11 for Workgroups is not that hard using DOSBox-Staging.
- Follow these guides:
https://github-wiki-see.page/m/dosbox-staging/dosbox-staging/wiki/Getting-started
https://github-wiki-see.page/m/dosbox-staging/dosbox-staging/wiki/Windows-3.1x
- DOSBox-Staging Soundblaster IRQ Default is 7 (Microsoft uses default IRQ 5 for SOUNDBLASTER)
- For gaming:
https://github-wiki-see.page/m/dosbox-staging/dosbox-staging/wiki/Config-file-examples
 
Alain De Vos said:
I want to go back in time even if i'm old.
Click to expand...
No need to excuse. The old games may lack of modern graphics, but several I still play, like "Diablo" (1), "Master of Orion II", "Heroes of Might and Magic III" - all from the mid 90s - not only because of nostalgia, but because many of the old games were (are) simply just good games, while many of their successors have been enshittified, or the new ones are often just pretty well made game mechanics, but lack of a game really joyful to play.

However,
there are several ways to do it:
  • Easiest way, as some already said, find it to play in the browser; there are several sites offering many old games to play directly in the browser without the need to install anything; there are lots of such sites, not only offering the old classics from homecomputers, consoles, and PC, but many tiny ones are also worth a trial. Downside: Most of the times there is no way to save the game, and sometimes there are only trial versions with limited levels. You need to check some out for yourself.
  • Get them by GoG for example, when you don't have the original installation medium anymore, and run them in VirtualBox, dosbox, wine or likewise. (Need some fumbling, especially when some 3D is involved, particulary wine, when the game is not listed in some preconfigured list like with winetricks.)
  • Steam also offers some of the old games to play.
  • Some games like Quake are ported to run natively on FreeBSD or Linux - but you need the original installation medium for it.
 
Maturin said:
...on a tuesday? 😳
Click to expand...
Yes. It's complicated.
In some years, I can invite my kids to a DM in good old Q2Lithium and wipe the floor with them. Having them talking about this in school is not what you may want to happen as long as they got their first set of teeth. So I need to wait till they are with their mom.
 
Sometimes playing retrogames is exactly what your soul needs. I played in the last few weeks:

emulators/wine:
  • Anno 1602 A.D.
  • Warcraft 2
emulators/dosbox-staging:
  • Lands Of Lore - The Throne of Chaos
  • The Settlers 2
I'm currently doing a Warrior-playthrough of Diablo with games/devilutionX. While you can get it to run via Wine with some shenanigans, playing it with DevilutionX instead is widely considered to be the definitiv way to play nowadays.
 
I am very fond of the old InfoCom games for MSDOS 16 bit.

These are text only.
I own all of them.

Windows 98SE is last OS that will run them. I have this as a VM under ESXi.

This is not a FBSD answer…. Just my fondness for these and a solution to play them.
 
This might be a bit more recent than you have in in mind, but I have managed to get Heroes of Might and Magic III Complete with HD mod (https://heroes3wog.net/homm-3-hd-download) working.

FreeBSD version: 15.0-RELEASE-p5 (pkgbase install)

Software:
emulators/wine-devel: version 11.5,1
emulators/wine-gecko-devel: version 2.47.4_1
emulators/wine-mono-devel: version 11.0.0
emulators/winetricks: version 20260125

Notes:
- Need to install 32 bit support (from memory this is the command you are prompted to run the first time you try to run an application using a WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX):
/usr/local/share/wine/pkg32.sh --old install -r FreeBSD-ports wine-devel mesa-dri
- I do not recall having to use any winetricks, and I think the operating system was set to 'XP' (or maybe 'Windows 7') in winecfg.

If you want the details I can dig up pkg32.sh command line and the configuration settings for you.
 
graue.Ritter said:
the configuration settings for you.
Click to expand...
That's the most important part of getting something run with wine.
Installing wine and its 32bit support, as you summarized exemplary, is not where the problems are to get some software run with wine. It's within the config.
On wine's homepage there are lots of How-Tos for many games and other software to get them running under wine. Some of them actually work. But if you want to run a game not listed there, you're f#c4ed. Because I still don't find any useful documentation yet explaining all the things wine offers, how to set up when for what and why.
 
Proton is similar like winetricks mostly a bunch of preconfigurations of a long list of software packages.
Long, but by far not complete. Lacks many games. (At least the ones I prefer.)
It's worth a shot to install it. If the game(s) you want to play are involved there, Bingo! If not, you find yourself fumbling desperately with wine again anyway.
 
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