Hi All,:=
I was up tonight, and for whatever reason my mind started wandering to my misspent youth playing independent adventure games....from there
I remembered playing games from Yahtzee, and Phil Reed's Larry Vales, but history has not been kind to these old AGS games...I was unable to play any of the classic AGS games I remember....Should I abandon these games as incompatible, and forget them and move on? If not, then how do I run these ancient games on my current computer, and moreover, whatever happened to Phil Reed and Larry Vales?
Cheers,
Taryuu
I have been wondering the same thing. I am about to give it another go and see what I find out. I am running windows 10.
Also, thinking about giving it another actual shot at using AGS to create something.
I'm using using win 7 at the moment,I also used to have problem playing the old ags games,the game kinda froze but the sound keeps playing,if thats your problem then I fixed it by going to my intel graphic & media control panel and change the color depth from to 32 bit to 16 bit.
There are various ways to try to get old AGS games to run:
1. Set various compatibility modes and graphic modes in Windows.
2. Use a virtual machine like DosBox (for the very oldest games).
3. Try to run the game with a newer version of the engine.
4. Try to run the game in the experimental ScummVM AGS build.
Each of these approaches requires a longer explanation; you should try searching the forums for previous threads. Results can not be guaranteed: it will depend on the details of the game and your computer, though I think in most cases it should be possible, one way or another.
I'd recommend something different: Why don't you try to play one of the newer AGS games? Lots of games have been released in the past few years and they usually work fine on modern PCs. For example, this page lists the games from last year's awards: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/wiki/AGS_Awards_2014 (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/wiki/AGS_Awards_2014) (some of them are commercial, but there are also a lot of freeware games - check out the "Best Freeware Game Created with AGS" category).
I can't run anything made before AGS 3.0 on my Win7 system unless I paste 3 .dll's into the directory with the game .exe. I got them from the first post in this thread (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=46598.0). I think it's something to do with incompatibilities between the old Direct Draw (only option in the older AGS versions) and newer systems, but I'm no expert: I just know it works.
edit: It looks like some people have been having problems with the archive format Saurabh used so here's a zip mirror (http://www.vanwijst.com/games/old_ags_compatibility_fixer.zip) with the files.
Although Phil doesn't make games anymore, he has it on his mind... so Larry Vales may return for a new generation*... watch this space :)
*of PC's more than people...ok maybe both ;)
ps. Welcome back!