I don’t think they have, but I haven’t bought any of the problematic games, so I can’t say for sure. And I’ve always assumed there were other factors involved until now. But not doing their homework (pretty easy homework, in this case) to at least point users in the right direction of known fixes gets under my skin.
If I paid $10 (top dollar for GOG), I wouldn’t expect to A) run into these problems and B) have to go digging for all this stuff myself when the game page says it’s “compatible.”
EDIT: What Mark said.
Yeah I totally support the analysis of whether it’s worth your 10 bucks. Since I don’t follow GOG, I wanted to know what we could reasonably expect from them these days. I’ve got it now.
Just as a head’s up for everyone, I created my own personal GoG-compatibility list, and posted it up on a very quick & dirty blog page:
http://gogcompatible.blogspot.com
It’s not intended to be a comments page, just a straightforward fast rundown of the GoG games I have and how they work with modern OS’es. Comments and additions to the list are welcome – you’ll be credited.
Again, not a vanity page, more of a PSA page :)
Well, I have the original Might and Magic 6 release which doesn’t run under WinXP and above. As it is not a DOS game but a Win95 one, and the GOG version runs without problems under Win7, they must have done at least something I presume.
With that said, most of the time they just slap DOSBox on top of a game and call it a day, though…
Love the idea! :)
Games not on your list:
Commandos - Behind Enemy Lines
Commandos - Beyond the Call of Duty
both work perfectly under Windows 7 64bit (played and completed both on highest difficulty last year).
GoG has the only version that worked so far for me.
The games are CPU limited meaning that with modern processors game speed is too fast and all one could do is trying to slow down the CPU with some programs / putting a lot of load on them.
Somehow GoG did manage to put them to the right speed for modern CPUs (mine is a Intel Core Duo E8500+).
Far Cry
Again perfectly fine on the same machine / OS.
Completed it on highest difficulty without any problems I could recall.
XIII
also works perfectly (Completed it last year on highest difficulty with the same machine / OS).
Groovy. Thanks and credited.
Vargr
6168
Thief II: The Metal Age is up now!
A predicatable release, but still welcome.
Giaddon
6170
This is great. Someday soon I’ll grab them both and go on a Thief bender.
Nixxter
6171
Sweet! I am going through Thief for about the third time. It looks nice in a higher resolution and, of course, I am a better gamer than I was back in the day.
It’s definitely a game and series that holds up and that I get into again. Usually I am not like that with games (and too many unplayed ones to want to go back and play them again). But Thief and Thief 2 are in my top 10 (possibly top 5) all time, so for me, this is the highlight of many good things that have come out of GOG.
WarrenD
6172
One of my all time favorites, Spellforce 2 Shadow Wars and Spellforce 2 Dragon Storm both fall under the (***) rating because you have to adjust a config file manually to play these at widescreen rez’s, but they look great fully cranked at 1600x900.
Thanks, WarrenD.
Thief 2 gets a (***) as well – runs out of the box, but no movies and the old limited resolutions. Tafferpatcher fixes everything but the movies for me.
Nixxter
6174
I found the movies are key to setting the mood on my replay for Thief itself. I could get them running on my old CRT / XP rig (at a nice high resolution), so I am doing that instead of playing it on my widescreen 27" Dell.
Also, playing in the dark, late at night. Got to set the mood just right!
WarrenD
6175
Before I forget, another one for your list scharmers:
Arcanum also gets a (***) as it needs both the Fan Patch and the High Resolution Patch to bring it up to speed.
Giaddon
6176
Eh, both of those are additions to the base game. Even if you had the game running perfectly as designed, you wouldn’t have those features. I wouldn’t call it a compatibility issue. The fact that mods exist that improve again shouldn’t be a knock against GOG.
WarrenD
6177
Exactly, that’s why I rated it as I did by scharmers rating system:
“Three Stars (***): Games plays OOtB as intended. 3rd-party fixes and additional configuration can bring the game close to modern standard (higher resolutions, later DirectX version support), or will significantly approve content, but this is optional – the game will run fine on its own.”
Yeah, the three stars rating is basically there to give folks a head’s up that there’s neat stuff out there that they don’t necessarily need, but will make the game better/more modern. Jagged Alliance 2 is another example – runs just fine with GoG’s 1.12 version, but is better with V1.13. None of the ratings reflect on the actual game’s quality, just how easy it is to get running and whether or not anything is out there that makes it run, uh, more “modern”. :)
The list itself is pretty bare bones about exactly WHAT mods are out there, by design. It’s Wall O’ Text enough.
Demorve
6179
I was looking at your site and noticed that you gave Starflight 1 & 2 4 's. How did you over come the monsters on the planet from moving to fast. Even if I reduce the cpu cycles the monsters kill me before I can even shoot them. By your criteria I would give the Starflight games a 2 rating.
Hmmm. Let me take a look at those, and I’ll even try kicking cycles down to like 500 or something. Would be interesting if DOSBox wouldn’t slow down enough to handle the game. The only other thing I’ve seen like this would be the Wing Commanders where one cycle setting just doesn’t work for the whole game.
This is exactly the kind of reference I’ve always been wanting when I buy games from GOG. Please keep this page up (and updated as you’re able). I’ve now got it in my “Favorites”. Thank you very much!
