8/8.1 crappy old games support any good workarounds?

[avada]

Hello!

It seems that old games support is totally butchered on windows 8 and 8.1. They run but slowly.
Desperados was unplayable for example. (I suffered through it with wineD3D and broken UI)
No One Lives Forever is playable but has crappy framerates. Less than 30, which sometimes drops below 20. Which makes it not quite enjoyable....

I was wondering if I could hack some sort of solution. Maybe copy relevant files from older windows versions. 7 and Vista are the closest. These games ran well up until 7. Is it possible? Anyone try something like this?

 

[Japeroen]

Remember that some old games' frame rate is capped at 20 (more wasn't necessary back then). I remember that this is the case for AOE II for example.

 

[Allison]

Unfortunately, it's all fanmade fixes at this point. For example, Neverwinter Nights 2 runs beautifully- as long as you're willing to restart your computer rather than play it after your machine's been on for fourteen hours and so on which I learnt online. Otherwise it lags like I'm trying to run it on the ancient XP computer that went curb side in the last local pickup, HDD-less of course. Look for other gamers and their solutions online as there are a lot of us who are fond of older games and put up with compatibility issues to play them. Most older games were never designed to work on anything with a dual core processor of all things, let alone a quad core or a 64-bit operating system, or even the graphics cards of back in 2008. Fortunately in many cases, there are workarounds.

I have the opposite case in KotOR where I have to enable V-Sync to stop screen tearing. The game, designed to work on far weaker components churns out too many frames per second which is why my next desktop screen is probably going to be 120hz- a far cheaper option than shopping around for a laptop with a same screen refresh rate.

 

[alphanumeric]

This may or may not help but open control panel and go to Programs and Features. Now go to Turn Windows features on and off and look for Legacy Components > Direct Play. Enable it and see if it helps.

 

[dskiller]

This may or may not help but open control panel and go to Programs and Features. Now go to Turn Windows features on and off and look for Legacy Components > Direct Play. Enable it and see if it helps.

it doesnt really help.

I tried to google directplay and only thing I come across is that it is networking in older games.

 

[alphanumeric]

OK, I figured it couldn't hurt and was worth a try.

 

[madmax1100]

Its unfortunate at this time as there is no real reason for older games frame rates to drop. Windows8 was SUPPOSED to have the same compatibility as Windows7 and play games better. Its a glitch in Windows8, and Its unknown at this time if MS intends to fix the compatibility issues or just move on and pretend that they have continued directx compatibility. Considering windows7 has no problems with these games, and Windows8 is often claimed as a better/faster windows7 with a metro interface added, one is currently left to hope that the problem could be a driver issue, or hope for an individual to find/make a patch, or one of the various tricks that work.

Reading some of the help on microsofts support page , leads me to believe the answers are purposely tone deaf.

Lets hope this gets resolved by Windows9 or within another year, a solution by gamers is found.

On another note, I host games on my computers and you can always tell when someone is using Windows8. There is a strange pulse that gets triggered, its like someone trying to play off satelite, but not as extreme, just enough to be annoying and mess up the frame rate. Kinda like what some Older antivirus programs would do that didn't have silent gaming modes or fullscreen modes.

I am sure there is some games that work better on Windows8, people keep telling me its faster, but so far, its been a major disappointment and my one friend has given up and trying other solutions with different OS hoping to have better success with emulation.

 

[avada]

Damn you MS!!!
Colin McRae Rally runs lik 10-20 fps (if it doesn't crash). The car setup runs at 1.8 fps... I need like a minute to get past it.