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So I fire this puppy up. It takes an hour and a half to install it - I expected that. When it starts up finally it takes a long time. I sit there hoping this is a "one time" dealie, despite the lack of inidcations that this is what it is. When I finally get to the desktop, I realize I can no longer see my Trillian icon in the system tray, but I can still hear it logging on. After trying several things I discover that un/reinstalling it fixes this. MemTurbo starts up twice for some reason. The desktop disappears for a second for some reason. And a simple volume adjustment in the system tray results in 80 processes I have to end. I start to wonder if this was such a good idea after all.
Then I noticed that I'm in a 800x600 resolution mode. I figured out in Win98 SE that the largest resolution I can push with my Voodoo3 3500 card is 1152x864, so I go to Display Properties. I can't pick that - it goes from 800x600 to 1280x1064 - and that latter resolution just doesn't jive with my monitor. Then I noticed that it has something like "Generic SVGA" as the adapter. Well that simply won't do, so I figure just reinstall the driver. Small problem - what do I reinstall? 3dfx only ever came out with Win9x and Win2K drivers - and now 3dfx doesn't exist anymore. I installed the Win2K driver - but it didn't take. Crap. So I did a Google search for WinXP and Voodoo3 3500 and it sent me to NTCompatible (I wonder if they'll ever change their name) who tells me that I might as well hit the Windows Update site, so I do.
Well holy crap, "product updates" pulls up some hotfix and a "Voodoo 3/4/5 series compatible adapter". Cool - Microsoft of all people is going to keep the drivers up to date. I fire it up and it works like a dream. Except that now my system can only push 1024x768 - perhaps some more fiddling is due.
I hate skinning. Some programs, like Winamp, use it to good measure, but others, like Ulead's VideoStudio, use it to hide their inadequacies. So WindowsXP is like one BIG skin. However, surprisingly, I like it. It "feels" good - not like some idiot-proof Mac or something. I'm not sure what to make of the start menu - perhaps it can be modified. It puts your name in big letters on the top of it, along with a customizable icon - I wonder why it chose the Rock Gutiar for me (unless it does this for everyone). In addition, you can uninstall it and go back to whatever you ran before - how effective this is I don't know, but it's neat.
As for the Windows Product Activation? Please - like presenting your driver's license when writing a check or being polite to the police officer, so long as you're legit it shouldn't be a big deal.
So no longer am I relegated to using Windows 98, nor do I have to worry with Windows 2000's compatibility issues - though the sheer newness and beta quality of Windows XP does tend to make compatibility a whole different animal. I haven't made my final verdict on Windows XP but I can say this much so far: not bad.
Oh, and yesterday I forgot the Nintendo 64 port of Doom, which looked and played more or less nothing like any previous version of Doom ever - the levels had changed and the engine heavily modified and enhanced to the point where it just wasn't Doom anymore. I figured they had made a whole new game and just "pasted" some Doom enemies into it, but I learned recently that indeed it was based on the original Doom source code, so they just made a hard left with it. So, despite having the best graphics and sound and also being the last Doom port to a console (save DoomDC), it also wond up being the worst port ever.
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So, on to other things. A port of Doom to the Dreamcast has been released. Coded by some independent hackers, DoomDC does a pretty bangup job. Considering that this is pretty much the first independent effort to port a piece of exisitng source code other than an emulator to the Dreamcast, it's mighty impressive. It will run the IWAD files for Doom, Doom II, The French version of Doom which lacks the swastica location, Ultimate Doom and both episodes of Final Doom. However, while it does have full speed and sound support, it doesn't play music just yet, nor does it feature multiplayer. Also, due to how the screen rendering is (so far) handled, the colors look a bit washed out. However, these are minor quibbles - this is the best console port of Doom ever. Doom's NeXTSTEP development platform meant that porting was relatively easy for id, so many consoles got Doom, but none of them ever got it right. The Atari Jaguar version was alright, but it had a low resolution (somewhere between the "high" and "low" on the PC) and the levels were abbreviated (some were missing, others had sections missing). Oh well, at least it had multiplayer through two linked Jaguars (finding a second person with a Jaguar, however, was the fun part). The Sega Genesis 32X version was laughable in that the screen size was too small and no sprites existed for any angle other than head on - all enemies were "coming right for you" all the time. The version for the 3DO player was pretty awful - lots of missing frames and the usual smaller levels. The versions for the Sony Playstation and Sega Saturn did what they could given the lack of technology, but neither really went down in the history books. And the Super Nintendo port (running with the assistance of the FX2 chip) was, like the upcoming port to the Game Boy Advance, more of a technical demo/stunt than an actual port of the game - impressive for the platform in consideration, but the worst ports in so far as the game was concerned.
Still, it felt damn good to play that game again. I think I'm going to have to go fire up the Bobby Prince soundtrack tonight. Let's just hope id doesn't blow it with Doom III.