Gaming in Windows XP

April 12, 2002

by Richard Leader

While most of the press concerning Windows XP, even among the gaming community, has concentrated primarily on the product's new activation scheme along with the standard host of benchmark comparisons--gamers making the upgrade were still left in the dark concerning many of the issues they would soon be facing. Though it was expected that some games would not run (including some of the more recent releases), even more problematic were the games that seemed to take inordinately long times to load and yet seem to function happily after that. Not being a clear cut example of incompatibility, users were left to wonder if they themselves are at fault. Other problems, such as the now infamous 60 Hz display error (where monitors would default to the ungodly low refresh rate that causes eyestrain from the flicker) had both Microsoft and video card manufacturers pointing their fingers at each other in blame, leaving most users in the lurch. These issues, however, have made it so that many other issues relevant to XP gamers have been largely ignored.

DOS Gaming

That is the million dollar question: will all my old DOS games still work? After trying to field that question many times, it seems that it is best answered by yet another question, "still?" Even Windows 98 (and its siblings SE and ME), though based on a DOS core, often had trouble with older software designed for the archaic Expanded Memory system and ISA format sound cards. If and when they did work, they would often run far too fast to be useful on today's more powerful machines.

While some advanced users resorted to doing more esoteric things to temporarily sabotage their computer's speed, such as disabling CPU's on chip cache (which is surprisingly effective on newer CPUs) or even changing the BIOS clock frequency multiplier to that of a slower chip, most gamers turned to various shareware programs such as MoSlow. While these were often capable of slowing games down to the required speed, not only were they were hard to use with often ridiculously complex command line instructions that required guessing what percentage of your CPU's normal speed would be the equivalent of a 386 16mhz chip, they usually also required registration and payment for the software to be fully functional--both of which were (and are) a deterrent to the casual user.

Because of these issues, it is more than a little bit disingenuous to ask if your old DOS games will still work, as it is painting a far too rosy picture of the way things were prior to Windows XP. After all, many members of the gaming community have been working diligently, volunteering their own free time, in an attempt to reverse-engineer old games to be playable on modern systems, such as the Exult team's work on Ultima VII.

To finally answer the question, however, I would have to say, in short, yes. Many DOS games will run and in some cases more easily than ever before… as long as sound is not involved.

Though the Compatibility mode feature has received its share of hype, ostensibly allowing you to essentially emulate the various environments that different Microsoft operating systems provide, practically speaking, these are of little use to gamers.

As few games were produced for Windows 95 that ran strictly in the Window's environment (often running instead on the dos4gw.exe shell, a proprietary environment licensed by many developers) until Blizzard's original Diablo showed the world what DirectX was really capable of, in 1996. Even fewer major Windows games existed prior to that, so the fact that XP Compatibility mode does not even offer a Windows 3.1 environment is of no loss from that standpoint. However none of the modes seem to offer any advantages pertaining to the DOS kernel, so running a DOS program in Windows 98 Compatibility mode is NOT the same as running a DOS program on a separate Windows 98 install, something that most of the hype has managed to imply.

Despite XP featuring a more robust control set for allocating memory to DOS programs (it is no longer necessary to run a separate PIF editor to manage these functions as they can be accessed by simply right clicking on the program's icon and selecting "properties" from the drop down menu), it seems that maximizing the settings is often less efficient than just leaving them on auto-pilot. Master of Magic, a cult classic that combined the building aspects of both Sim City and Civilization with the military tactics of the lesser known Centurion (all set to a world taken out of the collectible card game, Magic the Gathering) ran flawlessly out of the box despite its hefty requirements for conventional memory that made it sometimes tricky to run back in the days when DOS was the norm. Tweaking the settings in the Memory Properties control panel did more harm than good. However, all of this is without sound.

While there is an Autoexec.bat and a Config.sys in the root directory of your hard disk in Windows XP, they are not actually used under normal situations. Instead, an Autoexec.nt and a Config.nt located in the \windows\system32 directory are called when running a DOS program unless you specify an alternate path in the advanced settings. In the Autoexec.nt, you will find the line to initialize Sound Blaster compatibility. By default it will look like this:

SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 P330 T3

Or, for the sake of clarity:

SET BLASTER=AX IX DX PX TX

While some of the later DOS games would detect the location of a sound card automatically, prior to that, it was necessary to manually input the card's information within the install program--or in some cases, every time the program is run.

There first three registers are the ones that are important and need to be remembered. Ax specifies the card's address, Ix controls the IRQ setting, while Dx is the DMA (sometimes called the "digital IRQ" or DRQ) setting. Only the first of those registers is important for Adlib compatibility (the first mainstream sound system, which primarily played music and not sound effects), while all three have to be entered correctly for many games to work with Sound Blaster compatibility.

However, even with the correct numbers at your disposal, many modern sound cards no longer come with DOS drivers, including the latest incarnations of the Sound Blaster (though drivers for the SBLive! series were made, they are no longer are included with the standard software and must be downloaded from other hobbyists on the web). But Microsoft has not gone to any lengths to make this easier for users. In fact, most of the XP help files regarding these issues were written years ago for previous operating systems and do not discuss if and how XP supports Sound Blaster emulation through the Window's Sound System.

That said, the average user will often be more likely to get a DOS game to work on the first try with XP (though it is not as likely to support sound as a Windows 98 install) but conversely, if a game does not run in XP users will have little information regarding why and even less recourse in trying to rectify the problem.

The option to make a bootable disk for a DOS environment still remains as always--and is even more convenient now that most systems support both making and booting from bootable CDs that contain basic startup information. However, this is moving beyond the reach of most gamers as traditional utilities such as memmaker.exe (a utility for optimizing memory in DOS) are no longer readily available to them.

Strangely enough, it is often far easier for gamers to enjoy the nostalgia of their favorites in emulation on the PC (whether it be the original arcade ROM in the case of games "ported" to the PC, or the Amiga or even Super Nintendo version of a PC favorite) rather than with the game software they already own. What is puzzling is that Microsoft itself has not worked towards creating a completely emulated DOS session capable of handling a standard environment, that would not only support most games (and things such as USB joysticks), but be able to run them at the desired speed by assigning one of the traditional "landmark" CPU classes to the session (the 8088, the 286 16mhz, the 386DX 25mhz, 486dx2 66mhz, or possibly the Pentium 133mhz for those with especially fast CPU's today). Though this feature would not be overly attractive to most users, it is a necessary component of the Windows OS and it would most likely take someone the resources that Microsoft has in order to accomplish it. It would be especially feasible if Microsoft stopped trying to recreate the wheel with schemes to get people to switch from MP3 to WMA (Window's Media Audio) for their music needs.

 

Integrated XP Features

The most compelling reasons for making the upgrade to XP are promises of higher stability and better handling of large blocks of memory--two features that might make up for the larger overhead in system resources. However, many of the more cosmetic and interface options also carry over into gaming as well:

ClearType

Though font smoothing is not a new technology, XP does put a new spin on it with the introduction of ClearType. Not only does it use traditional methods of anti-aliasing (blending the edges of text so that it appears smoother and more defined), it is based on a sub pixel algorithm that takes advantage of the physical properties of new LCD displays.

LCD pixels, unlike those of conventional CRT monitors, are made up of three individual stripes whose intensity contributes to the final perceived color of the pixel. By rendering fonts using the sub pixel components, fonts can be made nearly 2/3rds smoother than using the Standard font smoothing ability (introduced first in the Plus! add on for Windows 95), but naturally, only on LCD displays. However, ClearType can also be a compelling option for users of CRT monitors as well because of some of the limitations built into the Standard option.

Whether or not Standard font smoothing is actually enabled (even as the option is turned on) for a certain size character seems to be dependant upon screen resolution. These seem to be the smallest sized font to be smoothed on various popular resolutions:

1600x1200 9pt.
1280x960 12pt.
1024x768 16pt.
800x600 22pt.
640x480 12pt.

Because of this, much of the text that you see at most gaming resolutions will not be smoothed at all with the Standard option set.

There are drawbacks to using ClearType on a CRT display, as the sub pixel data is still rendered, despite their not being any sub pixels present. This has the effect of sometimes creating thin red fringe on the left side of characters and another blue fringe on the right. Especially thin characters (such as your cursor in a word processor) that desire to be thinner than a single pixel can shift colors as you move them about.

Though many of the popular 3D games such as Return to Castle Wolfenstein use their own font rendering system, among other genres there are many titles that use the Windows font system as well and can often make use of the advantages that ClearType provides.

The above image is of the hit game Civilization 3 with Standard font smoothing engaged. Move your mouse pointer over the image and it will change to the same screen with ClearType enabled. The difference is even more pronounced in other areas of the game's interface, such as menu system, but the images of actual game play are more demonstrative of the typical improvement.

Those of us lacking LCD displays will occasionally see some of the problems associated with using ClearType on a CRT monitor, however.

The red and blue fringes from sub pixel rendering whole pixels are sometimes most evident in bolded text, as you can see here. It is much more distracting in the actual game than in a screenshot, as it tends to shimmer. Here is a 2X enlargement to show further detail--take note of how perfect the above red text looks and yet how distorted the bold text below is:

Despite this, ClearType will make many of your existing games (unless you play 3D first person shooters exclusively) much prettier to look at in XP, not to mention easier on the eyes, though this is a personal preference as some people find it to be blurry and distracting.

Audio and Accessibility improvements

Not all of the interface improvements in XP have been visual; great strides have been made in making the operating system more accessible to those with differing levels of physical abilities.

Like many people, I first encountered some of these features by accident. In the best selling Deus Ex, there is a somewhat eerie mission that takes place within a deep-ocean submarine base. Playing through the game recently (after installing XP) it seemed far more eerie than previously as I heard a muted voice in the background. I could not make out many of the words that it was saying, but it seemed to echo in the game's environment with disturbing clarity as I had the 3D sound feature turned on. It was not until I exited the game and did some research until I found out what exactly had happened and how I had triggered it.

When I fumbled in the dark to hit ALT and "U" to use one of the in-game items, I had mistakenly pressed the Window's key and "U" which brought up the XP Utilities Manager and launched the Narrator program. The disturbing speech I heard was actually a combination of XP reading aloud my key presses and the in-game menus and special events that appeared as text on screen! Similar things have happened to many XP users who unknowingly had their Language Bar (a toolbar that controls the speech recognition features) turned on and had random text appear on their screen, not knowing that their microphones were picking up ambient sounds from the room and recording them as user input.

Though Microsoft has tried to freeze out competitors in the voice chat market, such as Roger Wilco (which is now chiefly associated with the GameSpy network), in favor of their own Sidewinder Game Voice peripheral which relies on the MSN network, the new accessibility features in XP could actually be a boon to the industry.

The Narrator is highly adaptable, where it can be directed to read specific things and has customized voice profiles; though none of the three included personalities seem remotely human, at least to the extent that Macintosh users are accustomed to, especially with regard to the wide variety offered with that OS. It is unclear to what extent the fault lies with Narrator itself or whether the deficiency is associated with the available profiles. Though perhaps not ready for prime time, this feature might be of some use for gamers in the future. While text to speech will never be able to replace good voice acting, it is undoubtedly preferable to bad voice acting and is much cheaper as well. A game could potentially include a dozen or so voice profiles for the operating system's integrated text to speech software in lieu of recordings of thousands of lines of recorded speech. Not only would it save time and money--it would also save hard drive space and make it feasible to add speech to role playing games that have so much dialogue that recording it is simply unfeasible.

Going in the other direction, the speech recognition feature does stand to eliminate competition in the industry as the software is expensive to create and the market willing to pay for it has been quite small, forcing products such as the Dragon Dictate series to often sell for hundreds of dollars. However, having such software included with the OS seems to be a boon to both those with disabilities and the rest of us as well. By making it a standard OS component, Microsoft has made it so other software packages always know what to expect when trying to take advantage of it. Rather than having to bundle a specific speech recognition application, even things as seemingly trivial as games will be able to take advantage of the feature, allowing users to only have to "train" the software once (speech recognition software necessitates users speaking a variety of words and phrases to calibrate the program for the specific users voice). Unfortunately, once Microsoft's competition falls by the wayside, there will be little incentive for them to improve upon this feature further.

Conclusion

Developers are increasingly integrating their games to run with Windows instead of "on" it as has been the legacy of moving from DOS. Rather than pretending the OS does not exist as soon as the game begins, more and more games are taking advantage of Windows OS conventions. Although sometimes this is done haphazardly and to the annoyance of users--such as Remedy deciding we might want our Max Payne save-games to be stored within our "my documents" folder (Dungeon Siege and Grand Theft Auto 3, among others, have continued this trend)--if developers worked towards a standard such a thing could be eminently useful. To continue with the above example, in the past, save-games were hard to backup or transfer from one computer to another because they contained directory or "path" specific information and had components stored in multiple directories that were not intuitive to users. If all developers agreed upon a specific folder within the "my documents" to store this game information and made it easy to backup or exchange from there, it would be an improvement for all games across the board. Powerhouses in the industry like the Gathering of Developers (GOD) and Electronic Arts could make such a thing possible now that the OS has standardized the feature. It is up to Microsoft to make the new features it releases more modular and for developers to work together to exploit. Whether or not this will happen any time soon, however, remains to be seen.