Tech Support

Long Tail Games were created well before the current crop of computing technology came about. Sometimes it's hard to get the old stuff to work with the new stuff. Here are some resources to help you make it go.

Long Tail Gaming on Linux and Mac OSX with WINE

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A friend of mine recently asked if Patrician III might run on a Mac.  My knee-jerk reaction was: "Silly man.  Of course you need Windows to run a Windows game." 

Except, of course, I was wrong*.

I remembered that I'd played Patrician on my Ubuntu Linux laptop a while back, and it ran just fine ... provided I was willing to install the incredibly awesome WINE application, which runs Windows apps without needing Windows.

* A textbook vindication of Shoemaker's Rule #3: "Distrust the Easy Answer."

Symptoms: 
  • You want to play Windows games.
  • Your computer runs Linux or Mac OSX or some other non-Windows operating system.
Submitted by cameron on Mon, 06 Jul 02009 - 14:12

Fixing Jerky Performance with AMD Dual Core Optimizer

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As I played the 3d game ObsCura, I discovered that my 3d performance would jerk back and forth between perfect and far too fast.  This was weird because usually performance issues have to do with games running too slow.

Symptoms: 
  • AMD Dual Core Processor
    (Right-click "My Computer" and select "Properties" to see your processor.)
  • Windows XP
  • Jerky rendering that over-performed, as if the computer were working twice as fast as it should sometimes

Submitted by cameron on Tue, 16 Jun 02009 - 19:30