[Katsunami]

Well, I don't know if it should go in here or not, but still.

I've mentioned a few times that I've been playing my entire stack of games one more time before I (try to) let go of them forever.

While I'd love to finish stuff like Neverwinter Nights (2002, never did the expansions), Neverwinter Nights 2 (2006, never started it despite having it since release date... full time work interfered), there are four games I *really* want to finish one more time.

Baldur's Gate (1998, finished twice)
Baldur's Gate II (2000, finished twice, but not the expansion)
Icewind Dale (2000, finished once, but not the latest expansion)
Icewind Dale II (2002, never finished)
Planescape: Torment (1999, finished twice)

They are (slowly) becoming *VERY* hard to keep running on newer computers. It could be done up to and including Windows Vista. On Windows 7, the first four required some tweaks using the MS Application Compatibility Kit. Planescape Torment required like 10 tweaks. On Windows 10 RTM everything fell apart; the tweaks didn't work anymore because MS scrapped some compatibility features from DirectX. A directX wrapper, originally written for a different game, re-instated the Infinity Engine games on Windows 10 RTM, and it still works today.

To make sure I can still finish these games, I've been looking into virutalizing them, but no VM solution supports stretching the 640x480 screen to full screen with keeping aspect ratio. But... I found a utility ("Display Changer, by 12noon) that can switch the HOST OS (in this case, Windows 10) to 640x480, and start Windows XP within VirtualBox from the commandline. Windows XP will come up in 640x480, full screen, with the correct aspect ratio, and then I can start Baldur's Gate in there. After I power down the virtual machine, everything switches back to normal.

It runs without any patches or fixes, and without any problems as far as I've seen, in the prologue. Graphics are fine. I'll have to take a look at Planescape: Torment, which is a *serious* $#%%^%^&*#$! to get running on anything over XP. I expect it to run perfectly in the VM.

So as long as the host OS supports a resolution of 640x480 and there's a way to virtualize XP, I can take even more time finishing these old games.

Even more amazing is that Baldur's Gate, which is fixed to 640x480, is stretched to fit into 1920x1080 (with black bars to the left and right to keep the correct aspect ratio) appears to be completely sharp, at least on the 15 inch laptop screen. The graphics drivers seem to do a wonderful job interpolating this old stuff... so don't even have to use things such as the 'widescreen mod.'

Thanks to the Spellhold, Gibberlings3 and PocketPlane group for modding those games for 20 years, and thanks to the writers of patches/wrappers and screen resolution switchers to keep everything running on newer computers. In combination with this virtualization solution, I can give those old classics one more run.

I wonder if they can still be run in 2028, somehow...