Forums > Game Forums > EarthSiege 2 > win 3.x and direct x??
eXo (346) on 8/6/2014 8:05 PM · Permalink · Report
The game boxes here clearly say Win 3.1 on them, however when I went to install my copy of the game it told me that it needed direct X... as far as I know, there was never a version of direct X for windows 3.1.
Was there a later release that required direct x and an earlier one that didn't? I'm very confused by this.
vedder (70822) on 8/6/2014 8:53 PM · Permalink · Report
I don't think there was.
There are probably two versions of the executable on the disc, one for 3.x and one for 95. It detects you have 95 or later and automatically tries to install that. See if there are multiple executables to be found on the disc.
eXo (346) on 8/6/2014 10:51 PM · Permalink · Report
There are not. I spoke with collector about this on the vogons forums and he stated that there is absolutely no compatibility with the game in win 3.x in the US version and that he suspected the euro boxes were either errors or it was possibly backported. I find the chances of backporting a direct x game to wing to be extremely slim, if not impossible.
Terok Nor (42009) on 8/7/2014 7:22 AM · Permalink · Report
There must be different versions then. I found a few threads of people mentioning playing it in 3.1, like this. Looks like it needs share.exe though, which is not supported by DOSBox, so there are several threads on that issue, like this one in German. Some disc contents have been posted here, with several filenames heavily implying a 16-bit version.
eXo (346) on 8/7/2014 11:47 AM · Permalink · Report
share is not supported, but there is a fakeshar file that at least makes dosbox think it exists.
But that doesn't change the fact that the installer on my original boxed release (not re-release) is win32 only and is not recognized at all by dosbox.
I've been going through and purchasing and setting up every single game that mobygames has marked as win 3.x There is a distinct difference in the way win3.x in dosbox handles a late era game that is running into emulation issues and a win95 game - not to mention that as soon as direct x comes into the picture... well, if people honestly did play earthsiege 2 on win 3.1, then that means a non direct x version would have to exist - and that is surprising
eXo (346) on 8/12/2014 7:43 PM · Permalink · Report
as an update, all in all I dug up 3 different versions US release, US budget release, and Euro release. US Release was Win 95 only. US Budget release went back and added Win 3.11 win32s support. However it is unstable and not compatible with Win 3.1 installed within a dosbox environment. The Euro release was released with Native Win 3.1 and Win95 support. This release does work in a dosbox/win3.x environment once all necessary addons are installed.