Windowed WWP in XP/Vista? Not a dream anymore.

[Zombiek]

Well, I've looked for the solution for running WWP in a window for a long time now. After several useless attempts I've come to this simple (really!) solution. And it's working.

example:
http://www.ag.ru/_ex/wwp.jpg

So, what you will need.

1) Virtual PC - free tool for emulating PC under XP/Vista.
Get it here (around 30Mb)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=04D26402-3199-48A3-AFA2-2DC0B40A73B6&displaylang=en
2) A copy of Win95/Win98/Win2000/XP - CD or self-booting ISO. I've used my old Win98 CD, cause under this old OS WWP works much better comparing to XP.
3) A legit copy of WWP (of course)


Steps

I) Install VirtualPC and create virtual machine with settings for your OS (in my case it was Win98 PC with just 64Mb of RAM), and create virtual HDD drive with several hundred megs of free space (better OS = more space). For me it's dynamic 400Mb virtual volume.

Make sure your network connection set to "Shared Network (NAT)" in VPC's settings, otherwise the game may fail to work in WormNet.

II) Mount (in VPC termines - "Capture") your real CD or image with OS and install it as you do it on normal PC. For Win98 it tooks around 20 mins from start to finish. After all stuff will be copied and configured, create LAN connection if it's not set up automatically.

III) Capture game CD/ISO just like you did it with OS. Install the game and apply official patch. (You can download it just from virtual pc browser, like I did :)

IV) Run the game and go directly to WormNet. It will work. As for me, I've just allowed my firewall to skip traffic from/to Virtual PC client.

On my old P4 WWP runs just perfectly, with only small glitch - all sounds delay for about 1 sec. Maybe on faster computers there is no delay at all. And the GFX is smooth as hell.

Now you can not simply staring at the screen within big party games, but to browse the web, watch the pron, play X-O or chat in ICQ/AIM/whatever.

I hope this little tutorial will help you too.

P.S. And yes, you can copy your VHD-file with OS&Game installed to any other PC. And it will be working there just fine.

[pisto]

do you call it "simple" to run a virtual machine?

[Zombiek]

do you call it "simple" to run a virtual machine?
Yes, because novadays running Virtual PC isn't harder, than turning on hardware PC. And is it installing clean OS a real problem for a person, who wants to play 10-years-old game?

Of course, if you don't want to play in a window - you can wait until somebody will do the patch. If it will ever happen at all.

As for Vista - you can see in certain threads, how "good" WWP works there. For these people virtual machine is really simple solution.

Excepting installation time for W98, I've spent around 10-20 minutes for setting all things up. As for me - it's no time at all.

[Squirminator2k]

I still don't get why people want to play WWP or WA in a window. Short of being able to play it sneakily on the side at work, there's no real practical use for such a feature.

[Zombiek]

I still don't get why people want to play WWP or WA in a window. Short of being able to play it sneakily on the side at work, there's no real practical use for such a feature.
I, personally, want to play WWP in a window, cause there are lots of programs on my PC, who just LOVE to pop some windows and FOCUS on them (Firewall, antivirus, to-do lreminder, ICQ, RSS reader, and so on). Every such a window means end for WWP session, cause it can't be focused back again - everybody knows that.

With virtual machine I don't care about these windows anymore.
Also, there are games, when I play with 3-4 more people. Chances to get killed within first few minutes are pretty high. It's not THAT fun to sit & watch as others play, but it's not very cool to leave 'em and join after the game'll be complete.

That's my reasons. Other want to watch football thru TV-tuner or do something else, like reading news after each turn.

Windowed mode give more freedom for your "free" time.

[bonz]

there are lots of programs on my PC, who just LOVE to pop some windows and FOCUS on them
That's why I disable such pop-ups and always-on-top features in all my programs.

Furthermore:
Install the (official) TweakUI (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx) powertoy for Windows XP.
It has a global "anti-focus-stealing" option.

Other than that, I had often thought about trying out a virtual machine for some older games, including Hogs Of War.

[franpa]

WindowsXP by default since service pack 2 makes programs trying to attract focus flash on the taskbar X amount of times instead.

[Zombiek]

That's why I disable such pop-ups and always-on-top features in all my programs.
And then re-enable 'em again. With time-important to-do tasks it's not a good solution ;)


Furthermore:
Install the (official) TweakUI (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx) powertoy for Windows XP.
It has a global "anti-focus-stealing" option.
For me it worked for a short period of time. And then this feature just stops working. I don't know why.


Other than that, I had often thought about trying out a virtual machine for some older games, including Hogs Of War.
Yes, and that's a good side effect of using VMs ;)

[Lootskin]

I want to make a virtual OS with my Windows 98 CD. But i dunno how to make it work, i've made Windows 2000, XP to work, but i dunno about Win98.


Can someone make a guide?




Nevermind, i've figured it out.

[FutureWorm]

I still don't get why people want to play WWP or WA in a window. Short of being able to play it sneakily on the side at work, there's no real practical use for such a feature.
it's nice to be able to quickly switch between it and chat applications

[Diego82]

ZOMBIEK.... great post and great idea!! i'm playing now in a window under a win98 virtual machine and it's awesome! no more waitings!! XD

salud from spain!

[PuckMercur]

Just an idea for those for whom this is an option, and it may not even work now that I think about it. I couldn't find this particular idea in my searches.

But at any rate - if you have a laptop and don't want to mess with installing any virtual emulator and you have an XP machine in the home somewhere - it may work to remote into that machine and run it that way with the disk in the remote machine obviously.

Personally, I've just encountered the issues w/ Worms and Vista as I've picked the game back up after about 5 years of letting it sit. It works fine on my desktop running Vista x86 but not properly on my laptop for I'm sure the same reason it has issues on most anyone else's (Dell 1705 w/ Radeon x1400 and 945 chipset).

As I said, this won't be a solution for everyone and it might not even work - but I was just sitting here and had the thought so I thought I'd throw it to the wolves.

[albertr18]

When I try to run worms on emulated windows 98 with virtual PC the game don't start: missing MSVCP60.dll :S