Tag Archives: Windows

Steamed

Internet, Misc, , , , ,

For the first time in quite a few years I have a Windows PC (Surface Pro) at home, so I thought I would check out a few PC games. Nothing too taxing on the tablet, the Surface is not really a games machine. As luck would have it, Steam was having a sale. I now have a mini-library of older games to play:

  • Final Fantasy VII
  • Half-Life
  • Half-Life 2
  • Portal

Video Mode Change Failure

Unfortunately Half-Life refuses to play on the Surface Pro, with this error message:

The game has detected that the previous attempt to start in OpenGL video mode failed. The game will run in software mode.

Solutions on the Web suggest changing the Set Launch Options:

-software , -OpenGL, did not work for me (the game ran, but in a unusably small window).

-w 640 -h 480 allowed me run the game in a usable window.

Half-Life

Aha, now I have a playable game

-w 1024 -h 768 allowed me run the game in a better window.

Half-Life

This isn’t going to work…

I believe the screen dimensions of the Surface Pro are 1920 x 1080, so I gave that a try:

-w 1920 -h 1080

However, that resulted in a window that exceeded the bounds of the display. For the moment I will stick with XGA.

Next, getting a suitable joystick/gamepad…

Windows 7 and Ubuntu 9.10

Gadgets, ,

Last week I upgraded the operating system on my netbook, and used the opportunity to install Windows 7.

The upgrade to Ubuntu 9.10 went without a hitch –  a desktop alert informed me that there was a more recent version of the OS available, and then I let the computer do its thing. The only downside was a long (4 hours) wait for everything to download from the Internet, and then overwrite the existing system.

Slightly more hoops were jumped through to install Windows 7, but nothing terribly onerous. 7  pales next to OS X, but it is an improvement upon XP and Vista. It is brightly mediocre with one notable exception – the Media Center. MCE is now a pleasantly integrated part of the operating system, making the computer a powerful DVR. I don’t understand why Apple has nothing better to compete with. Frontrow and theApple TV are solely neglected, the iMac screams for an integrated television tuner. I wonder why Apple does little here.