DescentBB

Ahhh, Descent. How I have missed thee. Now that I have my own laptop, I can play them again.

....If I could get the bloody thing to install and run, that is.

I run a 64-bit version of Vista, and when I slam the CD into the drive and hit install, it gives me a compatibility error message and asks me to go ask the company for a 64-bit compatible version. How fun.

....I call bull★■◆●. There's no way a 64-bit system has zero backwards compatibility.

At the same time, I'm attempting to obtain the D2X-XL, which I obviously can't figure out either, trying to figure out help from a number of sites, etc, etc, etc.....

The end result is I have eleventy-billion windows open and zero progress.

Someone help, please? I really like this laptop, to put an axe through it in a fit of rage would be too sad.

If getting it to go with D2X-XL isn't working out for you ... try DXX-Rebirth. DXX-Rebirth and 64bit discussion on the DXX-Rebirth forum

Just FYI, both D2X-XL and DxX-Rebirth work for me on Vista x64. The hard part is getting Descent and DescentII initially installed. Don't give up.

Good to know that at least D2X-XL has been known to work. I'll keep Rebirth in mind as a viable option as well.

Problem is I can't get either of the programs if I can't get my old Descent 2 disks to install; can't rewrite files that aren't there. I have both the original and Vertigo disks; how did you get them on your computers?

Personally, I just copied my entire \\Descent and \\Descent2 folders from older computers where I had it previously installed.

I think there is a workaround for using the original disks, but I can't remember the details off the top of my head.

Do they run under DOSBox? I haven't had to do that myself...

Oh, DOSbox. Yes, I installed that to attempt to get the programs running; didn't really work so well. I THINK i installed the original Descent (it certainly said so), but gave me no way to run it. No idea if it would help with getting Descent 2 on, and I doubt I would know how to use it do so. So, workarounds: I need them.

They don't play particularly well in DOSBox, but you might be able to use it to get the games installed. (Then, of course, use D2X-XL and/or DxX-Rebirth to play.)

Is there anyway to just extract all the files and folders I need to a place on my computer? I dunno, these games have these weird file extensions sometimes that give issues with extraction. I am confused to be sure. DOSbox installation says it won't install the Windows version: Isn't that the most important part?

Download 7-zip from www.7-zip.org use it to open the descent.sow and descent2.sow archive files on the D1 and D2 CDs. Copy the files you need (the D2X-XL and DXX-Rebirth readmes contain a list of needed files) directly from the archive to whatever folder you would like to run Descent/2 from, patch to 1.4a for Descent, and use the Vertigo CD to patch Descent 2 to 1.2. After that you should be able to play the game.

Are you talking about the D2-Win95 exe? No, I don't think you'll need that. D2X-XL and DxX-Rebirth have their own executables; you just need to have the game data files in the folder.

Weeee, the answers are revealed! Off I go to try again =D