#oldnoth

I have a Windows 10 computer that’s almost a decade old now, and though it runs Wesnoth 0.1 (the very first one), in terms of other ancient Wesnoth versions, I can’t get anything older than 0.9.7 to run.  I used to have a Windows 7 laptop, and it could run Wesnoth 0.8.4!  I don’t know what happened between Windows updates, but when I try to open 0.8.4 on my PC, it just doesn’t work at all. The only thread I have to go on is that maybe Windows 10 comes with different .dlls, and stopped including certain older ones that older Wesnoth needs..?  Because I got a popup about a missing one when I tried opening 0.8.4′s map editor, and when I installed that .dll there-- though it still didn’t work-- it suddenly was able to make the screen black for a second before giving up, which was more than before.  But having gotten no more error messages since then, and having no luck with running it in compatibility mode, I’ve been stuck ever since.

A lot of my 1.2 and earlier Wesnoths experience bugs that they don’t on older hardware, too... can’t think of a single one that doesn’t crash if I try and change the screen resolution.  Many also experience awful graphical errors if I switch between windowed and fullscreen mode that don’t go away until I restart the program.  There’s also some annoying flickering effects with the monochrome cursor set (my favorite one...) that are only lessened-- not fully gone-- if I use the color cursor.  And in one of the most mysterious and sad glitches of all, in pre-1.2, Delfador’s sprites are prone to inexplicably not appearing in the game where he’s present!  All of this simply did not happen on even slightly older hardware. Some older Wesnoths I’ve been unable to try at all, since they’re based in Linux, and you have to “build” and “compile” them rather than simply double-clicking an executable... and sadly, I am not that much of a nerd yet to do such things easily.  But even then, Wesnoth 0.3 has an executable, but it merely brings up a command prompt window, turns the screen black, then closes before I can read anything clearly... and running compatibility mode has only made that one worse.

This isn’t even all limited to just ancient Wesnoth, either!  Right now, and even on my Windows 7, I’ve experienced a terrible issue with versions of Wesnoth 1.8 where they simply do not register manually installed add-ons.  This is kind of a huge deal, since the manual way is now the only way to install its fanmade content, since its server no longer connects in the program!!  This is perhaps due to the fact that holding add-ons outside the “campaigns” folder was a new feature at the time, and it had some unforeseen issues (even when it still could connect, for some reason, I never found out where they’re stored?).  This is an absolute travesty, since 1.8 was one of the highest points for UMC creativity and output, and now all of that can’t really be played on its intended software. In 1.12, sometimes the names and descriptions of most of my installed add-ons, and all of the text inside them, simply will not display.  I spent hours trying to pin this down to one add-on by removing and replacing them, to no avail.  Because it impacts multiple campaigns at once, and sometimes seemed to impact different ones, I couldn’t figure it out.  I have several dozen add-ons for 1.12, and I have no idea if it’s one add-on in particular causing the issue, or the fact that I have a ton of them by itself.  1.12 isn’t even that old!  It’s a relatively new one, already showing wear and tear for mysterious unknown reasons!!  The only comfort is that it doesn’t always happen, but I don’t know how much longer that may be the case.

Responses on the forum to modestly bringing up these issues seem to usually be “just play the latest version instead”, but I don’t always want to do that!  I shouldn’t have to do that!  The older versions still have their charms, and their unique style, lots of minor differences that build up, and sometimes I don’t want to have to wait for some kind soul with plenty of time to port it for me.  I don’t know how to use wmllint to port them myself (why can’t anyone explain it concisely?!), and even if I did, a lot of old UMC is buggy even on its intended version, and wmllint apparently struggles with things like custom terrains.