It's more about the tools they use to compile modern programs and the fact of MS no longer support those OS anymore.

Visual Studio 2010 for instance isn't compatible with Windows 2000. If you want to support 2000 with it it you have to do more work to support it....and since MS doesn't support Windows 2000 anymore then other companies see no point in supporting 2000 either. (Obviously not all companies have the same requirements).

As far as clients equivalent to Steam....no but there are Steam emulators and GUI's that perform much of the same functionality as Steam (and more).

I've made almost all of my Steam games standalone using emulators and cracks so I don't have to worry when Steam no longer works. 😀

DosFreak wrote:

It's more about the tools they use to compile modern programs and the fact of MS no longer support those OS anymore. […]
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It's more about the tools they use to compile modern programs and the fact of MS no longer support those OS anymore.

Visual Studio 2010 for instance isn't compatible with Windows 2000. If you want to support 2000 with it it you have to do more work to support it....and since MS doesn't support Windows 2000 anymore then other companies see no point in supporting 2000 either. (Obviously not all companies have the same requirements).

As far as clients equivalent to Steam....no but there are Steam emulators and GUI's that perform much of the same functionality as Steam (and more).

I've made almost all of my Steam games standalone using emulators and cracks so I don't have to worry when Steam no longer works. 😀

So what would be wrong with leaving an older version of the client that does work with 2K available for download? As long as they don't alter how the game library, the download mechanism or the registration system work there should be no problem. If they want to add new features for users of newer systems they can do that without alienating customers that are stuck with older systems for one reason or another. They would still be able to use the basic functionality only without all the bells and whistles that those using later OS's get.

So by standalone do you mean runs without having the Steam client running or runs without product activation?

As Microsoft has dropped support for it, Windows 2000 probably has some deficiencies in security at this point that Windows XP does not. And security might well become a concern to Valve if these "emulators and cracks" get out of hand.

Hypothetically, Valve might one day not want to have an older version of the client around if said older version is vulnerable to "emulators and cracks" while some newer version is not. If it breaks compatibility with Windows 2000 in the process, it would be such a vanishingly insignificant portion of their userbase that I doubt it would be much of a concern.

Jorpho wrote:

As Microsoft has dropped support for it, Windows 2000 probably has some deficiencies in security at this point that Windows XP does not. And security might well become a concern to Valve if these "emulators and cracks" get out of hand.

Hypothetically, Valve might one day not want to have an older version of the client around if said older version is vulnerable to "emulators and cracks" while some newer version is not. If it breaks compatibility with Windows 2000 in the process, it would be such a vanishingly insignificant portion of their userbase that I doubt it would be much of a concern.

The market will find a way. Someone clever will decipher how the official Steam client communicates with the Steam servers and write an open source Steam client that works with older operating systems. There are already open source Steam chat clients that work without loading up Steam so I don't see that it would be too hard for someone who knows what they're doing to rewrite the whole package or just the most basic functional parts without the fluff.

The thing is, who will be that "someone"? There aren't many people who are still using 2k compared to XP

Maybe someone will. Just don't count too hard on that

Precisely. It's impossible to make something uncrackable (just look at what's been happening with the PSP firmware), but it is quite possible to make something sufficiently difficult that no one in a relatively tiny user base will care enough to try to overcome it.

If that wasn't the case, by now we'd have fancy whizbang DirectDraw wrappers for dozens of games that don't work correctly in XP but that practically no one cares about anymore. (Of course, that's a different kind of issue and I can imagine that Steam and its DRM might be able to stir up the kind of spite that mere compatibility issues cannot.)

Well, you know one day XP will no longer be supported followed by Vista then 7 so what happens to all those gamers who paid for games that they can no longer play because the last version of the client they can run no longer connects to the server because it's not the latest version? Once you buy a game that runs on your current system under your current OS you shouldn't be forced to upgrade your hardware and version of Windows because Valve says you can't play games on that computer anymore. What gives Valve the right to say that you can no longer play a game that you paid for because your hardware is too old when the game ran perfectly fine the day before they updated the client? It's fine for some to say "It's only 2K, so who cares?" but one day it will happen to newer Windows versions and end up catching more and more people who can't upgrade their computers for whatever reason.

Well, if I am not mistaken, Windows 2000 has never had a very broad user base and it does not strike me that it can be compared to that of XP. After all, 2000 was never consumer-oriented the way XP is.

By the far-off time the XP user base dwindles to what Windows 2000's user base is now, the landscape of digital distribution may well be so radically altered as to bear little resemblance to what it is now. OnLive's platform-independent way of doing things might even catch on by then.

Jorpho wrote:

Well, if I am not mistaken, Windows 2000 has never had a very broad user base and it does not strike me that it can be compared to that of XP. After all, 2000 was never consumer-oriented the way XP is.

By the far-off time the XP user base dwindles to what Windows 2000's user base is now, the landscape of digital distribution may well be so radically altered as to bear little resemblance to what it is now. OnLive's platform-independent way of doing things might even catch on by then.

Microsoft will stop supporting XP in 2014 so no more security updates. What happens if Valve decides (possibly with a large financial incentive from Microsoft) that XP is no longer secure enough? Don't think it can't happen. Back in 2001 when the Everquest engine was updated to DX8.1 we were originally told for months that we only have to upgrade to DX 8.0. The DX 8.1 requirement was sprung on us just a couple of weeks before the Luclin update went live and a lot of people got screwed because they were still using Windows 95, and 95 doesn't support 8.1, only 8.0. Some people had to buy new computers because along with DX 8.1 came the requirement of a faster CPU and more memory. A lot of video cards got dropped from support in that update as well. I strongly suspected at the time that MS slipped Sony a huge wad of cash to change the update requirement from DX 8.0 to DX 8.1 to get the players to upgrade to 98 or ME to keep playing.

Okay, um I hate it when my threads get hijacked. Okay, I have a Pentium 2 dual core 2.5ghz, 500mb ram, only has sata the hd is gone, might get a cheap sata hardrive, as for newer cdrom drives, I have multiple ones, I thought there were copies of hl2 floating around, non cracked ones that didn't use steam?

To answer the question of this thread, in terms of mid-2000 gaming,

1. The first system - No.

2. The second system - Yes.

Preferred OS for mid-2000 gaming - XP.

(Win2K is OK. I remember the first game I bought which had left out official support for Win2K was Shellshock - Nam'67 - which is a mid-2000 game, I think.)

dosquest wrote:

Okay, um I hate it when my threads get hijacked. Okay, I have a Pentium 2 dual core 2.5ghz, 500mb ram, only has sata the hd is gone, might get a cheap sata hardrive, as for newer cdrom drives, I have multiple ones, I thought there were copies of hl2 floating around, non cracked ones that didn't use steam?

Dude, by mid-2000's do you mean a machine from year 2000 or as in like, year 2005?

Also, there's like a ton of Tombraider games produced over the years so which exact one are you referring to? There's a big difference in terms of required hardware for an early Tombraider game and HL2.

If you're looking to build a year 2000 rig, then Rig 1 is fine- just look for a pci video card and you're good to go. Load Win98 or 2000 on it - except that some older games may have compatibility issues with Win 2000.

OTOH, a 3ghz + P4 or Athlon 64 system is most representative of a 2005 gaming rig. Games from that era would run fine on any modern machine, so that rig 2 you have, whatever it's supposed to be would be fine I guess- with the addition of a suitable video car and at least a gb of ram. Oh, yeah and XP would be better for something mid-2000s.

sgt76 wrote:

Dude, by mid-2000's do you mean a machine from year 2000 or as in like, year 2005? […]
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Dude, by mid-2000's do you mean a machine from year 2000 or as in like, year 2005?

Also, there's like a ton of Tombraider games produced over the years so which exact one are you referring to? There's a big difference in terms of required hardware for an early Tombraider game and HL2.

If you're looking to build a year 2000 rig, then Rig 1 is fine- just look for a pci video card and you're good to go. Load Win98 or 2000 on it - except that some older games may have compatibility issues with Win 2000.

OTOH, a 3ghz + P4 or Athlon 64 system is most representative of a 2005 gaming rig. Games from that era would run fine on any modern machine, so that rig 2 you have, whatever it's supposed to be would be fine I guess- with the addition of a suitable video car and at least a gb of ram. Oh, yeah and XP would be better for something mid-2000s.

Agrees.
From a practical point, any fast enough single core XP rig will do fine for XP games.

If you want to put your P3-600 to good use, a suggestion could be to try a different version of 9x on it like ME, perhaps with the revolution pack. It would make the P3-600 rig more a duplicate of your other 9x rig, but with a different looking OS

Okay, also I have 4, yes 4 sbLIVE! cards laying around, might throw one in for good measure?

you'd better, as mid-2000 onboard sound sucks

Bur, the dualcore duo 2 has, well it says it has, don't know if it's true, it says it has 7.1 surround support built in. Hmm 😒

dosquest wrote:

Bur, the dualcore duo 2 has, well it says it has, don't know if it's true, it says it has 7.1 surround support built in. Hmm 😒

Use the SB Lives for the old P3s and such. The onboard sound on a s775 board is better.