Smack2k wrote:
I get all your "what-if's" and they make sense, but I get around any of that by using the within a calendar year of each other or less for the parts and generally the same generation of video cards if muliptle that I want to put on each build.
I see, and within a calendar year is your way of restrictring a build. I could choose 18 months, or 3 years within each other. Or I could choose whatever works in my build with parts available at the launch of the orginal IBM PC to any arbritrary date set past this. So from 1983-1981, 1987-1981, 1990-1981, 1996-1981... and so on.
Scali wrote:
What line? It was either available on the market on a given date, or it wasn't.
This line is a moving line. I understand that you are picking an arbritray date in the past and saying you can't add anything newer to that build because it wouldn't have existed after that given date. But in reality, living through that period, we could've upgraded our PCs past that arbritrary date - 6 months past, 12 monthas past, 2 years past... or rebuilt the PC and taking parts from our 3 year old PC instead. Or built a PC with the latest parts only.
Market availability is restricting the latest available parts for a build, not the oldest available parts.
Scali wrote:
In short: it's not an exact science. The point is just that you don't go overboard.
I guess a decent guideline is this: most games would include a recommended system configuration. By definition this system would be available. And especially in the early days, these specs would be high-end to cutting-edge consumer systems. So to be 'period correct', you'd play the game on a machine that approaches the recommended system configuration, so you get an experience that approaches the experience the developers were going for.
That's a good guidline. Take an arbitrary date and a game, then that will give you the parts available for that build and then you can enjoy that game as the developer intended.
That's for one game. What about all games released prior to that date? Make a seperate build for each? Or for groups of games released every year, and a build for them? Every 3 years? Every 5 years? A build from 1983-1988? From 1994-1981? How many PCs do you want to build?
I see your point about not to go overboard, but why not? Because it would break compatibility? Because it's too far from the developers specs? - The former is understandable and the latter is too, if you want to experience the recommended specs. But if your build covers those two reasons, then build whatever works.
Scali wrote:
Yea, and if that were true, this forum would not have existed, because we would not have ANY problems whatsoever to run old games on modern PCs without any kind of emulators, specific hardware, drivers, wrappers etc.
Yes, the IBM PC was built with future expansion in mind. I don't think anyone at launch would've known where this would end up. And it's a shame the PC doesn't have perfect backwards compatibility. But a newer PC emulating an older PC, in a sense, is going full circle and marching forwards. They are both still PCs.
Scali wrote:
Anyway, my point was not about the PC platform as a whole. Please re-read my original post, and see that I was talking about reproducing the gaming experience in a historically accurate context. Basically: "If you played this game when it was released, this is what it looked/sounded like".
I'm not saying that this is something everyone should do, I'm just saying that it would be interesting to preserve old games in this way, for future generations. Playing a game like Doom on a real 486DX2-66 VLB with a CRT is a completely different experience from playing it in DOSBox on a modern system (you see the same argument about real arcade machines vs a modern system running MAME. There's even some shops specialized in restoring original arcade machines). I would like to somehow preserve that original experience for people to see what games really were like.
I completely understand this and agree with the sentiment. Being realistic, it would be easiest to emulate and compare as I mentioned earlier. Having a museum with real hardware and comparing games across various formats is doable, but someone will have to fund this and maintain it. I'm sure there are individuals out there with collections to display this already. And the most interesting/ valued items should pass around collectors hands until they get donated to a museum or lost to time - hopefully the former...