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LaserWars under Virtual PC

Man!  It has been too long since I've done a gaming post.  Sorry for all the seriousness :-).  But on to the topic at hand, LaserWars under Virtual PC.  This is a fun little shareware program from 1994.  You and your opponent both control a tank that is capable of shooting a powerful laser beam.  Your goal is to use this beam to blow up your opponent.  You can do this by either moving your tank, or by placing or removing angled mirrors that change the course of your laser beam.

This sounds really simple, but the challenge is that any mirrors that you configure to get your opponent, can be used by your opponent to get you.  So this game actually ends up being quite engaging, with a lot of thought needing to be given to your strategy.

LaserWars under Virtual PC   LaserWars under Virtual PC   LaserWars under Virtual PC  

The game runs perfectly well under Virtual PC, but unfortunately even though it is a shareware program, I have been unable to find a download of it on the Internet.  So if you have this sitting around somewhere on an old floppy disk or hard drive, I recommend that you get it out and play it one more time.  You know you want to.

Cheers,
Ben

Comments

  • Anonymous
    February 22, 2007
    Here are two places to get it: http://www.filelibrary.com/Contents/DOS/84/30.html http://cd.textfiles.com/nogames3/009a/ The filename is laswar10.zip If you fix the "Borland runtime error 200" with this: http://www.brain.uni-freiburg.de/~klaus/pascal/runerr200/ you can even run it under Windows XP directly.

  • Anonymous
    February 22, 2007
    More info: The runtime error 200 is the code for a divide by zero error... most of the time caused by timing routines which try to figure out how fast your processor is.  Of course, they weren't made for processors nearly as fast as those seen today.  Thus the routine finishes in a unforeseen small length of time which gets rounded to zero and divided by. There are plenty of programs to slow down DOS programs, so feel free to Google around and try a few different ones.

  • Anonymous
    February 23, 2007
    Ben, I've had a look around your blog but couldn't find an appropriate post to ask the following question, so I'm asking it here (sorry!): Is there any way to add multiple sound cards to a Virtual Machine in Virtual PC? I'm testing an application that uses multiple sound cards - being able to use Virtual PC for testing would be a help. Thanks in advance, Brian

  • Anonymous
    February 23, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    February 23, 2007
    TIGERe: I tried it with no problems on Windows 98 SE as guest with Virtual PC 2004 SP1. You must set the game to software rendering, and mouse pointer integration must be turned off. The game was pre-installed and patched to 1.11, then the installation folder was copied over to the guest OS. For anyone else who wants to try, the game is currently freeware.

  • Anonymous
    February 23, 2007
    Sorry about OT. How do I configure networking in VPC2007 under XP Pro when running Linux? I know it's not officially supported, but Mandriva 2007 works fine except for networking. TIA!!!

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2007
    Albion, one of my favourite games, doesnt work in VPC 2007: http://img108.imageshack.us/img108/4875/albionro1.jpg It is probably some display resolution issue, do you know how to fix it?

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2007
    Dan - Actually, we have special code in VPC to detect and correct programs with the runtime 200 bug. Brian - No. There is no way to do this. luke - I do not have that gave myself. However, I have another game by blue byte software that exhibits the same problem, and I have not been able to figure out how to get it to work. Cheers, Ben

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2007
    luke: I'm guessing that Albion programs the VGA registers to set up a 360x240 resolution, and Virtual PC doesn't support that kind of thing, or that resolution isn't supported by the emulated video card.

  • Anonymous
    February 26, 2007
    http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/comp_list.php?showID=1381&letter=A&search=albion I don't have the game but according to the list it works fine in DosBox.

  • Anonymous
    February 27, 2007
    Thanks for the feedback Ben. Brian

  • Anonymous
    February 27, 2007
    Wowsers, that is amazing!!!

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