Elite / Frontier Frontier on Windows Vista

davery

D
Hi all,

I have been looking into getting a copy of Frontier to introduce my son to, so that he can experience the pleasures that I did, when I was his age.

The problem I have is not being able to get the game to work on my Vista machine. Does anyone have a patch or other way of getting it to work at all please? Maybe a link to a website? Anything?

Thanks.
 

turwhitt

turwhitt
I would recommend GLFFE.

You should find it if you do a web search. That has instructions for installation and use. If you have problems with it, post back.

If you are feeling adventurous, try out the Russian 3d mod, which is in a thread a few down from this one. I'm pretty sure people have run it in vista.
 

davery

D
Ok, thanks.

I never actually played FFE, so that would be quite interesting.

I'll give that a go, and see how I get on.

Obviouslly, if there are any other suggestions in the meantime, feel free to chuck them in.

Thanks again.
 

davery

D
Yes, I've tried using dosbox, but I didn't really understand what I was doing with it. I'm ok on general day to day use on the computer, but not at anything even slightly technical.
 

Steve

Steve
davery said:
Yes, I've tried using dosbox, but I didn't really understand what I was doing with it. I'm ok on general day to day use on the computer, but not at anything even slightly technical.
Click to expand...
I've had a page up on my website for a while now which explains how to get FE2 running with DOSBox. Click here

Hope it helps :)
 

DraQ

D
davery said:
Yes, I've tried using dosbox, but I didn't really understand what I was doing with it. I'm ok on general day to day use on the computer, but not at anything even slightly technical.
Click to expand...
Well, DOSBox emulates the DOS OS which was pretty much the norm back in the day and everyone used it.
It only looks complicated - once you get over the first 'what?' moment and take your time to read the readme it should become fairly straightforward. Of course, if you can get some simple GUI, like Norton Commander to autostart when you start the 'Box, it'll only make your life easier.
 

Sir.Tj

The Moderator who shall not be Blamed....
Volunteer Moderator
Sir.Tj
Dra Q;9369 said:
Well, DOSBox emulates the DOS OS which was pretty much the norm back in the day and everyone used it.
It only looks complicated - once you get over the first 'what?' moment and take your time to read the readme it should become fairly straightforward. Of course, if you can get some simple GUI, like Norton Commander to autostart when you start the 'Box, it'll only make your life easier.
Click to expand...

Yep, Dosbox is a very easy to use program once you get used to it.

What it does ids to mount a virtual drive so you can run your DOS programs in it, the main command I use is:

Mount f C:\games\ffe (in my case this is where FFE is stored on my HDD)

this creates the VDrive F:

Then type F: as in chancing drives

Then type dir. that the will show you everything in this case within the c:\games\ffe directory so you can then run the ffe.exe file.
 

davery

D
Ok, thanks everyone, I'll give it a go, see what I can come up with.

As an extra thing, I played Frontier when I was younger, but never First Encounters. What are peoples views on which is better?
 

Sir.Tj

The Moderator who shall not be Blamed....
Volunteer Moderator
Sir.Tj
davery said:
Ok, thanks everyone, I'll give it a go, see what I can come up with.

As an extra thing, I played Frontier when I was younger, but never First Encounters. What are peoples views on which is better?
Click to expand...


Now there's a question. Each to there own. I personally prefer ffe. We had a poll a while back on what was the best version. Ffe won that one closley followed by frontier.
 

Sir.Tj

The Moderator who shall not be Blamed....
Volunteer Moderator
Sir.Tj
davery said:
Great, 2 replies and already a split decision!!

Maybe I'll just try both!!
Click to expand...

Best way would be to try both, then try the GLFFE version then the D3D Versions, Can't see me going back to the older versions after seeing the D3D version.
 

DraQ

D
Try both.

Frontier is simpler, but much more polished. It also has some details FFE lacks - like clouds.

FFE has quite a few extra features - planetary geography, better AI, handcoded missions, more ships and upgrades, journals. It's also at least unfinished in many places. Some astronomical body types have plain wrong properties (and I mean major screw-ups like having or lacking atmosphere where reverse should be applicable or complete lack of axial tilt), in some places orbits are all messed up, some ship models display equipment incorrectly, many have broken rear view offsets, you're unable to fully disable the computer thruster control while in combat - this "assist" mode can often turn an otherwise easy task into an exercise in frustration.
 

Steve

Steve
It's a funny thing with FE2/FFE. I was perfectly happy playing FE2 - I even had the CD32 version which was great - but as soon as I started to get into FFE I hardly touched FE2 again.

There's just something about FFE that works for me. The X-Factor, if you will :)
 
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