Antrad

I suggest under audio settings to add a marker for games that came with CD audio tracks/CD music.

I am bumping up this thread, not sure if anything was done about it in the meantime. CD music playback is broken since Windows Vista: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=36870&p=643220&hilit=HardwareAudioMixer#p643220 Not only do people have trouble getting the music to play, but once it does you have no control of the music volume, changing the music volume in the settings changes other sounds as well. I experienced that in several games now. And it gets worse than that, I am currently playing a game on Windows XP, because the game changes CD music volume during gameplay, so on my new Windows 7 computer when the CD music goes silent all other sounds go silent, it is completely broken game now, because of the changes in Windows audio mixer. Just like there is a note now about broken DRM, there should be a note for games using Red Book CD Audio and we need some flag/marker in audio/middleware section for it.

I think it might be a good idea to make some kind of time limit for making edits. Just look at this mess here in history: https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Area_51_(2005) 9 edits in 7 minutes and it seems nothing was changed in the end. Surprising this was not misused by bots or something. It is annoying to check the changes when people go on a edit spree like this with very short edits. Maybe after the third edit in a short time span to block for 5 minutes, like when login in.

I disagree that Wikipedia is more useful, since I already wrote in the first post that many games or game developers don't have a Wikipedia article, but Moby Games does. Try finding any information about Brilliant Digital Entertainment and their games like Cyberswine and all you get is what is on Moby Games (probably one of the reason Telltale gets credit for innovation in adventure game genre and online episodic content while BDE did exactly the same things already back in 1997, people completely forgot about BDE). Not only does Moby Games have covers that most people here use when making articles, but they also have system requirements listed which I use when these obscure games don't even have them in readme. In the end it doesn't matter now, since they don't want to cooperate.

In the area under the game cover art there are links to Wikipedia, SteamDB, Wine... and other stuff. I recommend to add MobyGames there too, since Wikipedia is a general online encyclopedia and MobyGame is basically an online encyclopedia for video games and people often already add the links to it in the general info section. Many old obscure and less known games don't have a Wikipedia page, but I have yet to find an old game without a MobyGames page.

In my opinion the news section should be more focused on what this Wiki is like fixing games, compatibility issues and that kind of stuff. For example in the past few weeks new versions of nGlide, dgVoodoo and DosBox has been released, I think stuff like that deserves some attention, since these and other tools are very important for many games and you wont see mainstream media cover this stuff. Another example is Microsoft shutting down their games servers that were used on Windows 7 which is now causing serious issues for W7 users like some random games not starting and rundll.exe stressing their CPU. Here is a discussion about it on GOG. I think stuff like that are perfect for website like this to cover. https://www.gog.com/forum/general/old_games_not_launching_and_eating_100_of_the_cpu_on_windows_7/page1 These are some recent examples that I can think of.

Yeah, there is no changelog for the final release. He posts changelogs for "WIP" versions on Vogons forums, so you would have to go back one year and look at dozens of changelogs. In short, the big update is DirectX 9 suppport that has been in the works for the past year, before it was DirectX 1-8. BTW, what is stopping Google from flagging PCGW as malware too, people also upload various fixes, hacks, dlls and exes here too ?

Widescreen Gaming Forums is one step close to being shut down thanks to idiots at Google, this is another example what this site should report about.

I agree, for example this will make all the classic adventure games n/a, it should be left to true.

On my watchlist page I saw bots flagging many articles having corrupt images, some covers and screenshots that I uploaded as broken, but others from the same set are fine, it seems to be random. What is going on ?

1) This Wiki lists a lot of technical aspects of games like DRM, graphics and sound API, physics middleware, etc... so listing that the game uses CD audio tracks for music and/or sound effects would make sense. 2) Some older games can have issues playing CD tracks on modern Windows, so you need to use a custom winmm.dll, then rip them to OGG format and then put everything in the game installation folder (some old games are re-realeased like this on digital platforms, for example Extreme G-2). This info would be useful on pages of games with that problem.

If a game is using some tech then that is interesting to mention if it can enhance user experience or cause technical issues if running the game on unsupported hardware and stuff like that. Adding that it was FIRST to use something is a fun fact, but that information isn't helpful to anyone in any technical way, it is more a thing for Wikipedia.

I don't understand what this means ? I've seen Garrbot changing all my edits where I set "hackable - Can be forced in the GPU control panel" to "false - see the glossary for a possible solution". And worst thing is the glossary is just a large wall of text, and only at the very end there is a table which you need to expand to see all the possible ways to force AA, and the cherry on top is there you have AMD control panel called "Catalyst" which is not used for two years I think. I think if a user has confirmed forcing AA works through the control panel, there is no need to set it to false and point a random wanderer to that confusing glossary to search for a "possible solution". It should be left as hackable and instead point directly to the instructions how to use the GPU control panel.

I wanted to make the exact same thread for some time now. "PCGamingWiki aims to list fixes and workarounds for every single PC game" Well, it is simply not possible to fulfill that goal without fully embracing things like No CD cracks. Microsoft doesn't support it on their new operating systems and since most games will never be patched by the developers themselves we have no choice. In this situation that makes various sites that have cracks available more important than sites that still have official patches for old games. The cracks are the fixes ! Similar to that, we also have Games For Windows Live, which was shut down. The rule of "no cracks allowed" is already broken. Most widescreen fixes that are linked here use a cracked exe. Similar to that there are GFWL games with links to dlls that disable it. With all that said I'm aware you can not fully embrace it also because of issues of "trust". What crack site can you fully trust and link to it ? Who will verify if everything is safe ? What I would suggest is to automagically add a note/warning on all games that have securom or safedisc listed as copy-protection and mention why it may not work on new windows version, and link to some official news article or something about that topic. I have personally left a note for Will Rock. The game was not patched, it is not being sold anymore, you can not buy a DRM free copy, so you have no other choice. You can find people all over Youtube and gaming forums claiming the game simply doesn't work on Win7 and later, but the only problem is the DRM: https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Will_Rock

I don't know what to suggest, I played the game recently with no issues, but on Windows 7. Did you try using any compatibility settings like turning off desktop composition, visual themes, display scaling and that kind of stuff ? Did you try disabling DVR ?

I think the game uses OpenGL for rendering and DirectX is just for input, so graphics wrappers wont work. But don't quote me on that. Did you try renaming fakk2.exe to quake3.exe ?

What can't you find ?

If everything else fails you might try using WineD3D for Windows. Download it from here https://fdossena.com/?p=wined3d/index.frag, then copy d3d9.dll, libwine.dll and wined3d.dll in the game's executable directory. It helped me with Starship Troopers on Windows 7 and Beyond Good And Evil on Windows 10.

On many pages in the references section I see "Verified by randomusernamehere". I don't know how to format this in text when I want to verify a fix, for example: {{Fixbox/fix|Install WineD3D|ref=<ref>{{refcheck|user=Suicide_machine{{!}}Suicide Machine|date=August 13, 2016}}</ref>}} Do I need to write all this, or some of it gets added auto-generated ?

Thanks. You probably wont believe this, but I never actually saw that "Templates" button :P By looking at some other references, I also learned you can give a name to your reference, so if you verify more stuff, you can just write the name for the next one instead of writing everything again. What are the rules about verifying you own stuff ? For example, like skipping intro movies with a launch parameter, it's not really something major that others need to verify. Can I put a reference there and write a comment "i figured this out myself" or "found in the manual" ?

I would not remove it completely, maybe just make it optional, if there is no WSGF article available. The rating is not just a "rating" it's a link to the WSGF article which often contains the original instructions and widescreen fixes that are made by WSGF users themselves(shout-out to jackfuste) and gives the site and their users credit. It may not be that useful for new games, but WSGF is still important for fixing old games. When I see their rating on the page, I know someone more experienced might have already looked into fixing the game I plan to play, and I can track down that person and ask for help with other games, like I did several times before. Maybe it should be simply more clear that icon is actually a link to an article and not just a rating ?

I see you removed a ton of info on that page and I don't see a need for most of changes. You removed any mention of the free version even though it is legit and is available to download on several sites. Yes, it was originally ad supported, but the newest patch removes it. And you left Project Dreamland that has a custom DRM and can't even be launched without an internet connection. Also why remove the image that shows rendering issues when AA is forced ? It's a valid issue. Also you say "retail version is broken", no it's not, the installer only doesn't work on the latest versions of Windows. One might think they released a broken game. The original text was more accurate. "No Online MultiPlayer". One might think the game had no MP support at all, the original text saying Gamespy servers have been shut down, was also more accurate. There is also a lot of rephrasing on a lot of places that didn't improve anything. Also who does capitalize each word: "HUD Elements are Small at 4K Resolutions" ? That is probably against editing instructions. I think the article is less informative and less accurate than it was before. EDIT: I see someone already reversed it.

Area 51(2005) game is considered freeware and on its page I have put a download link to free version from gamewatchers.com as a note under availability section. Now, somebody deleted it with explanation "I had to delete "Availability/row| official" because gamewatcher.com is a third-party website". But it was just a note. So, I don't know what to think about this ? If the game is freeware I think it doesn't hurt to put links on the page under availability. Is there a rule against it ?