Attempting to run on Windows 98SE

[leilei]

The Visual C++ 9 dependency actually holds it back quite a bit even with KernelEx. Also I can't start it due to the error:

The IRRLICHT.DLL file is
linked to missing export KERNEL32.DLL:SetConsoleDisplayMode

Which is strange, as i've ran another irrlicht game without much problems on Win98 (Minetest), and on a lowly PowerVR PCX-2 card at that

[hiker]

The Visual C++ 9 dependency actually holds it back quite a bit even with KernelEx. Also I can't start it due to the error:

The IRRLICHT.DLL file is
linked to missing export KERNEL32.DLL:SetConsoleDisplayMode

Which is strange, as i've ran another irrlicht game without much problems on Win98 (Minetest), and on a lowly PowerVR PCX-2 card at that

Xeno created a special version of STK 0.7.3 for windows 2000, not sure if that might also work for you. We don't have any intention to maintain backwards compatibility to windows 98 or so (though are happy about patches of course ).

Cheers,
Joerg

[leilei]

Funny thing is...... I did try the Windows 2000 version first.

Is there a MinGW compiling path for this? That would help legacy platform support

[charlie]

Why would you want to run it on Windows 98 SE? What's next? Attempting to run it on Windows ME?

If a computer is powerful enough to run STK, it's powerful enough for XP or a Linux.

Not that I'm saying you should rule out legacy/alternative OSes... just this seems a bit masochistic and a lot more effort than it is worth (i.e. a tiny market of users, possibly single digits - less than 10).

[Arthur]

Not to mention hardware specs may not be enough to play at a decent framerate.

[leilei]

I disagree. With the "low poly high quality" direction I see, it looks more like a game meant for a Pentium II 66MHz FSB w/ Voodoo Banshee kind of spec, and the Windows 98SE machine i'm trying to run this on is a late Pentium IV, which is technically top-of-the-line for 2003.

If you're saying i'm masochistic for trying to run STK on a machine that powerful in anticipation of poor performance, then I don't know what to say other than "optimize".

I understand STK had an asset reboot in concern for performance and quality control. That's what i'm going through with my project as well since i've learned some hard lessons about OpenGL performance, like keeping texture pages for various things, reducing texture switching, enforcing the required existence of LOD meshes that are at least 1/4 reduced in polygon count, etc...

[Arthur]

No no, we aren't trying to discourage you, but you may find it more rewarding to try your hardware with a more modern OS first to ensure it will run well enough. E.g. a lightweight Linux distro. By doing that you won't waste your time in case it doesn't work too well, and if you care to do any tweaking necessary for Win98 feel free to go ahead. We can't officially support operating systems that old though.

[Auria]

I'm afraid that our time is limited so we need to invest it in a way that will be rewarding for most of our users. So unfortunately I will have no time to invest on Windows 98 support since nearly none of our users use this OS