Fun while it Lasted

[Amerelium]

Actually, they have to make it work on an OS whose achitecture and code is closely guarded by Mircrosoft...
But since no one will NEED Vista for another year at least, there's no point in installing it if it limits you.
As for the laptops: well, I would personally never pay money for a laptop, as it's no more than a glorified typewriter. But if I did I'd make sure to have a parallel port floppy drive with it...

why would it be ? Its their product. A product which they have themselves been working on for well over 2 years. They aren't a bunch of newb programmers. They know the code. If they are having trouble they are going to have to bring in some help.

Vista is going no where. As much as the release version sucks at the moment it is the next step for your windows OS. I would say this should be a higher priority than even the Unity port. After all not everyone that plays Horizons knows how to dual boot XP and Vista. That is as well not an acceptable solution to a compatibility issue between horizons and Vista. Unless of course Vitrium is ready to label Horizons Legacy software...

a time frame would be nice or at least a " ya we are working on it " the only thing Vitrium has done it seems is to now state that Horizons isn't vista compatible on their minimum spec for the game. Have they actually said anything ?

[Tryagain]

Actually, they have to make it work on an OS whose achitecture and code is closely guarded by Mircrosoft...
But since no one will NEED Vista for another year at least, there's no point in installing it if it limits you.
As for the laptops: well, I would personally never pay money for a laptop, as it's no more than a glorified typewriter. But if I did I'd make sure to have a parallel port floppy drive with it...

that doesn't make any sense. Having programmed a plenty in dot net it makes no sense at all. Windows has always been closed source. But that has never stopped development and never stopped development in MS's own environment.

thats definitely perplexing.

[Deth]

Some how I have gooten my system locked into computability mode pre windows 2000 and no mater how often I reboot I still can play on vista. *knocks on wood*

[Flindar]

just get rid of the Vista piece of crap already

Yeah i love this answer...and what will we do next year when Vista is the only option....

Plus...It came installed on my lapttop...I have no extra copies of xp or 98...you mail me a full disk version and the key and sure ill wipe the HD and start with xp....otherwise I have no options

....its not vista that needs fixed anyways...it runs great on everything else I do...Its Horizons that needs to get with it

those that claim poor framerate...I get about 50 fps when vista loads....

[Velea]

and what will we do next year when Vista is the only option

If this happens, I'll stop using computers. Everything I've read about Vista says to me "avoid it like the plague"

[Flindar]

If this happens, I'll stop using computers. Everything I've read about Vista says to me "avoid it like the plague"

I also heard that about Win98...Win2000..WinMe...and XP when they came out....every new OS has bugs.... *cough*Horizons....I know its not an OS but what 4 years in the making and still bugs....the point is...

Vista will get fixes...it will get better and then it will do to all the other MS os's what every one before it has done....

[Leviathan]

Oddly enough... I tried 2 more times after my original post and poof...it let me in...

I swear ill be bald before theres a Vista fix...

There is a Vista fix...It's called XP Professional :P

[velveeta]

If this happens, I'll stop using computers. Everything I've read about Vista says to me "avoid it like the plague"

well, aside from horizons, i haven't had any probs with vista, except for the need to approve every action - that's is really annoying, but you get used to it after a while.
i am not saying you shouldn't hate it, i am just saying its not that bad, to me......

[Pharcellus]

Yeah i love this answer...and what will we do next year when Vista is the only option....

Vista will NEVER be the "only option". You can still get legal copies of Windows 95 (and every other Windows OS out there), for Pete's sake; you just can't get it from Mickeysoft.

I also expect that Desktop Linux distros are getting good enough to finally challenge Windows on the Desktop. I mean, you can get Horizons to work fine under Linux, and it is getting easier to do so every day.

Plus...It came installed on my lapttop...I have no extra copies of xp or 98...you mail me a full disk version and the key and sure ill wipe the HD and start with xp....otherwise I have no options

http://www.9software.com There's your option. Also, check with the laptop manufacturer and tell them you are having troubles with Vista and that you want to go back to XP. Right now, many are offering the capability to do so because they know what a boondoggle Vista is, and have been granted special dispensation from Mickeysoft to do it.

....its not vista that needs fixed anyways...it runs great on everything else I do...Its Horizons that needs to get with it

Probably everything you do will also run great with any other OS, too. Yes, Horizons does need a lot of work, but that doesn't excuse the mess that Vista is. I do support work for customers who have 2000,XP, and Vista, and the crap that we have to put up with to get Vista to work in a business setting is pure hell (well, it's pure gold for me; but I hate that hassle, for both my customers and myself).

[Bateluer]

Lotta of Vista hate in here. Unfortunately, it also seems devoid of any real substance. Simply people hating MS and their latest product. Many people I see on the net, seems to be more common in MMORPG forums for some reason, seem to be under the impression that Vista is a bloated version of XP with a visual face life. See the links at the end of this post for more information on this.

Maybe some of you aren't old enough to remember going from DOS to Windows to Win3.11 to Win95 to Win98 to Win2k to WinXP. Every time this has occurred, MS has been attacked for cutting support on older OSs, compatibility issues, stability issues, security issues, and bloatware. Ironically, the only really crappy OS that MS has ever made was WinME. Avoid WinME like the plague.

Vista is probably the best OS MS has released since Win2k. Its solid as a rock and more secure than any previous MS OS. When your apps don't function the way they should, that is not MS's fault. Its the fault of the developer/publisher/programmer for not making their software Vista capable. MS provides all the information to code apps to work under Vista free of charge on their sites. Vista driver issues are the result of hardware vendors ignoring MS's technical papers until the last minute. Hardware vendors knew what they'd have to do to write drivers for Vista back in late 2005, they were simply lazy.

Now, it'd be foolish to write an app that only works under Vista, given that its market share is lower than XP at the moment. However, there are hundreds of thousands of applications that run perfectly fine under Vista and XP.

I've been running Vista on my primary desktop for almost a month now and the only title I've had problems with is Gothic 3, a candidate for the buggiest game ever released. Though, admittedly, I don't currently have an active sub to Horizons. I would encourage the developers to complete a Vista patch as soon as possible though. The burden for this is on the programmers, not on MS. All the various compatibility patches released by MS making Vista more compatible and even more stable are simply a bonus.

And before someone calls me a MS fan boy, I run Vista on my desktop, XP Pro on my notebook, Ubuntu 7.10 on a Dell Optiplex, FreeBSD on a Compaq SFF machine, and CentOS on another Optiplex.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature..._Windows_Vista

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Securit..._Windows_Vista

[Tryagain]

I seem to remember similar complaints with XP when it first came out. That OS is now pretty darn stable and most of the time fairly secure. Honest it is and any security issues are usually user related.

Vista will eventually have all the kinks worked out. Right now I do not run Vista as my main OS but I do have it installed for troubleshooting purposes. When the first service pack is released I will re evaluate it and see if it can become my main WINDOWS OS.

That all being said this should still be a top priority for Vitrium.

[velveeta]

thank you, bateluer, for stating my position much better than i can!
vista is new and peeps are resistant to change - heck, i still have a win98 machine, cause i just can't give up dungeonkeeper - but it will happen. so far, vista is much the same as xp, to me, except for the horizons thing....

do not fear vista, and if you don't want it now, that's fine. you will eventually be exposed to it. have no worries, if you can use xp, you will be fine using vista. except for those darn cancel or allow messages....those still make me insane.....

[Vahrokh]

I worked since 1998 on Solaris, since 1992 on SCO Unix, and Xenix in the older days, VMS Ultrix, OS 400, Amiga OS, HP UX, IBM Aix, NeXT, Irix, Netware, BeOS, and Linux, Linux since version 1.0 both as user and data center owner (Debian, Slackware, Red Hat, Caldera, Knoppix, Mandrake and some security enhanced distros). Developed for DOS since version 2.0, Windows since it exists, including the DEC Alpha version of Windows NT, WFW, NT Server Terminal Ediction with and without Citrix Metaframe.

I think I can say I have seen a fair number of OSes.

Vista is like Windows NT 4 to Windows 95. It's only partially compatible (it's a 95% compatibility) due to the implementation of some pretty different technologies in its core. Or introduced additional layers over or below other previous APIs (several security changes as well). The incompatibilities are very visible because the drivers are the first thing that won't work on it (while I had Win 3.1 drivers for a SCSI scanner working even under Windows XP). Less than well debugged programs won't work as well, as there are some additional checks done about dangling pointers rampaging around and I suspect Horizons has exactly a variation of this issue (and possibly an incompatibility vs the querying of the graphics properties) making it crash.

Vista is a visibly better system than most previous Microsoft products, both as structure and actual release. The fact in beta it has been crappy and that some insist on running it without patching it should not "impact" in the current product opinions.

I use it since March, I had to work very hard to make it crash twice in this time (using old low level applications) and generally it's a breeze to use.
Like for major Microsoft releases of the past, reusing older hardware may be difficult, I still recall trying installing Windows NT or Windows 95 on Win 3.1 capable hardware, usually it was just better buy a new rig or get crazy and see slowness in action.

Like in the past for other Windowses (the same can be said for i.e. Red Hat Linux or even Solaris), not doing any tweaking in Vista leads to slower performance, I quickly disabled that fancybar that hogs the system resources down.

Sure, some softwares won't work on Vista, as I said drivers and lower quality desktop applications. Very proprietary software too won't work, i.e. I don't even try installing Siemens SoftNET (PLC and industrial control) since I know Siemens are expecially ******** (self censored) at making huge software releases that work with "Windows X.X, patch A.B.C. released in the morning or NN/NN/YYYY" else forget it.

Said that, at the moment I have Vista Ultimate on "my" computer, used 6+ hours a day, XP on another, NT 4.0 on a server and Debian Linux on a fourth computer and all of them work like a charm.

[Velea]

See, I have one problem with the "programmers need to make their games compatible with Vista" point. Which came first? The program, or the Vista?

Going forward, yes I can see that anyone who publishes something now needs to make it Vista compatible. But I put the blame for any program incompatibilities squarely on the shoulders of MS for things that were released prior to Vista. Just like what coders need to make their program Vista compatible exist for free now, MS developers obviously had what was required to make a program XP (or earlier) Vista compatible.

For example, there is a HUGE list of educational software that I'd love to be able to use for my youngest son now. I bought it all legally when my oldest was his age (6 year age difference). But because the OS's changed so much, each time by MS, in that time, none of it works. And most of the companies that made it are now either out of business, bought out by someone else, or making other types of software. It's a rather cyclical problem, actually. Such software makers are finding that the market for edu-tainment is shrinking, so they stop bothering to update programs, so the market shrinks more. On the flip side of this coin, anything that we'd bought for the Mac way back then still works just fine on my kid's Mac mini. New OS's for the Mac (though we haven't upgraded anything to Leopard), didn't cause everything we owned to be unusable. So I'm left wondering why MS can't figure out how to release a new OS that allows for backward compatibility. To me, the burden is on them because they came second.

And, just for the record, yeah, I really don't like MS's general corporate policies. Not a MS hater because there's not nearly enough passion behind my feelings them to call it hate, just think they need to step down from their self created pedestal and look at what other people are doing right. (And my apologies if this seems like a topic derail, it's not intended to be.)

[Tryagain]

And, just for the record, yeah, I really don't like MS's general corporate policies. Not a MS hater because there's not nearly enough passion behind my feelings them to call it hate, just think they need to step down from their self created pedestal and look at what other people are doing right. (And my apologies if this seems like a topic derail, it's not intended to be.)

problem is that MS is just continuing the natural progress of where their OS should be going given the hardware that is available today. Hardware has been outpacing software progress a 1000 to 1. So much that todays processors will beg windows XP just to keep up. As well when an OS like Vista comes out it will amplfy the general lazy practices of todays programmers and further amplify the shortcuts they take to get their software to work on a more forgiving operating system. Horizons is a prime example of a piece of software that is such a hack and spaghetti job that any new OS was bound to have trouble with it. 4 years of totally ineffective development in the game and the ignoring of its very basic setup led to the issues it has now running on Vista. Current MMO's btw work fine on Vista as an illustration of the point.

So now of course vitrium now has to put best practices back into play to bring their product back in line with effective and quality control standards. Vista will be much less forgiving of older habits.

[Bateluer]

. . .except for those darn cancel or allow messages....those still make me insane.....

You can turn that off easily. Use the Vista help and search for User Access Control. I don't recall the exact steps to turn it off, but thats how I started.

http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManage...rsion&iId=3696

http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManage...ation&iId=1978

Looks like Dungeon Keeper 2 works alright, but DK 1 is borked for the moment. However, Wine releases are frequent and it may work a future release.

[LaughingOtter]

4 years of totally ineffective development in the game and the ignoring of its very basic setup led to the issues it has now running on Vista. Current MMO's btw work fine on Vista as an illustration of the point.

Those games work on Vista because they had development teams working on them over the past year - something you might have noticed Horizons did not have.

Further, Horizons does run on Vista; it simply does not do so consistantly. Compatability is not an issue unique to Horizons by any means; I work for a defense contractor supporting branch of the DoD, and from what I've seen neither my employer nor our client is terribly satisfied with how Vista is performing in integration testing.

I tend to agree with Velea that Microsoft has an obligation to provide backwards compatability support with Vista; maybe not forever, but enough to ensure that anything that runs on XP will also run correctly on Vista. From what I've seen of Vista, Microsoft failed that obligation.

[Flindar]

See, I have one problem with the "programmers need to make their games compatible with Vista" point. Which came first? The program, or the Vista?

Going forward, yes I can see that anyone who publishes something now needs to make it Vista compatible. But I put the blame for any program incompatibilities squarely on the shoulders of MS for things that were released prior to Vista. Just like what coders need to make their program Vista compatible exist for free now, MS developers obviously had what was required to make a program XP (or earlier) Vista compatible.

For example, there is a HUGE list of educational software that I'd love to be able to use for my youngest son now. I bought it all legally when my oldest was his age (6 year age difference). But because the OS's changed so much, each time by MS, in that time, none of it works. And most of the companies that made it are now either out of business, bought out by someone else, or making other types of software. It's a rather cyclical problem, actually. Such software makers are finding that the market for edu-tainment is shrinking, so they stop bothering to update programs, so the market shrinks more. On the flip side of this coin, anything that we'd bought for the Mac way back then still works just fine on my kid's Mac mini. New OS's for the Mac (though we haven't upgraded anything to Leopard), didn't cause everything we owned to be unusable. So I'm left wondering why MS can't figure out how to release a new OS that allows for backward compatibility. To me, the burden is on them because they came second.

And, just for the record, yeah, I really don't like MS's general corporate policies. Not a MS hater because there's not nearly enough passion behind my feelings them to call it hate, just think they need to step down from their self created pedestal and look at what other people are doing right. (And my apologies if this seems like a topic derail, it's not intended to be.)

Im not understanding your logic here...your saying that MS should have accounted for all the software outthere?

your talkin thousands if not millions of programs and no sane person is going to try and encode a whole new OS that uses current technology with every other application in mind...

Thats like saying...Were gonna put the plumbing up and then you carpenters get to build the house around it....It just dont work that way..Foundation comes first and if you want your programs to survive YOU make them work with the os's out there...

They sort of tried an umbrella effect with the compatability settings but it doesnt work with all programs....why?

Most likely from what ive gathered it is something to do with a security issue...some security program in Vista is not liking something Horizons is doing...

It looks to me like Vista is trying to protect the user from security breaches that could occur, so it wont run the game...

This is a bad thing?? No...Security is an OS's primary concern in the world today....that being said...XP or the past os's were allowing something from Horizons that could possible be considered a security breach??

I dunno but the issue isnt with Vista

[Tryagain]

Those games work on Vista because they had development teams working on them over the past year - something you might have noticed Horizons did not have.

no and yes

not all software had to have a vista version made for it. When vista was on the horizons we took our beta version and tried it with every piece of Software we run. The only thing it did not work with was a PDF printer type software we use. The rest of our in house standard developed on dot net 1.1 and 2.0 worked fine. Some of those programs were simple but a couple were monsters with 10's of thousands of lines of code.

When I tested it at home there were just a few older games that did not work. But everything that I purchased 2003 to 2006 worked just fine. Perhaps I was lucky.

I tend to agree with Velea that Microsoft has an obligation to provide backwards compatability support with Vista; maybe not forever, but enough to ensure that anything that runs on XP will also run correctly on Vista. From what I've seen of Vista, Microsoft failed that obligation.

umm no...well perhaps a little

There will be a time when OS developers have to leave the concept of backwards compatibility behind. It is the sole reason why hardware just has to wait for software now. With CPU's coming out in the next 24 months that are 20 times faster than what we could get in 2004 you think an OS like XP can utilize its power ? As it is Vista does provide backwards compatibility its just well.... not very forgiving of applications where the quality of the coding and development behind it is suspect and sorry HZ does fall into that category. Now I do hope that Microsoft does do something to ease the pain. But to blame the fact that HZ does not work on Vista to be solely Microsoft's fault is silly, vista was available for testing when Tulga was still in control.

Someone already said in this thread that Vitrium can do nothing because they can't get what they need out of MS due to it being closed source. That still makes no sense at all.

I do hope vitrium considers this an active issue and its one I think that has just as high of a priority as the Unity port.

btw I got HZ to work a couple of times on my vista machine. But only more consistently when I turned off the aero desktop....

[Velea]

Thats like saying...Were gonna put the plumbing up and then you carpenters get to build the house around it....It just dont work that way..Foundation comes first and if you want your programs to survive YOU make them work with the os's out there...

No, what I'm saying is not that. What I'm saying, to use your analogy, is that you have a house already built and want to upgrade the electricity. You aren't going to tear down the old house which worked just fine in most ways, just to upgrade the electricity, are you? You have the design blueprints on the existing house well detailed because you were the electrician when you built the original house, too. So you know what the limitations, requirements, etc, are for the upgrade. What MS did, in my opinion, with each new major OS they came up with is said "To heck with the old blueprints. We're tearing out anything in the house that doesn't work with this new electrical system.".