Before IRC expirienced its latest outage, I saw a few people coming through asking for advice on how to get Outpost 1 running on their shiny new 64 bit systems. While I have seen many pointers and good suggestions always offered, it seemed that the same people often came back and asked again. The truth is there are several ways one can pull it off, but of all the ones I have tried, this one worked the best for me:
What you will need:
1 Computer (Windoze XP x64/Vista x64/7 x64), preferrably with at least 2GB of RAM (tried one GB and the emulation was a little flakey), between 2 - 10GB of spare HDD space, multi-core CPU reccomended, and a CD drive if your Windows 98/Outpost CD are physical.
1 Copy of Windoze 98 (CD/Floppy/Image) and your CD key
1 Internet connection
Basic understanding of computers, hardware, and preferably emulation.
Possibly an hour or so of spare time for tweaking.
What to do:
1.) Download Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 from the Microsoft website:
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/detai...ang=en&id=24439(Link was good as of 8/23/2011)
2.) Install Microsoft Virtual PC 2007
3.) Open the VPC Console by clicking start -> All Programs -> Microsoft Virtual PC
(Note: Windoze Vista and 7 Users may have a slightly different Start Menu cofiguration.)
4.) Click the 'New' Button on the VPC console.
5.) The first screen should say something to the effect of "Welcome to the new virtual machine wizard". Just click 'Next'
6.) Choose the 'Create a virtual machine' Radio Button and click 'Next'
7.) This section allows you to name your new VM and give it a custom path if you choose. Do so and click 'Next' (I used "OP1VM", but this name doesn't really matter.)
8.) The next part is the Operating System selection. This basically gives you the reccomended allocation of resources for the OS you are going to install on the VM. I used the 'Windows 2000' Settings, but the Windoze 98 settings should be sufficient, seeing as this game was designed to run on 4MB of RAM. When you're finished, click 'next'
9.) You can adjust the amount of RAM maually on this section, I just left it alone. When done, you guessed it, click 'Next'
10.) In this section it gives you the opportunity to create a virtual hard disk. This is no more than a file within your physical (or host) hard drive. Select "A new virtual hard disk" radio button and click 'Next'
11.) This part allows you to determine both the size of the file, and its location within your hard drive file system. You shouldn't need more than a couple of gigs for the OS and the Outpost installation. After you are finished, click 'Next'
(Truthfully you don't even need that much, you can get 98 on a couple hundred megs if you really try for it, but in this case you want to get it installed and running with plenty of space to spare for a page file and anything else you may want to do.)
12.) This is just the summary section, look it over if you like, and hit 'Finish'
13.) Your new VM should show up in the VPC console now. Click on it and click the 'Start' button (The one in the VPC console, not your taskbar) -.-;.
14.)
FOR PHYSICAL Windows 98 CD: On the window that comes up, click the "CD" Menu, and select 'Use Physical Drive *:' (Where *: is the letter currently assigned to your physical CD Drive)
FOR ISO IMAGE Windows 98 CD: On the CD Menu (In the VM window) select 'Capture ISO Image' and browse to your ISO file location, select it and click 'Open'
15.) Install Windoze 98.
16.) After the installation is completed:
FOR PHYSICAL Outpost CD: On the VM window, click the "CD" Menu, and select 'Use Physical Drive *:' (Where *: is the letter currently assigned to your physical CD Drive)
FOR ISO IMAGE Outpost CD: On the CD Menu (In the VM window) select 'Capture ISO Image' and browse to your ISO file location, select it and click 'Open'
17.) You can use the autoplay to set up the outpost installation, or you can browse to it manually and launch it.
After this you should have no problem playing the game.
However, I did come across one machine in my 12 scenario trial that refused to function with the CD.
No CD Patching:
Copy the entire contents of the CD to a directory (For this example I'm going to use C:\Outpost)
You need to modify two files in the C:\Sierra\Outpost (Default directory, if you installed elsewhere, navigate there) directory: 'Outpost.ini', and 'Sierra.inf'.
Outpost.ini:
In the [General] Section, you need to modify all of the paths of the 'opimage' variable to 'C:\Outpost'
FOR EXAMPLE:
Your original Outpost.ini file looks like this:
[general]
opimage=D:\bitmaps;D:\videos;D:\music
You need to change it to:
[general]
opimage=C:\Outpost\bitmaps;C:\Outpost\videos;C:\Outpost\music
Sierra.inf:
At the very bottom of the file under the section called [Misc] there is a variable called 'SourceDir' that needs to point to the root of the copied image.
FOR EXAMPLE:
Your original Sierra.inf file will look like this at the very bottom:
[Misc]
SourceDir=D:\
You need to change it to:
[Misc]
SourceDir=C:\Outpost
Thats pretty much all there is to it. I didn't really run into any further issues. If you need any further help, feel free to send me a message or post to this thread.
