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« Last post by Oldtimer6360 on August 21, 2023, 10:08:45 AM »
I am a long time player of Outpost (off and on) since the first game came out in the 90s. I just have a few comments.
In addition to the good comments about the game in the main post, I have found a few things that may be of interest to all.
1) You don't need Windows 3.11 to play this game. Win 8.1 32 bit will work just fine. The issue is "32 bit", not really the OS in general, I believe. This old game doesn't play on 64 bit OSs without an emulator.
I've tried to make those work, but the instructions provided are poor at best, and make assumptions about the user's knowledge that are unwarranted, so it's like trying to learn Calculus II with some modern textbooks that assume you know the details and make logical leaps and you go "huh?". Yeah.
My suggestion is to get Win 8.1 instead of bothering with the ancient 3.11. I think it is a free download or very cheap. It is a pain to get set up though, especially if you're converting from Win 10.
2) For this game to work it's best, you have to run the Patch using Dosbox so that it can repair the bad software in the original game.
However, it still won't fix some things, such as the Monorail. If you attempt to set up a monorail, it will IMMEDIATELY crash the game. I've tried it twice and it crashed both times.
However, the patch does make the game much more playable. I've noticed that the other colony won't surrender as quickly, and I'm able to begin using the Trade feature.
3) You can play the game without the 1.5 patch; however it will be missing a lot of small things.
It is clear that this game COULD have been much bigger and better; and still could be with a newer engine that works with modern OSs. However, I'm not a fan of Outpost 2. I have tried to play it several times, and I just can't enjoy it. It isn't the same game and it isn't better IMHO.
4) For those who use Win 8.1 or older OSs, it should go without saying that those OSs aren't supported by anyone anymore, except for a very few. You can buy AVG antivirus and VPN that will work with 8.1; but the browsers aren't supporting it anymore, especially the OSs older than Win 8.1. So you are playing with fire by going on the internet with these OSs, even if you have AVG to help out. I can't say how good AVG antivirus is; but it's better than nothing. In any case, I just go to the website where I can download Outpost 1.5, get it, and then get off the internet ASAP! It's just too dangerous to stay on very long. In fact, the hackers are constantly (literally) pinging the internet to see which computers are using old OSs. And when they find one, they attack it automatically and set up your computer as one of their millions of BOT machines that they use to attack other machines with DOS (denial of service) attacks.
So my advice is if you must get on the internet, make it brief; and get off asap. Don't use your old game machine as your primary computer. We live in a very dangerous world. Best to you all.
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