Long-Lost forum member returns

I was a regular here on GameBoomers up to about ten or twelve years ago. Then my computer died, and when I tried to log in with my new machine, it wouldn't let me. It seems as if it thought by account belonged to someone else, and I was dead-ended. Now that computer has itself died, and this is being written on my current "new" machine, and I seem to be getting through. But my Kate Walker avatar has been replaced with the letter "A"; is there any was I can get my Kate avatar back?

Thanx,

Antoinetta

Welcome back.

welcome back also.

Hi Antoinetta, welcome back!

back Antoinetta! I just browsed through all our avatars and I don't see a Kate Walker one, but I have missed it. We have well over 100, that you can choose from. If you had your own avatar, like many of us did, me included, hosted on Photobucket, those avatars were locked out unless you paid Photobucket.

Ana

Welcome back, Antoinetta! Yes, things have changed a bit since 10 years ago! If you had your avatar hosted somewhere, it may no longer be available. I use the free storage site, Imgur for mine.

Hello, long-lost forum member, and welcome back.

Welcome back. We've missed you

Thanks for the welcome back, everyone! I'll look around on the Internet, and see if I can find a Kate Walker, or other appropriate avatar, and see if I can't capture it and keep it for use here and elsewhere.

Unfortunately, I haven't been playing any new games for the past few years; what killed my ability was the disappearance of games for sale that came on a disk. My techie computer abilities rate around zero; actually more likely should be expressed in negative numbers. My experience in downloading free stuff is spotty; sometimes it worked, other times a small window appeared saying that the download failed, and other times the window came up and said that the download was successful-but there was no new ikon on my desktop to show this. I supposed it was buried somewhere in the electronic bowels of my computer, but I would have no idea of how to go about finding it. With this experience, I am loath to risk paying out $$$$ for something I won't be able to access.

Unlike downloads, the disk will hold your hands and tell you where to click as the installation process proceeds.

Anyway, if people here can help me find a consistent way to download stuff I would be most appreciative. (is there possibly a mouse-click by mouse-click walk-thru somewhere?

Thanks for all.

Antoinetta

Welcome back Antoinetta!

There was a time I thought I would never download games but I am a frequent downloader now. I buy from Big Fish, GOG, and Steam. They all have helpful clients (or game managers or whatever they're called) that do the work for you!

Yes, what oldbroad said! I used to like to have the physical games too, but much prefer downloading now. And free downloaded games are potentially full of malware. Buy and download from a reputable place like Big Fish, GOG or Steam. GOG has a lot of old games that will normally not play on new systems which they have tweaked to run on Windows 10. They are the best! Sometimes they have them for not much more that $1. My favorite one from them which I couldn't play any more was Shivers 1.

The GOG sale is going on now and the Steam Winter sale will be starting soon, so now is the time to take a look at them .

Draclvr, if the GOG games have been tweaked to run on Window 10, will they also run on Windows 7 Professional Edition, which is my current operating system.

I have played from 150-200 games since I bought my first computer back in January of 2000. As the years passed and I went through several computers, I found that with each operating system upgrade, some games would keep being playable, and others not. Interestingly, in the same purchase that I made of my first computer, I also bought several games, including Gabriel Knight III and Amerzone. Amazingly, these two games have played on every operating system I have had, from Windows 98 to Windows 95 to Windows XP to Windows 7 Home Edition to Windows 7 Professional.

And on the other hand, there was a beautiful little game known as Amber, which would only play on Windows 95.

So I'm just curious, why the wide variance on which games will play on which machines.

Thanks.

Antoinetta

Yes, but I hope you are not using Windows 7 on the internet? Microsoft stopped supporting Windows 7 almost 2 years ago, so it has received no security updates and is a huge target for hackers.

You question about gaming and operating systems would be a great one for the Glitches forum where we techies hand out!

Yes, my computer died several months ago, and I was able to go to a local computer repair shop, and was able to get a used Windows 7 (Professional) for $110. I had wanted to get an XP machine, but none were available. What, if I may ask is the difference between the "Home" and "Professional" versions of Windows 7.

I'll bring the games and operating systems over to the proper forum.

Antoinetta

I have played from 150-200 games since I bought my first computer back in January of 2000. As the years passed and I went through several computers, I found that with each operating system upgrade, some games would keep being playable, and others not. Interestingly, in the same purchase that I made of my first computer, I also bought several games, including Gabriel Knight III and Amerzone. Amazingly, these two games have played on every operating system I have had, from Windows 98 to Windows 95 to Windows XP to Windows 7 Home Edition to Windows 7 Professional.

And on the other hand, there was a beautiful little game known as Amber, which would only play on Windows 95.

So I'm just curious, why the wide variance on which games will play on which machines.

Antoinetta

Welcome back, and to add to what has already been said about downloads, games that you buy from GOG, you can download the files Directly to your Hard Drive and then you can Burn them to a DVD(s) or flash drive or External hard drive and so these games will be always available without having to re-download them again, they are DRM free and Yours to keep forever, so even if GOG went out of business you would have your games backed up.

And yes to what Draclvr said regarding whether you are using your Win7 online is a no no.

Starcom, that is all true but that is a big problem for those of us who don't know how to do that stuff very well (download to the hard drive and burn to somewhere). I believe though, that you can do that also while using their client, at least with some of the games.

There are so many different reasons in answer to your question. Sometimes it is the way that games are programmed, sometimes it is the video drivers, sometimes it's because it requires a 32-bit processor but it won't work on a 64-bit processor, sometimes it's because of Windows Media Player or Quicktime, etc., etc., in terms of why some games won't play while others remain playable without tweaking on several different operating systems. There just isn't one simple answer to your question - there are many different factors involved.

If you ever have trouble, though, getting a game to run on a certain operating system, there are folks here who might be able to lend a hand and offer you some advice about getting them running. There are also a lot of older games now that have been tweaked to run on newer operating systems - the website GOG sells many downloadable older games such as this.

I believe there is a patch out there that allows Amber to run on Windows Vista/7, but I have never tried it myself. I see at least one playthrough on YouTube where the YouTuber is playing the game on Windows 10 - he is probably running it inside a virtual machine, but I haven't investigated it further.

Additionally, by installing and running a virtual machine on your computer running one of the older operating systems, you can play pretty much anything out there. I have games from several decades running on one computer, thanks to Virtual Machine/Virtual Box, DOSBox, etc.

The only thing I would add to Marian's post is for Windows 10. It does not allow certain forms of DRM to be installed and so many games cannot be played. An update also made this true for Windows 8 too. Again, GOG has removed the DRM from many of them. I just got to do a replay of A Vampyre Story I downloaded from GOG!

And I'd really like to advise you against using Windows 7 on-line. I have at least one individual who refuses and thinks that because she has a free anti-virus program on it she is safe. But she is not safe from all manner of bad stuff having nothing to do with viruses.

In any case, do not use it for anything - and I mean anything - of a personal nature, including email.

I'm going to move this over to Glitches where we can chat about computers, avatars etc.

Ana

Antionnette, using game sites like Steam and GOG is really easy. You just download the GOG or Steam client onto your computer and then you can buy and play your games from there.

If you go to the Steam site (liteally just do a search for Steam), at the top of the home page will be a little green box that says "Install Steam." You click on that and the process takes care of itself from there with prompts. Once Steam is installed, you sign up for a free account and then you're in business. Buying and downloading games is just as easy. It's all laid out for you on the site. They like to make it easy for those of us who aren't computer experts.

Thanks, Ana! But Antoinette had already started a new post there about gaming and her computer!

This is true oldbroad, not everyone knows how to Burn stuff to another medium, not hard too *learn though but the reason I mentioned burning or storing it elsewhere is for people who do not have a Fast Internet and/or a limited download Cap per month and a lot of these games are getting Bigger and Bigger in size so one with Slow internet and/or limited Cap per month they do not want to re-download games over and over and keeping All these Huge games on their hard drive once installed could really eat a huge chunk of their HD. But I also agree with you that it is very simple to download and install the game directly for GOG or Steam or other companies.


*And to add again, if one has a Big enough external hard drive one just has to simply move the downloaded files to the EHD for future use, or even use a large capacity Flash drive or two or three for storage for future use. This would avoid having to learn the art of burning which is becoming more and more out of style.

Yeah, I've been thinking about a large external hard drive for my GOG games for awhile now but thinking is as far as I've gotten with it.

When the new Carol Reed game comes out in January I will have to re-learn how to burn it to a disc. I do have two external drives I put them on also though, with the hope that at least one of them has been done right .

Several people here have made reference to "Clients." In my world, lawyers and private detectives have clients. What does the word mean insofar as computers are concerned?

Is there any place I can get detailed, mouse click-by-mouse click walk-thrus for all the technical stuff ie: downloading, burning disks, etc?

How can I get to the place here at Game Boomers where you have your collection of avatar ikons?

As for Windows 7, its what Ive got; I am on it right now as I type this.

As I said, with Windows 7 you are wide open to all kinds of bad stuff and it's being targeted by hackers and other malware. Make sure you have a good anti-virus, but the security holes in the underlying system are something you can't fix. I will repeat that you should not use it for anything even remotely personal - even email. And start saving up for something that has a secure operating system ASAP.

We can give you step-by-step instructions for those things here. However, you can get instructions like that for downloading and installing a game from GOG right on their website. We can link you to that.

You can get to your account settings by clicking on your name at the top right of the page.

Yes, this got confusing quickly when Ana moved the original thread! Could we move it back to the General forum?

I just merged the other thread with this one, so the whole shebang is now here in Glitches as one thread. There was technical talk throughout the posts, so it seemed like the easiest way to handle the mess that was being created.

Antoinetta, there are new posts for you to read in this thread due to everything having been merged, so make sure you look over the entire thread or you will miss some answers to some of your questions. Thank you.

Oh, good idea! Thank you, Marian. I'm confused easily enough!

Antionetta, the term "client" refers to the free program you download onto your computer that allows you to access the Steam or GOG platform where you can buy the games and join the dicussion forums. It is also the place where you launch the games you have purchased.

So, when you Google search for Steam, you will be directed to the Steam downloader/installer. Click on that and the Steam client downloads and installs. It will also install the Steam icon onto your desktop. Click on that, and you're in business.

It's the same process for GOG.

To expand on the client definition... it's really any piece of software that allows you to access a service made available by a server somewhere else. For instance, my Outlook email program is an actual piece of software that allows me to access and download my emails from my ISP server. My Gmail email account is NOT a client because it is not a piece of software on my computer, but rather a web-based service provided by Google. The clients from GOG and Steam install on your computer and then CAN be used to download games from their server. However, for GOG, you do not HAVE to use their client. You can also download using your web browser. But I find it much, much easier to use the GOG client.

I'd kind of like to address your questions one at a time so they don't get all mixed up in the post! If these posts from me and hagatha address your question about what a client is, then we can move on to your next question.

Sincce we're on the subject of GOG and Steam, I have a question that has been bugging me for years.

For the life of me I cannot find a way to search the GOG store for games. There simply does not seem to be a Search function anywhere. For that reason, and that reason alone, I generally buy my games from Steam because I can search Steam's store.

What am I missing? Every time I go to the GOG store I look for that elusive Search function, but I have never found it.

When I go to GOG, the search icon is on the upper right next to the cart.

It's that magnifying glass.

Yes it is the magnifying glass.

Thanks for the info re clients. You make it understandable enough.

Antoinetta

So, next question, Antoinetta!