Games to play on a netbook

[fuser]

I would probably play Arcanum or Alpha Centauri.  Those are my clutch games for low performance systems.  And *maybe* Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic, but that might be pushing it.

Speaking of Arcanum. High Resolution Patch just came out so you could scale it for the wierd netbook resolutions.

• Full support for any resolution.
• All elements of the interface perfectly centered.
• All elements of the interface remain their original size with no custom graphics in any resolution.

[Yegolev]

Some netbooks/laptops have an Fn-toggle as "Num lock" for a part of the alphanumerical keyboard, turning it into a numpad. Don't know about this model or if that would suffice for Dwarf Fortress, though.

As someone who used the number pad to play Civ and tried on a laptop, the fake numpad thing is not a replacement.

For roguelikes, the numberpad is not necessary once you get used to the original navkeys:

Code:

  y k u  
  h   l  
  b j m  

The problem here is a little bit that DF isn't really a roguelike and a lot that Toady uses retarded keys for menu navigation.  For whatever reason, the numpad - (;) and numpad + (/) are inverted on the Fn toggle, plus I have to switch out of it to use U, I, O, P, J, K, L, ;, and ?.  Nethack works great because it uses pre-numpad keys, but DF/Toady assumes a numpad.  This is one of the reasons I think he's an asshole.

[Sky]

Speaking of Arcanum. High Resolution Patch just came out

   

(My avatar makes any show of appreciation kind of creepy imo :))

[Draegan]

This thread made me install Diablo 2 last night and play for an hour or so.  I never played an assassin before.  I have no idea what I'm doing. 

[rattran]

Clicking to kill shit. It's not too hard to understand 

[Engels]

I wonder if the original Deus Ex would play on a netbook. It is 3d, but pretty ancient, so it may work well. Still one of the best RPG/FPS game in existence, in terms of story writing.

[schild]

I wonder if the original Deus Ex would play on a netbook. It is 3d, but pretty ancient, so it may work well. Still one of the best RPG/FPS game in existence, in terms of story writing.

Can't see why it couldn't.

[Jain Zar]

Install DOSBox. Download every game on Underdogs. You're done!

Downloading from The Underdogs may be pretty hard these days.

Abandonia is still around.  
If DOSBox is an option, you can not go wrong with Ultima 4,5,6, the Underworlds, or the 2 Worlds of Games.
There is the Eye of the Beholder series, old Might and Magic games (3 and Xeen saga being the best), Wizardry.

And if you wish to fight fer da Emperor (who sucks.  BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!), the original Space Hulk, and Space Crusade are good choices too.

Its not really found in abandonware sites, but Warlords 2 is tits and still completely awesome.  I wish I had the CD deluxe version and not the 3.5 floppy edition.  And I really don't wanna buy a USB 3.5 drive to attempt to install ancient DOS titles on my iMac and hope Dosbox is chill with it.  That's what abandonware sites are for.  And no copy protection hassles.  (Note to self: Organize giant cardboard box of pre minibox PC game documentation.)

I am playing the SSI Goldbox Krynn games with legit copies.  Fuckin game treats me like a criminal with 3 different forms of protection it asks for all the time.  Load a game?  Copy protection.  Randomly saving a game?  Copy protection.  Reading 1/2 the barebones plot?  COPY PROTECTION.

Its sad when the people who break the law can have a better game experience than those of us who legitimately BUY OUR SOFTWARE.  (You fucking developers out there hear this?  I buy game?  You get off my dick.)

[Engels]

I wonder if the original Deus Ex would play on a netbook. It is 3d, but pretty ancient, so it may work well. Still one of the best RPG/FPS game in existence, in terms of story writing.

Can't see why it couldn't.

My only thought would be a netbook with a non-ancient default screen resolution that can't display the game's resolutions well.

[Roentgen]

Got Fallout 1 and 2 installed on the netbook.

FYI, Fallout 1, 2, and Fallout Tactics are bundled at Good Old Games for a total of $15 for all three together.   

[Tarami]

I got another one. Aquaria (link). Really fun and endearing game. Bring headphones because it has some great music.

[Quinton]

The problem here is a little bit that DF isn't really a roguelike and a lot that Toady uses retarded keys for menu navigation.  For whatever reason, the numpad - (;) and numpad + (/) are inverted on the Fn toggle, plus I have to switch out of it to use U, I, O, P, J, K, L, ;, and ?.  Nethack works great because it uses pre-numpad keys, but DF/Toady assumes a numpad.  This is one of the reasons I think he's an asshole.

Also, he forces me to run win32 to play a text-interface game.

Roguelikes that don't run on unix are an abomination in the eyes of gods and men.

[Yegolev]

I knew I liked you.

[Roentgen]

I know I'm a decade behind the times but FALLOUT IS FUCKING AWESOME.  Great game.  Never played it before.  It somehow doesn't feel dated at all.  That's how you know it's fucking good.

[Hayduke]

You should play the Troika games afterwards.  They were good.  If buggy.  Unbalanced.  And unfinished.  No idea how that creative powerhouse went bankrupt

[AutomaticZen]

I know I'm a decade behind the times but FALLOUT IS FUCKING AWESOME.  Great game.  Never played it before.  It somehow doesn't feel dated at all.  That's how you know it's fucking good.

I also have not.  But I'll buy it this weekend from GOG.

[raydeen]

Just got myself an Asus EEE PC with XP and the 16 GB SSD drive ($250 at Best Buy). I copied my NWN folder to it from my external drive, patched up and was pleasantly surprised to find that after 1.68 it no longer does a CD check Two words: WOO and HOO. Now, a quick question for those in the know. Is it worth the money to get NWN Diamond? I have Platinum. Is there any advantage to that final collection that I don't currently have?

[schild]

Just got myself an Asus EEE PC with XP and the 16 GB SSD drive ($250 at Best Buy). I copied my NWN folder to it from my external drive, patched up and was pleasantly surprised to find that after 1.68 it no longer does a CD check Two words: WOO and HOO. Now, a quick question for those in the know. Is it worth the money to get NWN Diamond? I have Platinum. Is there any advantage to that final collection that I don't currently have?

Talk more about this EEE PC. Which one did you get? How is it for getting shit done?

My laptop totally fucking up and died and I can't afford a full laptop right now. Info plz.

[Hawkbit]

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neverwinter_Nights :

Though not actually expansion packs, Atari released subsequent editions of the game following its first release in 1999. These editions are: Neverwinter Nights: Gold, which combines the original game with the Shadows of Undrentide expansion pack; Neverwinter Nights: Platinum (in Europe called Neverwinter Nights: Deluxe Edition), which combined all three NWN products and came on a single DVD-ROM or four CD-ROMs; and Neverwinter Nights: Diamond (in Europe called Neverwinter Nights Deluxe: Special Edition), which includes everything in the Platinum edition plus the three additional modules from the Kingmaker Expansion Pack.

[raydeen]

Talk more about this EEE PC. Which one did you get? How is it for getting shit done?

My laptop totally fucking up and died and I can't afford a full laptop right now. Info plz.

Here's the model I got:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9272299&type=product&id=1218072684944

So far it's not bad. It will tend to hang here and there as the stock SSD is apparently not the fastest (delayed write cache and all) but for just low down dirty work it seems to be quite nice. About $30 more will get you either a 120 or 160 GB drive. I opted for the SSD as I don't want to have to worry about failing drives due to impact shocks.

The only hangups for me are the tEEEny keyboard (touch typing can be a little tricky) and the occasional drive hiccup. No lockups so far and the battery is pretty decent. I got about 3 hours out of it on a full charge. It comes with a webcam, Skype, MS Works and a trial of MS Office Student edition (deleted that right away) and Norton (deleted that even quicker). NWN, Perfect World and WoW run fairly decently considering the hardware.

3 USB ports, VGA, SD slot and headphone/mic ports. Just about anything you'd want or need for basic computing.

[Lounge]

I picked up one of the 8" EE's for my son for his birthday last month.  It's a great little machine for him, but i can't (like fucking not at all) use the keyboard on it.  If you were to get one for anything other than airplane rides plan on hauling a usb keyboard with it.

[MisterNoisy]

It's not an EEE, but I picked up a Dell Mini 9 through their outlet recently for just under $200.  Even with just the 8GB SSD (and an 8GD SD card permanently parked in the reader), it's got enough room for what I need to do and is fast enough to make light to medium duty tasks (office shit, photo editing, etc) and general bullshit pretty well.  Surprisingly nice screen for a $200 machine.  One thing I really liked about the Dell is that the RAM and SSD are readily accessible from the bottom of the PC (two screws and everything's exposed), so upgrading is pretty easy.

[raydeen]

I'll add one pro and one con to the model I bought. Pro: It has a multi-touch trackpad. I gotta admit, as much fault as I have with Macs, the one thing I love is the two finger trackpad scroll. This particular model mimics it pretty well. Con: It doesn't work well in Firefox. I have no idea why. IE, Windows Explorer, everything else, it's perfect. Firefox, it's incredibly unresponsive. I've pretty much switched to Opera as it works well there. Maybe you're already an Opera fan and it won't matter. I'm getting to be one. Opera's implementation of font size switching and Flash are a little wonky but those are minor quibbles. Two button scroll works very well with some tweakage and double tapping with both fingers will enable 8-way scrolling for webpages that are bigger than the screen. Video playback seems a bit faster in Opera than Firefox although there's a little strangeness with minimized Flash windows. I hate to say it but Firefox may start taking a back seat. It's been my browser of choice for years but Opera seems to be kicking it's ass in some areas.

[fuser]

One issue wuth the dell mini 9. The ssd is a bastardized pata solution that only a handfull of vendors make solutions for. The bonsus tho is zero moving parts, no cpu fan no spinning hdd it is wisper silent.

[raydeen]

One issue wuth the dell mini 9. The ssd is a bastardized pata solution that only a handfull of vendors make solutions for. The bonsus tho is zero moving parts, no cpu fan no spinning hdd it is wisper silent.

The eee I bought definitely has a fan inside. It's not horrendously loud but you'll hear it from time to time. And the 16 GB SSD may be 2 8's tied together. Not sure on that but I do know some models have a 4 and an 8 tied to make a 12. In any case, with a stock install you'll have about 10 GBs to play with out of the box. XP and everything uses up about 5 GBs.

Edit: Of course, if you opt for the HD model, all that's a moot point. I'm amazed that these things have bigger HDs than any of the computers in my house. My biggest internal is 60 GB. I've got a couple external 250's but still...I can't imagine what we'll have in a few years.

[Tale]

EverQuest 1 is running on my netbook (Samsung NC10 with Intel Atom, 1Gb RAM, i945, XP). It runs very smoothly in older zones, chugs a bit in the larger new/revamped zones - might be able to solve that by upgrading to 2Gb RAM. I'm just messing around with low level characters, fighting stuff and going ding. My resolution in 1999 was 800x600 on a 15" CRT, so 1024x600 on a 10" LCD is just fine.

[Quinton]

Does anyone manufacture netbooks with trackpoint instead of touchpads? 

[Tale]

Haven't seen any. I plug in a USB mouse whenever I'm doing anything that needs pointing and clicking (Logitech's cheapest full-sized wired model).

[raydeen]

Does anyone manufacture netbooks with trackpoint instead of touchpads? 

If you mean the little 'nubbin' controller, I'm pretty sure the Sony Vaio P uses it. It's around $800-$900 though so I don't know how much of a selling point that would be. They're also supposedly dumping Vista and will shortly be pre-installing XP due to performance issues.