Using WineVDM to play windows versions of Civilization I or old Civ1 fan programs

[Blake00]

Been meaning to post about this one for a while & I think I've seen others mention it here in comments but it's time to post something more obvious and official about this!

Even if you're not a regular Linux user many of us have probably heard of Wine before which allows Linux users to play Windows applications. Thankfully some rather smart and wonder people decided to port Wine over to Windows. Why would you port a program that runs windows apps back to Windows you ask? Because it finally solves the frustrating issue of not being able to run 16bit 90s Windows apps on modern 64bit Windows operating systems.

While most Civ1 players stick with the old DOS version through DOSBox some of us actually prefer the Windows CivWin re-release of Civ1 due to its high resolution support (eg you can play it in HD with cool mods) and some like the final multiplayer CivNet release too. However these Windows releases were 16 bit applications that will not run at all unless you used a virtual machine (eg I was using Virtual Box with WinXP on it). WineVDM changes all that and you can run them on modern operating systems quite well.

Some of the old fan editors from back in the day (can't remember any off the top of my head sorry but there were bunch) were windows 16bit apps that have to be run from a VM these days too however once again you can probably run them in your main windows OS just fine via WineVDM.

Granted I'm still using a Windows 7 64bit machine for my testing but I've seen others reporting classic 16bit apps running on Win 10 and 11 thanks to WineVDM so hopefully all our Civ1 stuff does too.

For those like me into retro gaming then this program is a godsend for plenty of other great old games too eg I've been able to run the original Civilization 2 release and its two addons Conflicts in Civ and Fantastic Worlds (The MGE gold edition & Test of Time were 32 bit though so they don't need it), Colonization for Windows, Outpost, Heroes of Might & Magic 1 & 2 for Windows, Sierra adventure game windows releases, and other classic 16bit windows games I'm forgetting! Hopefully one day GoG make a deal with these guys like they did with the DosBox guys to sell prepackaged games with this built in as there's so many great old games not currently for sale because of this annoying issue.

Interested people can get the latest WineVDM releases from here:

Releases · otya128/winevdm

16-bit Windows (Windows 1.x, 2.x, 3.0, 3.1, etc.) on 64-bit Windows - otya128/winevdm

github.com

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[Quintillus]

I finally got around to trying this out and it is pretty cool! So far it is flawlessly running the 16-bit port of a 32-bit application that I wrote back in 2007 (to cater to that sizeable crowd of Windows 3.1 users in 2007). Ski Free already has a native 32-bit port, but I am looking forward to seeing if I can get a bunch of older other games running again. I rescued a bunch of old Windows 9x game CDs from my parents' house a year or two and surprisingly few ran, with 16-bit installers or components being the most common cause of failure.

This could change a lot, and best of all be a completely native experience without having to be in a VM! That 16-bit port can access my local files just the same as any other program!

Edit: Seems to play Sim Ant perfectly!

Sadly I can't electronically register my copy of Sim Tower:

But I love that the 16-bit application does its best to do so!

 

[Blake00]

Yup it's a game changer hey.. an old game changer haha!

 

[retrohackshack]

I got it working! Thanks for the tip. I have never played civwin only civ for DOS. Are there no sounds for civwin?? The music is working fine, but no sounds like when you found a new city or discover a village. Only the wav music is working.

 

[Lord_Hill]

The only sounds are for battles (a little tune for winning/losing or bang/explosion for the modern units), there are no other sounds. The windows version is bare bones compared to DOS.

 

[Blake00]

Yeah and the music that comes with it is terrible which is why I made the CivWIN soundtrack overhaul mod a few years back. However I could only replace existing sound prompts and couldn't do anything about absent sounds sadly as that requires hacking game code.

 

[retrohackshack]

Too bad they don't release the code for it at this point. It's pretty amazing what people have been able to do with it anyway. Enjoying these mods!

 

[Blake00]

Yeah I fear it's long lost like many things from the Microprose era. This new project below is probably our best hope as rahorvat is disassembling CivWIN into readable code. If successful that would allow modders to fix all sorts of things.

Original code of Civilization 1 - Contacting Sid Meier directly

Hi everyone, I have disassembled and parsed the Windows version of the Civilization 1 to a human readable code. Also I have done some translations to C# code, parsed the resources etc. The plan is to get the source code that works exactly as the original code. I know that there are independent...

forums.civfanatics.com

 

[Blake00]

In my recent experiments I'm able to play CivWIN on a modern OS with WineVDM, however I'm unable to get any animation (crashing waves, flowing rivers etc) working sadly. That usually required Windows to be set to 256 colour mode (which is what I do in my XP VM). There's a tickbox on Windows 7 and 10 (Dunno about 11) in the compatibility tab when running old applications that allows you to force turn on a 256 colour mode but when I try that Civ1 gets all these crazy hyper colours and I still don't see any animation unfortunately. If anyone has any better luck, let me know!

 

[Lord_Hill]

Yeah, winevdm can't emulate 256 colour cycling on an OS that doesn't already have it. It won't work I'm afraid.