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I find it ironic that I feel confident in collecting demos for oldschool platforms (because they are guaranteed to work on emulators) and yet when it comes to Windows, I have to rely more on crappy videos because so often, these demos will refuse to run on, for example, Windows 7 which I have.

What ways are there to run demos that fail to run at all these days, like "Faded" by Oror or Still's Eternal Dream of Beauty, which is only a couple of years old? I found out, in the process of trying some of these files, that a crucial DLL for Direct3D (I think) is missing from Windows 7, so I downloaded it and everything is fine for those.

However, there are those cases where not only does the demo itself not run, like "Faded", but there is no video of any kind, meaning that the demo is lost to me. I remember when I was able to run it on Windows XP and I really liked it. I tried troubleshooting compatibility for the demo, but selecting WinXP SP2 resulted in the demo being unable to find the "datas.pak" file which it needed - it's like the demo exe was being run in isolation.

And there's Eternal Dream of Beauty, which I was able to run earlier this year, even if it was a bit choppy, and now I can't run it at all, as it goes back to Windows in the middle of the loading bar. There is a video, but I would really prefer to see these demos "live", as it were.

I know the nature of the Demoscene, where talented people come together to put these prods together, usually until the very last moment before projection onto the big screen, and so they only have time to make sure the demo runs for the party, before releasing a "final" version later on, so I can understand that, unlike games which are meant to run on as many different configurations as possible, demos usually run on the configs on which they were developed and it's pot luck if they run on any others, so I'm not complaining, but it's such a shame we have to rely on videos most of the time.

I do like it, however, when groups return to an older prod and update it to run on the latest OS, like with "Elevated", which stopped running for me a long time ago and is suddenly running again, because the files have been updated. Come to think of it, "Cdak" failed for me a while ago as well and that's running again - was it updated?

Anyway, that's the end of the lament.

i wonder if the concept of docker could be applied to demos?

you mean the "works on my machine lol" part? :D

Didn't I say that?

All I'm really asking is for tips on how to run PC demos that refuse to run any more.

wysiwtf: not a bad idea but afaik GPU virtualization isnt there yet , if you're not running a multi GPU system you're stuck with software rendering.

However in preparation for technology advancing it would be clever to note a "known to work" system config in the NFO so in the future we're able to build/configure virtualized machines according to the NFO to run the prod.

The breaking point is often graphics card drivers/resolution. If you can force a windowed mode or tweak your settings to make amendments for 320x240/640x480 etc., plenty of demos will still run.

Debug them and figure out why they fail, then make a patch. That's the common solution for compatibility issues on Amiga, cf Whdload.

I have no idea how to do that.

Any Linux demo made in the 32 bit era is getting difficult. Linux in general isnt great for backwards compatibility so running even up to ~2008 stuff on a modern distro is a crapshoot.

To be fair, those weren't really easy to run back then either.

Then learn it. How do you think those demos were made to begin with? People weren't born with demo making abilities.

absence: maybe some links would be a little more encouraging?

it's your own fault, foebane. Demoscene customers just have to haggle better SLAs with demogroups for LTS on demos.

Ironically, running some old Windows demos on Wine may work better than on recent Windows versions. :D

Absolutely, or book recommendations. I don't have any off hand unfortunately, but anyone is free to chip in.

I guess you think I'm being selfish, but then anyone else could chip in about stuff they want to see again, too.

Not at all, I was just suggesting what could be done about the problem. A list of stuff that doesn't work is of limited use until someone intends to do something about it. :)

Not sure if listing these is part of the point of this thread, but "Do Zen" by Komplex (http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=17) is another one that's just impossible to get running these days. Uses some really weird old stuff.

The trouble with Windows demos is that there are so many factors that can cause a demo to not run, and just now I've been able to run Threepixels' Cuatro when I wasn't able to a long time ago. Also, concerning Noiseless and Talent's Christmas Chips, I've known about the intro animation that refuses to work, and how I can use "/nointro" to skip it, but when I ran it a few months ago it ran absolutely fine, but now I'm getting an annoying flicker on the screen which I also had a long time before.

It certainly IS a game of pot luck in running Windows demos, and runnability seems to come and go depending on each user's config, but I guess that's something we just have to deal with until the original coders or talented programmers can patch them. However, I love those demos that have separate soundtrack files, as they can be run from something like XMPlay with ease :)

According to the comments it requires MSJVM which was discontinued due to legal action. Might run on an old unpatched Windows XP. Alternatively, did you try the .NET port?

This++;

For PC-Demos one should have some VMs...you can determine via release date if sth should run on WinXP for example...simply start your XP-VM and run the Demo! (just make sure you have all the openGL/DirectX-Runtimes installed and some GraphicsCard-Drivers that are considered very compatible)

There will for sure be many Demos that won´t be made working again easily...this lies in the nature of the demoscene...lots of experimental stuff was done. Just hope someone gets it running and puts a video on youtube then!

Fixing old stuff yourself is very timeConsuming i guess...especially if you don´t even know how to debug sth. :p (And if you really want to learn it, just google it, the internet is full of information about everything!)

Generally for small intros in the 4k/8k/64k-categories you should check if you have the needed Runtimes first (OpenGL/DirectX), then try in a 32bit-OS, if still not running try recompressing them (in case of 4ks most of the times crinkler is used...so search for "crinkler" here on pouet, download it, read the "manual.txt", it describes in some few words how to recompress an intro formerly crunched with crinkler. This even helps with the 32/64bit-issue!)

Stuff that predates crinkler is mostly .com-objects, those would need some debugging, maybe even hacking some values in a hex-editor could work out...but you need deep knowledge to do such things! ;)

Just don´t think you can open a thread, post some Demos that don´t work and someone jumps in to fix them...it takes time not many people would want to invest just so you can watch some demo again! Maybe you get lucky and someone else wants to see this exact same demo again aswell, but i don´t think so!

This is why I asked if I was being selfish, I was just wondering if I was missing some ways of getting them running, with certain drivers or files or whatever that I may be missing. But now I know more, and I'm willing to settle for videos for those demos that no longer run, or not at all for the examples I mentioned.

would be nice to have a page or document of some sort on how to get certain demos running on modern systems atleast. but then it would need to be recently updated or risk most of information getting deprecated as emulators and OSs change. which is probably why no one bothers managing such a thing.

I occasionally do some patching on the ones that I wanna see again; a lot of the times it's minor issues. For software rendering ones that run hardwired in modes that are no longer supported (320x200 or 512x384, etc) you can try https://github.com/Gargaj/upskkale.