- Joined
- Dec 22, 2003
- Messages
- 36,690
My old laptop (which my missus very occasionally used to play games with/against me on) went pop the other day.
Twas a bit gutted. I'd fancied playing through Torchlight II but couldn't be arsed on my own and I'd literally just bought her a copy 5 minutes before.
I've got an old spec main PC, though with loads of RAM and HDD space. I've got an old Phenom II X3 and a HD7970 - which runs most games pretty well (though I've stayed clear of BF4 so I don't know what that'd look like). I wondered if I could get two copies of Torchlight running on it (one on my 42" telly and the other on my actual monitor (which sits on the unused desk since I plugged my PC into the telly).
So I booted up my copy of VMware workstation and wanged a copy of XP Pro on a VM. Installed steam on a different account. Plugged in a second keyboard and mouse and...
...couldn't get the fucking thing to exclusively use the second keyboard and mouse. Tried everything. Was really annoying. Spent a good day rooting through logs and adding specific things to the .vmx config files. Nothing.
Then it occured to me to perform an upgrade to v9.0.3 of workstation itself. Lo and behold the fix for USB human interface devices was in the readme.
Two copies of Torchlight II, running perfectly acceptably on a single (not great spec) PC, separately controllable on two different monitors. Win
Thank fuck consoles are holding back PC game development in the graphics department eh? If we were still going full-tilt bells and whistles and aggressive hardware upgrades then the games I'd want to play wouldn't work like that. But as everything is now shittily cross-platform my spare CPU cycles can be used more effectively. Epic win. I'm gonna test L4D2 later since valve was nice enough to give it us all for free!
(Only drawback is I've not got a second sound card - I may pick a really cheap one up and wang it in a spare PCI slot - then give the VM exclusive access to that. For now she can make do with both our sounds coming out of my telly)
Twas a bit gutted. I'd fancied playing through Torchlight II but couldn't be arsed on my own and I'd literally just bought her a copy 5 minutes before.
I've got an old spec main PC, though with loads of RAM and HDD space. I've got an old Phenom II X3 and a HD7970 - which runs most games pretty well (though I've stayed clear of BF4 so I don't know what that'd look like). I wondered if I could get two copies of Torchlight running on it (one on my 42" telly and the other on my actual monitor (which sits on the unused desk since I plugged my PC into the telly).
So I booted up my copy of VMware workstation and wanged a copy of XP Pro on a VM. Installed steam on a different account. Plugged in a second keyboard and mouse and...
...couldn't get the fucking thing to exclusively use the second keyboard and mouse. Tried everything. Was really annoying. Spent a good day rooting through logs and adding specific things to the .vmx config files. Nothing.
Then it occured to me to perform an upgrade to v9.0.3 of workstation itself. Lo and behold the fix for USB human interface devices was in the readme.
Two copies of Torchlight II, running perfectly acceptably on a single (not great spec) PC, separately controllable on two different monitors. Win
Thank fuck consoles are holding back PC game development in the graphics department eh? If we were still going full-tilt bells and whistles and aggressive hardware upgrades then the games I'd want to play wouldn't work like that. But as everything is now shittily cross-platform my spare CPU cycles can be used more effectively. Epic win. I'm gonna test L4D2 later since valve was nice enough to give it us all for free!
(Only drawback is I've not got a second sound card - I may pick a really cheap one up and wang it in a spare PCI slot - then give the VM exclusive access to that. For now she can make do with both our sounds coming out of my telly)
