Having Fun:

Games and Vista

Although the experts may extol the many productivity enhancements in Windows Vista, the truth is, we all need to relax sometimes. And sure enough, since the earliest versions of Windows, Microsoft has been including a number of games with its operating system, from classics like Minesweeper and Solitaire to lamented lost titles like Pinball. In Windows Vista, Microsoft has provided users with a totally refreshed and modernized set of game titles as well as a centralized Games shell folder that aggregates all of your game titles and related hardware devices, such as game controllers. In this article, we’ll have a bit of fun, Windows Vista style.

Games You Get with Windows Vista If you were a fan of Minesweeper, Freecell, or any of the classic games from Windows past, get ready for a fun surprise: In Windows Vista, many of these games have been completely overhauled with new graphical treatments that take advantage of the underlying 3D graphics capabilities of Microsoft’s latest operating system. Table 14-1 summarizes the games you’ll find in Windows Vista.

Using the Games Folder

Although the built-in games were relegated to the All Programs portion of the Start menu in previous Windows versions, Windows Vista now includes a special shell folder called Games and has elevated that folder to a position on the permanent, right-most side of the main Start menu display, 14-1.

When you select this option, you’re shown the Games special shell folder, as referenced in article 14-2. Games is a handy front end to the games that are included with Windows Vista as well as a number of other game-related features. As you select any of the built-in game titles, a preview of the game and its Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) rating is displayed in the Reading Pane, which is found on the right side of the Games window. Depending on how you’ve installed or acquired Windows Vista, you may see additional games in the Games folder. For example, PC makers often include their own selection of game titles. And if you’ve upgraded from Windows XP, many of the games you had previously installed in that system should show up here as well. To launch a game, simply double-click its icon. Or, select the icon and click the Play toolbar button. As you can see in article 14-3, the games included with Windows Vista are significantly more attractive than the games in previous Windows versions.

As a special shell window, Games is customized in certain ways. The toolbar includes links to Games options, game-related tools, and Vista’s parental controls, which provides a way for parents to restrict which games their kids can play (among other related functionality). If you select a game from the list of available titles, the toolbar will change to include a Play menu and a Community and Support button that links to the web site of the company, Oberon Games, which supplied the updated game titles in Windows Vista. We’ll examine these features in the next few sections.

Some of these options appear only for built-in games. If you select a game you installed previously, for example, you will see a Play menu, but not the Community and Support button.

Game Updates and Options Various Games options can be configured via the Set up Games options dialog box, which you can access via the Options button on the toolbar in the Games folder. Shown in article 14-4, this dialog box enables you to configure the few options that are directly related to Games.

Rating Your System’s Performance One of the more interesting features in Windows Vista is the new Performance Information and Tools functionality. Using a simple interface, you can let Windows Vista test your system, determine its overall performance rating on a scale from 1 to 5, and then get advice about ways to improve performance. This tool isn’t just useful for game playing, but it should be quite interesting to gamers and anyone else who wants to ensure that their system is running as efficiently as possible. To access this user interface, click the Tools button and then choose Performance Information and Tools from the drop-down menu. (Alternatively, you can find this tool in Control Panel -> System and Maintenance -> Performance Information and Tools.) Shown in article 14-5, this control panel gives you an idea of how fast your overall system is and rates individual components such as processor, memory, primary hard disk, graphics, and gaming graphics. Typically, your PC’s performance is tested and given a rating during initial setup. However, if you don’t see a score - called the Windows Experience Index - or perhaps if you’d like to retest the system because you’ve made a hardware change, you will see a button titled Rate this computer. Press the button to run the test, which takes a few minutes and then returns a score. If you’ve already run the test, you can click the link titled Refresh this rating now to run the test again at any time. Based on the scores your PC and individual components receive, you may want to make some upgrades. For example, a score below 3 in any one category should be a warning sign to any dedicated gamer. There’s also a performance issues section that lists a number of general issues that could affect overall system performance. You can scan through the list and click any that you’d like to fix. This will cause a Solutions dialog box to appear, which steps you through the steps needed to fix the problem.

Managing Your Game Controllers and Other

Game-Related Hardware In addition to working with actual games, you can manage your game-related hardware from the Games folder as well. If you click the Tools button in the toolbar, you’ll see a number of items in the drop-down menu that are related to hardware gaming:

Hardware: This option launches the Hardware and Sound Control Panel, from which you can perform such tasks as access configuration information for printers, audio devices, mouse, scanners and cameras, keyboard, and other hardware devices. Hardware and Sounds is shown in article 14-6.

This is also a handy place for accessing the Windows Device Manager, which can tell you whether you need updated drivers for any of your hardware devices. You’ll see Device Manager in the list of options in the Hardware and Sound Control Panel.

Display Devices: This option launches the Display Settings dialog box, 14-7. What you see here will depend largely on your hardware, but the dialog box generally includes information about the displays and video cards attached to your system, and the screen resolution and color depth.

Input Devices: This option launches the Game Controllers dialog box, which provides access to configuration information about any game controllers, such as the Microsoft Xbox 360 Controller for Windows, that you may have attached to your PC.

Most people actually play PC-based video games with the mouse and keyboard. You can access the properties for both of these devices from the Hardware and Sound Control Panel described previously.

Audio Devices: This option launches the Sound dialog box, which provides access to the new sound device customization features included in Windows Vista. As you can see in article 14-9, this dialog box provides access to all of the sound-related hardware attached to your system and provides a separate tab for sound events and themes.

If you double-click an audio device in the list, you can deep-dive into its unique abilities. For example, the Volume Control playback device lets you configure how many speakers you have attached to the PC, various default volume levels, and much more. There are also links for Firewall and Programs and Features, as follows:

Firewall: This entry is important because some games require specific network ports to be open so that you can play against other people online.

Programs and Features: The Control Panel applet that is your primary interface for uninstalling or changing applications.

Installing and Playing Third-Party Games Windows Vista’s built-in games are attractive and even occasionally addictive, but real gamers will want to install their own games. One of the big questions with Windows Vista concerns compatibility: How compatible will this system be with the mammoth Windows software libraries out there? The question is particularly problematic for games, because they tend to take more advantage of low-level hardware features that are typically hidden from within Windows.

Using Legacy Games with Windows Vista In our testing of fairly recent and even several-year-old game titles (hey, someone has to do it), we’ve found Windows Vista to be reasonably compatible with so-called legacy game titles. In some cases, such as Valve’s epic Half-Life 2, which is a modern 3D shooter, there’s no work to be done at all: You simply install the game as before - albeit with the occasional User Account Protection (UAP) silliness. (See Article 9 for more information.) Other games, especially older games, will require a bit of prodding. In some cases, Windows Vista includes compatibility information about certain problematic game titles. For example, when we installed Microsoft’s classic Halo: Combat Evolved, we were presented with the dialog box shown in article 14-10: Halo has known compatibility issues with Windows Vista.

This won’t be a problem for Halo 2, which should ship around the same time as Windows Vista and be released exclusively for that operating system on the PC. That’s right, you’ll need Windows Vista to run Halo 2. If you expand the See Details widget on this dialog box, you’ll discover that Halo developer Bungie (a subsidiary of Microsoft) has released a Vista-compatible patch. The dialog box provides a link to download that patch so you can get back to the game. Prepare for another round of UAP foolishness, however. Just copying the two patched files you download into the Halo directory will require a mind-numbing series of UAP confirmation dialog boxes. Isn’t security fun?

Adding Games to the Games Folder Although this isn’t documented anywhere, it’s quite possible to add games you’ve installed on your PC to the Games special shell folder, so you can access them as you do the built-in games. Presumably, next-generation game titles will do this automatically so that they can integrate more closely with the games-related infrastructure Microsoft created in Windows Vista. To add a third-party game title to the Games folder, simply drag a shortcut to the title into the folder. As you can see in article 14-11, legacy games such as Halo and Half- Life 2 can be added directly to Games. Many games will be added automatically, however, so check before dragging and dropping.

Any games in the Games folder, including built-in games and third-party games, can be customized in very limited ways. If you look at the Play button in the Games toolbar, you’ll see that it has a drop-down menu associated with it, with one choice: Customize. Click this option and the Customize dialog box is displayed, 14-12. What this does is let you create numerous shortcuts for a single game title. This is handy for a number of reasons. For example, some games come with different shortcuts for launching single player and multiplayer versions of the game. So this would be an obvious place to add a shortcut for the secondary version, which you could then access from the Play button’s drop-down list. Other games enable you to add command-line options to access special game features. As any dedicated gamer knows, these options can often be used to unlock new features or even cheat.

Problems with x64 Versions of Windows Vista If you think the process of installing and playing older games in Windows Vista is difficult, then you’ll want to avoid the x64 versions of Windows Vista for a while. If you purchase a copy of Windows Vista at retail and install it on x64-based hardware - that is, a PC that includes an AMD or Intel microprocessor that includes the 64-bit x64 processor instruction set - you will be able to install either the 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows Vista. Our advice is simple: With very few exceptions, you’re going to want to install the 32-bit version, not the x64 version. Here’s why. Although the x64 versions of Windows Vista will enable you to use more than 4 GB of RAM, very few people will have a need for such a thing during the lifetime of this OS version. The downsides to x64, however, are daunting. First, the x64 versions of Windows Vista cannot utilize any of the thousands of 32-bit device drivers out there. So you’ll have to make sure that you have a 64-bit driver for each and every hardware device you are, or will be, using. And right now, there are plenty of instances where 64-bit drivers aren’t - and maybe never will be - available. Second, software compatibility is more problematic in the x64 versions of Windows Vista. Although Microsoft tried to engineer these versions of the OS to run 32-bit software - that is, virtually every single bit of Windows software produced before 2007 - many software packages refuse to install or run. And yes, you’ve guessed it, games are among the worst offenders. If you’re a gamer, you will want to stick with the normal 32-bit Vista versions. That said, some games will work find in the x64 versions of Windows Vista, and some game makers are actually creating x64 versions of their game titles so early adopters can experience next-generation computing. Over time, of course, this situation will get better and better. But for now, we believe that x64 is just too problematic for most Windows users.

Downloading More Games for Windows Vista In addition to the games that come with Windows Vista, the vast library of legacy game titles out there, and the unique Windows Vista game titles that developers will be creating, there’s one more avenue for adding games to Windows Vista: Microsoft will be offering a variety of entertainment-related downloads via both Windows Updates and, for Ultimate edition users, the unique Windows Ultimate Extras. Shown in article 14-13, Windows Ultimate Extras is a special benefit of using the most advanced Windows Vista edition. Ultimate edition users will gain access to a number of special features via this interface, including unique applications and services, and even tutorials. Some of these applications will be games, of course.

Although Microsoft is tight-lipped about exactly which games it plans to ship in the months after Windows Vista is finally released, we do know that certain locales will gain access to a special version of the Texas Hold ‘Em poker game that’s quite popular these days. Apparently, Microsoft won’t be happy unless we never leave the house.

Summary There’s no doubt about it: Windows Vista will be the ultimate operating system for gamers, and a better destination than even the Xbox 360 or Sony’s Playstation 3. With its array of nicely spiffed-up built-in games, parental controls aimed at helping keep children away from inappropriate games, stellar support for gaming hardware, and a handy Games explorer that works nicely with third-party games, Vista has it all. And if you’re lucky enough to own Windows Vista Ultimate, you can look forward to some extra perks as well.