Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ @lemmy.dbzer0.com

1y ago

You are going to be trapped in a room for 12 hours with a mid 2000s office desktop with no internet connection and an external hard drive; what are you putting on the hard drive?

I've got some DOOM WADs I have been meaning to play so I would probably grab Trench Foot, Total Chaos, and the sequel to Ashes 2063, Ashes: Afterglow with a portable install of GZDoom to play them.

After that I'd probably bring Star Trek TOS and a MOBI copy of Neuromancer by William Gibson combined with a portable install of VLC and Calibre in case the computer didn't have applications that support the file format.

What about you?

I wanted to phrase this in a way where it isn't a prolonged or desert island style question where the responsible idea would be to bring Wikipedia ZIMs and educational PDFs. It's just an awkward amount of time to kill. The mid 2000s office desktop stipulation is just an additional challenge so you can't just bring in a copy of Baldur's Gate 3 or Cyberpunk 2077.

Edit: By mid 2000s I meant around 2005; the XP or Vista.

186 comments

Boy, this question hurts.
For anyone above a certain age with kids below a certain age this isn't a punishment or a challenge, this is A DREAM!! Heroes of might and magic 3, system shock 2, Anno (any version up to 1503), Morrowind, Civilization 3, Age of wonders shadow magic, Baldur's gate 1 and 2...
Whenever my wife finds the time she goes to her room to play Morrowind. She just got a new laptop and the first thing I did was install OpenMW and copy her save file.
It goes without saying that you couldn't finish any of those games in those 12 hours, except for System Shock 2.

Civilization 3, and I would accidentally stay 20 hours
- Civ is a good one. I have done the same. Would you prefer 3 over 4 if the computer could run it?
  
  I’d take 3 over 4 anyday. 4 always felt like it was designed around Multiplayer.
  
  Either would be fine, but I liked the look of 3 a lot better.
- Alpha Centauri. Just oooooone more turn

This is a fun question!
So, in the mid 00's I worked for a pretty large software company doing mid level tech support for enterprise customers. One unassuming weekday, we get a notice that the building is going in to lockdown. Nobody in, nobody out.
Not long after we're told to contact our families and anyone that may be depending on us after work. There's a communication stating "we have a strong reason to believe anthrax was released in the building and no one is leaving until the CDC takes a sample and tests it". Awesome.
After the initial chaos wears down the dawning realization that there are a few hundred (well closer to a thousand of us) now stuck in a multi- building complex with fuck all to do sets in. This is before YouTube really had anything and Netflix was barely serving up a few streaming movies. Plus, there's no way I'm installing Silverlight on my production box. Dark times indeed.
In a stroke of pure luck, I stil had a couple of burned "backups" in my backpack from the previous weekends LAN party (jesus, this story just keeps getting more and more ancient).
A few short moments later and the ISO's were dumped and it was game time. Now, we were all saddled with Dell Optiplexes of some random flavor (620's maybe... this was pushing 20 years ago, details are a little sketchy) so there wasn't much we could really run but anything in a pinch, yeah?
Long story long, I'd spend that time playing C&C Renegade, Quake 3 Unreal Tournament and maybe speed run Duke3D one more time. All while listening to some flavor of Scandinavian metal to truly flesh things out. If that got boring, I'd likely watch Ricky-O again or maybe throw on whatever else I happened to have dumped at the time (likely something from Tartan Asia Extreme or an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm).
Despite what an utter shit show this moment was, I have so many vivid memories of playing those games on the test network with a bunch of other 20 something people barely navigating through life while being scared to death that we may never see our families again.
That and trying to teach Ted how to copy a crack to the install folder... again... wtf man, directions are right there in the readme.nfo
- So eh, obviously you survived. But what about the rest?
  
  Ted is now paying every last dime he makes for entertainment and gaming streaming services
  
  Ended up being a hoax. The crew is still around and we occasionally get together to golf or drink at tailgaters when it's football season. Time and children have taken their toll on the LAN's and other drunken tomfoolery of those days. That's always the thing about the "good times" they just seem like life when we're in it.
- What a ride. Someone asked what they get for doing this. I guess the answer was not killing your family or being arrested.
  
  It ended up being some jackass on the SoCal sales team sending a "joke package" to one of our local sales guys. As far as I remember he was let go and no criminal charges were pressed. I think everyone involved was just relieved it was a hoax.
- That's one hell of a story, thanks for sharing!
  
  Absolutely! It was a pretty fun moment in my early years in this industry. Now, after 10 or so years working from home, I almost get nostalgic for an office.

A whole 11.5 hours of extra sleep next to a nostalgia machine?? Count me in.
- just put a big pillow 'on' the external hard drive.

Only 12 hours? LoTR extended edition.
- I put my answer in, but this is the only true answer.
  
  Ikr? It's like, the perfect thing for a 12 hour period of time. I should just carry it around in my backpack (ive got the 4K blu-rays), you can't go wrong with it. That and star wars (classics, prequels, and animated cartoons).
  Just gotta beat everyone to the nearest conference room and take over the projector.

12 hours? I'm sleeping through that whole thing

MS Paint, an old clip art CD, and notepad. It's time to make some unbearable personal websites
- This is the best idea.

Fallout 1&2 obviously, and stay trapped for the next month or so
Or morrowind if it can handle it
- I'm here for the Morrowind vote. I do that for 12 hours already, willingly, with plenty of other things I could be doing. Maybe for the fun of it though I could grab some other games that are hard to run on modern machines, like the Neverhood
- Would you bring the GOG version or the data files and something like Fallout-CE?

12 hours of trying to overclock a mid 2000s desktop as much as I can
- Memtest on a floppy and superpi or prime95, atitool on the drive, maybe a few games to benchmark? Can't forget a soldering iron and defroster repair kit. 12 hours is not going to be enough.

12 hours isn't really even that long, could probably bring just about anything, but I think Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri would be a great way to spend that time.

Porn
- After those 12 hours are up:

I could bring the whole Person of Interest series and wouldn't finish a season. That, or any TV series with reasonable length. I was thinking:
Dark
Breaking Bad
Fringe
Mr. Robot
Hannibal
Battlestar Galactica
The Expanse
Speaking of, I wonder what the mid-00s performance for decoding HEVC.
Also, what do I get from this, anyway?
- Also, what do I get from this, anyway?
  You don't kill your family or get arrested if you are in this person's position I guess
  https://sh.itjust.works/comment/10506722
  Speaking of, I wonder what the mid-00s performance for decoding HEVC.
  That's a good question. I hadn't thought of how that would play into things
  
  Yeah, my collection is now on either AV1 or H265. Otherwise that 2TB won't last.
  I was hoping someone with a retro PC could answer.

Emulators definitely should still run fine for GBA games I'd think. So there's a lot to choose from already in that library. If not, then SNES. even a potato from the mid 2000s can run SNES games.
Other than that, I'm thinking I would load up my entire calibre Epub library so I can read books. I have so many books I want to go through that I have collected over the years. Want to go through the entire Dune series for the first time among other books.
I'm also quite certain a mid 2000s office PC can run VLC. I have many older series I have yet to watch still because I've been so busy. Stuff like The Shield or The Wire that I have downloaded but never got around to watching.
I don't think I would get bored without internet for 12 hours at all with all that media at my disposal. Even on a 128gb thumb drive, I can easily bring in 2-3 full 1080p tv series. Epubs and retro system ROMs take no space at all so that'd be easy.
And if I get bored of all that media somehow, I'd just use an offline copy of wikivoyage to plan my next vacation.
- SNES 9x ran great on systems of this era. I spent days playing all the Megaman titles and save-scumming or scanning memory to make infinite health cheats.
- I'm currently listening to the Children of Dune audio book. That alone is 16h. I think Messiah was around 8h and Dune was around 12h. Basically, 12h is nothing.

Winamp with my favorite skin
Entirety of my mp3 collection
All 7 seasons of DS9
All 5 seasons of Kids in the Hall
- Someone explain to this guy how long 12 hours actually is.
  
  I like to overprepare - if I get tired of one thing I can switch to another.

Dungeon Keeper, Diablo II, StarCraft maybe, Morrowind, Uplink, Civilization II, Sim City 2000 or 3000 (depends on what will run), quake.
- I enjoyed Uplink as well.
  
  I blame my career choices to that game and the 90s movie "Hackers".
- Mid-2000s? SC3K would run easily, I'd have thought. SC4, on the other hand...

Nothing I can explore the PC for 12 hours. Sounds like fun. Maybe play some pinball.
Please not Vista
- Windows ME it is!
  
  Okay I have never used it I think that will be interesting!

Factorio
EZPZ
- I checked Steam to see the minimum requirements for Factorio and they are quite low. I wasn't sure if it was going to be one of those games that seems like it wouldn't be demanding but actually is or it slows down significantly as your advance further into the game
  
  I'd say the requirements are accurate, it needs cpu to do the simulation stuff but I'm still a noob.
  Regardless, i think i could go 12hrs before crossing that threshold (if it does exist)

Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction
- Bring on that 800x600 goodness.

Dwarf Fortress. I used to play it on the weekends as a kid when I was stuck with my stepmom's old computer from 2000.

Stardew valley

Rollercoaster Tycoon 2
ADoM
Donkey Kong Country and SNES9x
2005, you say? I bet KOTOR could run on low on a shitty office PC.
Master of Orion 2
- Check out OpenRCT. It's RCT but improved for the modern age.
  
  I'm well aware, thank you
- GalCiv 2?

Age of Empires 2... See you in 12 hourse ✌️

Copious amount of ebooks or web novel downloads, as well as my lofi folder for background music. All preloaded on a boot drive with a Linux distro capable of both running on the hardware and viewing everything I brought, if I can figure out how to do that. Plus however many snacks I can sneak in.

VLC and The Wire. It's been a while since I did a rewatch.
- That's a show that's been on my watch list for years now
  
  It's very worth it. Before I saw it, I would always see the way people talk about it online, and I always thought to myself, "it can't possibly be as good as people say it is". And I can honestly say, it's even better.

Windows XP pinball

Dwarf fortress
- It turns out the answer to these types of questions is always Dwarf Fortress. Even if it's "travel back in time" style, with only access to stuff of the time, it's still Dwarf Fortress, though much more limited and janky, and probably 2D depending on when you drop in.

awkward amount of time to kill
For how long? Because that's probably the most important factor.
There's also a million indie games that run perfectly fine on mid 2000 desktop hardware. Even games that look crazy computational intensive like Factorio.
- Sorry I forgot to put 12 hours in the title. I made the edit.

Extreme Warfare Revenge, an old wrestling management game, has always been one of my go-tos for situations like this.
- I would take an SNES and N64 emulator. 12 hours is nothing.
- Is it anything like MDickie's Wrestling Empire?
  
  I haven't played that one much, but it's a lot like ProWrestling Sim. It's a management sim, so a lot of menus and text. You recruit wrestlers, setup the various faces/heels/tag teams/stables, you schedule the storylines, rivalries and matches, etc... It's very deep and addictive, if you like the genre/subject matter.
- Backyard 2 Global!
  EWR is still my favorite booking sim. TEW is just too much, but ProWrestling Sim on Steam is showing some promise I think.
  
  I've really enjoyed ProWrestling Sim. Have you given it a shot? I never, ever meet people who know what these games are.

Depends. Are we in the 2000s or is it present day stuck with a 2000s desktop? If the former, I'd grab Final Fantasy XI and relive my childhood. If the latter, I'd download a few seasons of Buffy and Xena and chill out with some popcorn.
- Present day with 2005 desktop.
  
  Yeah definitely watching some classic TV and anime on CCCP. The CRT will do great justice to older shows. If I had to game, I'd boot up Zeus: Masters of Olympus, Rollercoaster Tycoon, and Dungeon Keeper II.

Since size of harddisk is not specified, I’d take all Nintendo consoles roms that work with emulators on that desktop. May some genesis, Atari and some PSP, basically I take myrient erista on my drive 😂
- But what would you play? Or is this an !sbcgaming@lemmy.ml thing where you'd spend the 12 hours tinkering with emulators?
  
  Well, yea, I have most likely spent more time installing stuff on my 3ds than actually playing with it
  But in all honesty I would likely kill most time with Zelda, Mario, and pokemon (any generation of each)
  Thank you very much for the link to that community, it feels just like home 🤩

StarCraft, warcraft 2, HL, Portal, doom 1-2, Simpsons doom, quake 1-2, command and conquer series, Dune, NES emulator and the full game library zip.
I probably don't need that many but yeah.
- Would you use engine recreations or the original versions of the games?
  
  When in Rome? I've only played the originals and they should all play on mid 00s hardware.

Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 or possibly OpenRCT2 (depending on whether or not it works on the hardware)

Twelve hours? Easy, civ 3. Spent 14 hours on it last Friday? Sunday? Not working for a week makes it all a blur lol
Maybe throw in ultra Lionel train town or hype the time quest if I want variety. Good reminder to look at some stuff I haven't thought about in awhile ngl.

Linux and a bunch of ebooks. Maybe Larn and Nethack.

Stuck? Sounds more like a gift to me.
I'd probably not waste any time and play minesweeper

all my Napster mp3s to listen to while I beat my high score on 3D Pinball Space Cadet

Lemmings.
Nothing else. 😛

FTL: Faster Than Light would run on a computer that old, yeah? Probably bring that and a couple animes to watch while I play it.
Oh shit, if it's XP then I'd be good just playing pinball for the full 12 hours

Not sure 12 hours is enough time for me to grab much. Perhaps my backlog.
- You don't have 12 hours to grab anything. You're stuck in the room for 12 hours
  
  That part was understood. I don't think I could complete 1 game in that period of time.

Quake and Doom. Maybe binge some shows. Mid 2000s PCs are plenty powerful for a lot of tasks/entertainment.

Open X-COM. Or well, maybe the regular X-COM, that should run just fine regularly.
Some books as epubs or whatever format is convenient, and a reader. Would have to research which one works on Windows 2000 or ME. Or was it XP already?

There should be an external hard drive full of portable game installs in some drawer that fits the time period.
Should easily kill a week.

warcraft 3, sid's pirates, civ 3 or 4. portable of vlc for some classic 90's anime.

Elder scrolls morrowind. 12 hours should'nt be a Problem.

12 hour morrowind marathon begin. and a few seasons of TV series I like.
- I remember back in 2013 I picked up the full expansion set at a thrift store for $4 it was the best summer of middle school by far— got the werewolf mod working and went around finding out who was essential to the plot by killing them and then reverting the saves— good times
  
  sounds epic one of my fave mods is the illuminated order mod, I remember having such fun becoming a lich

probably some snes roms, an emulator, and some ebooks

Surprised no one mentioned GTA series
- Bro remember the top-down GTA games?! Those were legit.
- Someone further down did mention the 3D GTA games. I'm assuming they mean 3 and VC

Civilization 4, Dungeon Keeper, Black & White just to name a few. See you next year. :p
- Man, I haven't thought about Black and White in a long time. I wonder if I still have the disc floating around somewhere...
  
  I still have the CD. Getting it to run might be the tricky part. :p

12 hours? Lol probably just some stuff to code on and screw around in. I'll probably take a nap in there somewhere to kill time

Zsnes and a few roms

Diablo 2 with a mod: Project Diablo 2.
I'd download an offline copy of the wiki, too. And a build guide; 12 hours isn't enough time to come up with a build and play the game!

Newest Linux distro
G4 and G5 MLP episodes

Morrowind, RCT2, Total Annihilation with all my mods and Deadlock 2 as well if I have time.

186 comments