Getting Machines Up and Running

This short guide should help you to get Machines installed and running on your... machine. Keep in mind that this game is very old. Things might break. If you can't figure it out, open up a thread here.

Download

There are a few things you'll need.

1. Copy of Machines
2. Machines Disk 2 ISO image.

Installation

After you've downloaded the files above to your PC, you can follow these instructions to complete the installation process.

1. Extract Machines.zip to a directory on your PC.
2. Mount the disk 2 virtual image Machines Disk 2.iso. If you are running Windows 8.1 or above, you can simply double click the file to mount the disk image. Otherwise, you may need to use a program such as MagicDisc or Daemon Tools.
3. Play the game!

Extra Goodies

• Check out the Downloads section

More detailed instructions may be available later.

@Hayden
Hello, wonder if you can help. Did all the downloads, followed the instructions, mounted disc 1, double-clicked on "Setup", got the "Do you want to proceed?", said yes, nothing happens.

Using Windows 8.1, 12GB RAM, 759 Gb free space on C drive. Can you help, please?

PS - right-clicked, tried "Run as Administrator", still nothing.

Thanks,

Ian

Have you tried running in Windows 98 compatibility mode? Just right-click -> properties -> compatibility -> Windows 98.

I'll give it a shot in Win 10 myself in a little bit.

I didn't need to run the setup in compatibility mode, but I was unable to run machines without compatibility mode on win 8 anyway because the game will not launch without 16 bit color mode, which, if I'm not mistaken, is not available in windows 8. And although it runs under compatibility mode, it has a very low framerate.

Is windows 8 the end? :o

@bilal said:

Is windows 8 the end? :o

I was able to run it under Windows 8 fine a while back. I'll try it again and post an update here.

Not sure about the 16-bit issue, but I did notice that I cannot get to install the demo because an error message keeps popping up

"Setup is unable to find installation languages in \Machines\SETUP.LID. file.

Error 105".

Did not have this issue when installing the full version, though ='(

Windows 7, 64 bit. Tried everything on the install file, from running in 256 colors and compatibility mode and whatnot. But it won't seem to help anything, seeing as it's an issue related to files on my hard drive... I downloaded the demo from several different sources and they're all the same =(

I too was unable to run the set-up, so I started a Windows XP virtual machine and ran it there.

I've modified the original post to instead link to a zip archive of the installed Machines folder. That should help resolve any set-up issues.

In the end, I was able to get the game to run - however, I am experiencing poor performance like @bilal mentioned. Not entirely sure where to go from here - I'm tempted to blame video drivers. I'll try on another machine later and see if it makes any difference.

I was able to get it running on my laptop with an onboard Intel graphics processor - the frame rate was decent, but not smooth. Not really sure what the cause of this is - so your results may vary.

@Hayden Hhmm... Peculiar. Similar thing happened to the console version (and now that I think of it, the PC version as well) of Turok 2. As you may or may not know, Turok 2 was Acclaim's proudest release (of that time... Or, possibly, ever...). They maxed the graphics and pushed the LIMIT out of the processing capabilities of the gaming devices of those days. This meant that the framerate was somewhat unsteady throughout the game. I still notice it now, to the very same extent, when I fire it up on my pc. Almost as if the FPS-issues got... hardcoded into the game... Rather than letting the hardware run everything.

Anyway, seeing as Machines was developed by Acclaim's subsidiary Charybdis... Might be the same thing. Although honestly, I get pretty decent fps as well... Or, whatever fps you could expect of those days...

@StonerHate My guess is that it probably depends on the graphics processor and drivers. My NVidia machine had significant slow-down and graphical artefacts... I'm guessing that after awhile these graphics manufacturers care less about supporting old DirectX 6 (or whatever version Machines uses) APIs.

To be noted also is that I'm running the technical preview of Windows 10 - this could introduce some problems as well.

All in all, Machines seems to work better with Intel on-board graphics units... still not as good as I remember it performing a few years back. Perhaps we can start a hardware database of what works best?

What be even better is getting a VM with 3D graphics acceleration working with Windows XP or 98. Perhaps that would provide a decent experience, though I've never managed to get that kind of set-up working in the past.

Mmhh... I guess we're gonna have to actually have different physical topologies available to test the game out on. Would we need some kind of setup like IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) or something? Or do hypervisors support the feature to actually emulate different kinds of hardware, motherboard-wise?