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?
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.
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.
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
12 hours? I'm sleeping through that whole thing
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.
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.
Winamp with my favorite skin
Entirety of my mp3 collection
All 7 seasons of DS9
All 5 seasons of Kids in the Hall
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?
Stardew valley
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.
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.
Age of Empires 2... See you in 12 hourse ✌️
Windows XP pinball
Stuck? Sounds more like a gift to me.
I'd probably not waste any time and play minesweeper
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.
Quake and Doom. Maybe binge some shows. Mid 2000s PCs are plenty powerful for a lot of tasks/entertainment.
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
probably some snes roms, an emulator, and some ebooks
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.
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!
Silent Hunter III
Sink some tonnage.
I'd copy my Doom and Quake folders, hoping the modern sourceports still work on them. Well, PrBoom+ and ZDoom should both work. Then all my emulators up to the 32-bit era, some music and the seasons of Kamen Rider and Ultraman that I'm currently watching.Honestly I could just bring my actual external hard drive or my HP laptop from 2013 that I installed Linux on. It's what I got on those.
Some retro computer emulators(Atari 8-bit, C64) and my dev environment for them - when you target old stuff you can customize the whole dev tooling setup with very little compromise, especially if you go the route of assembly/Basic/Forth and then pile on higher level build steps. I'd have to be careful around the potential problem of "whoops there's a 64-bit binary in there and I'm on a 32-bit OS".
Basically if I were back in college it'd be that all the time, and then VLC and some anime or movies in 480p. No sense in keeping up with those darn 2000's games.
I'd love to chance to play a bunch of nostalgic titles - just off the top of my head I'd play DOOM, Uplink, Darwinia, Morrowind, and my trashy favourite from that era Themepark world. There are definitely more if I had time to think about it.
Zsnes and a few roms
12h is barely enough for 1.5 out of 33 of Ascendance of a Bookworm volumes. I would probably rererereread volume 1 and 18
Install the gta 3d games need for speed most wanted 05 and music from 80s to the 90s
Angband or umoria
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
- 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.
Max Payne 1 and 2, F.E.A.R, Far Cry, MAME with a couple of arcade roms like Galaga, Tetris, Pang, Puzzle Bobble, Metal Slug.
And if I get bored with those there is always Microsoft solitair, mine sweeper and mayong to fall asleep on the keyboard.
Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego and Commander Keen ... wait a second, the time machine's dial is broken.
This kind of feels like every work day. Except I can't use the pc for fun. Lol help me :')
+1 on roms and Doom. Maybe the sims. Tbh I'm not too familiar with that generation of PC gaming. There's probably a lot I don't know about
So, just a PC? No controllers or anything?
I might get a few 8 and 16 bit ROMs
And mainly movies, I'd get around to watching Rambo and get some other stuff
Tutorial videos for programming
A complete collection of QI episodes, and I'd be able to watch a fraction of them 😊
If it were actually the mid 2000s, I'd be okay for an insane amount of time with just Flash and Audacity. Today, probably the first Baldur's Gate.
Oo or an snes emulator with Shadowrun.
Can it be running some unix derivative?
I'd probably sit and play Unreal, or maybe Riven if I was feeling more chill. Could easily burn through 12 hours like that. Just need to be able to take a case of Jolt, a few bags of chips, and some Skittles along and I'd be set.
When what happened to me, I had Chrono Trigger. Shortest 12 hours of my life
Nerf arena blast.
Honestly not sure if it will run on the PC because man that game was a resource hog but should feel just like my childhood trying to get it to run if it doesn't.
Visual C++ 6 SP3
Neverwinter, will entertain me all day long
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Dark Disciples 1 and 2, including the temple of eternity module.
If I have enough space, a copy of RCT3 platinum edition (the only one I've ever played), and a bunch of music. May not get me completely through the 12 hours, but I at least get a lot of time to see park guests "dying" to getting hit by runaway coasters and get to keep designing a bunch of insane coasters that couldn't be built today for monetary and legal reasons.
A few movies on the drive and I'll take a nap to waste some time