game machine based on FreeBSD?

[Andrew Merenbach]

On Fri, Aug 5, 2016 at 9:51 AM Luca Ferrari <fluca1978 at infinito.it> wrote:

> I'm just curious if there is any effort or possibility to build up a
> FreeBSD gaming machine. Since I've seen SteamOS
> <http://store.steampowered.com/steamos/> I'm just curious to be able
> to make a machine based on FreeBSD (and therefore use it also as a nas
> thru ZFS).
> Links and/or suggestions are welcome.
>
>
Hi Luca,

While modern games lie mostly outside my experience with FreeBSD, "retro"
game players do have a large amount of flexibility, especially if they are
willing and able to install Wine and/or DOSBox.  Some examples from my
experience, not all of which are of the same caliber:

1. Wine: Fallout 1 and 2, DOOM I and II, Quake II, Return to Castle
Wolfenstein, Unreal Gold (the original)
2. Ports: ScummVM (Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Flight of the
Amazon Queen, many others); Marathon 1, 2: Durandal, and Infinity (plus
Aleph One expansion packs like Tempus Irae); DOOM I and II (with caveats)
3. DOSBox: Duke Nuken 3D Atomic Edition, Shadow Warrior, Myst (IIRC—tried
only once), Wolfenstein 3D
4. Terminal: Angband, NetHack, text adventures (e.g., Zork and Curses)
5. Emulator (e.g., VirtualBox): any Windows or Linux games that won't run
under Wine or DOSBox, or compile under the FreeBSD ports system

I haven't tried early Warcraft games (Warcraft I, II, and III) but I'd be
willing to bet they could be run in a combination of DOSBox, Wine, and/or
emulation.

Cheers,
Andrew