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Breathing New Life Into Old DirectDraw Games

Posted by Soulskill on from the new-love-to-old-games dept.

An anonymous reader writes "I bought a bunch of old Wing Commander games for Windows, but they use DirectDraw, which Microsoft has deprecated. They don't work too well under Windows 7, so I ended up reimplementing ddraw.dll using OpenGL to output the games' graphics. I wrote an article describing the process and all the fun workarounds I had to come up with, and released all related source code for others to hack on."

7 of 274 comments (clear)

  1. Re:heads up for combat soldiers' family and friend by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Man that is pretty bad! I say we put Origin out of business for making such a hurtful game!

  2. Re:There were some damn fine games in that era... by reverendbeer · · Score: 4, Funny

    and we didn't need gimmicks like motion controllers, photo-realistic graphics and high framerates to enjoy them.

    ...consarn it!

  3. Re:Who says DirectDraw is going away? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    But removing IDirectDraw would only break some games from the 90s, while removing CreateWindow (Ex) would kill every single Windows application ever coded.

    And nothing of value was lost.

  4. Re:heads up for combat soldiers' family and friend by linguizic · · Score: 5, Funny

    I try to enjoy parties, but every time I can't help but feel bad for all those poor Indians who died in 1812 during the Boston Tea Party.

    --
    Does this sig remind you of Agatha Christie?
  5. Re:There were some damn fine games in that era... by LazLong · · Score: 4, Funny

    and we didn't need gimmicks like motion controllers, photo-realistic graphics and high framerates to enjoy them.

    In my day we didn't have fancy-schmancy graphics. We didn't have graphics all. All we had were alphanumeric characters to manipulate for our games. And that's how it was, and you liked it! Sound? You were lucky if you could get a single-toned beep from your computer. And don't get me started on those fancy motion controllers! All we had was the keyboard. We stabbed ADWS until our fingers bled. And games? We had great games like Lemonade Stand, Tic-Tac-Toe, SpaceWar!, Star Trek, Super Star Trek. And that's how it was, and you liked it! You loved it!

  6. Re:Or you could by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Multiple spare boxes are a huge mess. Don't fall to this trap. You may end up on one of those hoarding shows. :(

  7. Which is it -- 80 or 20? by CarpetShark · · Score: 4, Funny

    But to run Wing Commander on modern hardware, it doesn't need to be optimal. 80/20 rule dude.

    But does the 80% go to the rear shields, or the front?