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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."

9 of 274 comments (clear)

  1. BREAKING NEWS: GOD IS AN ATHIEST !! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    God is an athiest. Think about it.

    1. Re:BREAKING NEWS: GOD IS AN ATHIEST !! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      Not if he's Triune. Think about it.

  2. heads up for combat soldiers' family and friends: by ChipMonk · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    In 1998, I bought a second-hand Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom for US$10. The gameplay and graphics quality were fantastic, and I was particularly impressed with the producers' investment in the game.

    But there was one thing I couldn't get past: the warzone aspect. At the time, a dear friend of mine was in the Bosnia combat zone, and every time I tried to play WC4, I couldn't help but think about her and what she was experiencing. I wanted to enjoy WC4, honestly, but after about 5 minutes I just couldn't, knowing that my friend was in mortal danger for real. It got to the point that I ejected the CD, wrote off the $10 as a bad investment, and flung it across the room.

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  6. Re:Wine? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    There is no (-1, Disagree with sentiment), mods.

    Parent is correct. Windows 98 is unusable on current Virtual PC and VirtualBox. It's easier to put Windows 98 on an old laptop for gaming.

  7. Re:Or you could by hapalibashi · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Amen

  8. Re:Or you could by M.+D.+Kristopeit · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    the topic is whether or not the best solution is reimplementation or virtualization... i pointed out it's obviously reimplementation... someone else suggests otherwise, i point out why they're wrong and instead of trying to lie and explain why i could be wrong, someone says i'm a prick... i am again forced to point out the obvious, and then again, instead of a valid argument, i'm labeled "offtopic".

    the ignorant moderation on this site is pathetic. you're all idiots.