i think 'super ef2000', 'hind' support 3dfx so no need for enchanced ddraw at least for these games

Super EF2000 doesn't support 3dfx.

A Voodoo patch, named GFX+, is only available for the DOS version of EF2000. Or, to be precise, EF2000 + TACTCOM add-on, aka. EF2000 v2.0 in the U.S.

You have to use a DosBox build with kekkos Voodoo board emulation to use it (i.e. Ykhwong). Glide wrappers won't work because Ef2000 GFX+ is one of the few games that were statically linked against Glide.

fighters anthology has no hardware acceleration however ati's mlaa may work with it

neilcoal wrote:

some smart people made some ddraw utilities with advanced features, in an effort to make some old (software only) games look as […]
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some smart people made some ddraw utilities
with advanced features,
in an effort to make some old (software only) games look as if accelerated

mostly, the efforts went towards the 'wing commander' series

If you're referring to "ddhack", we already have a thread about that:
ddhack

And the Wing Commander games in question weren't software-only; ddhack is basically just a wrapper for the DirectDraw DLLs.
http://sol.gfxile.net/ddhack/

If you're referring to something else entirely, then never mind. 😉

Also http://hifi.iki.fi/cnc-ddraw/

thanks, i was only asking about a solution to make ANY directdraw game look better (tricking either the game or the videocard to start using direct3d or opengl features)

and frankly, i'm still not clear on the subject

but thank you nevertheless

cheers

ps: hind has a glide patch

neilcoal wrote:

thanks, i was only asking about a solution to make ANY directdraw game look better (tricking either the game or the videocard to start using direct3d or opengl features)

and frankly, i'm still not clear on the subject

Well, what you were asking about in your first post was about "software only" games, not "any directdraw game". There's a big difference there.

By the way, I've had pretty good results capturing games using BB Flashback Express. (It does not, however, support Win9x, if that's what you're looking for.)

Direct3D, DirectDraw, and OpenGL have all been ported run off each other...
gldirect
dxglwrap
wined3d
and of course ddraw is backed by GDI

Drawing one image on top of another is always going to look the same no matter what API you use.

Visual improvements really need to be done by hand for each game.

There are some hacks to run directdraw games in a window, etc.
DxWnd

Capturing DirectDraw shouldn't be to hard to do.
(The only issue to workaround is the locking of the primary surface)
kkapture won't record live gameplay

neilcoal wrote:

thanks, i was only asking about a solution to make ANY directdraw game look better (tricking either the game or the videocard to start using direct3d or opengl features)
cheers

Well.. "better" is in the eye of the beholder. Any modification to the original art is going to lose some information (by generating new data).

The "halfnhalf" filter (scale up with point sampling, then continue with bilinear) works pretty well in my opinion since it makes games look more or less like they did on worse quality monitors back then =)

As for just bilinear, or applying morphological AA or some such, those techniques may make the game look better, but at the same time they make some assumptions on the source data that was definitely not there when people still used deluxe paint 2 as the primary art authoring tool..

And as to the "any ddraw game", apparently doing a 100% functional ddraw re-implementation is nearly impossible. Thus, all approaches (apart from wine) aim some specific games.

Sol_HSA wrote:

And as to the "any ddraw game", apparently doing a 100% functional ddraw re-implementation is nearly impossible.

It is? How so?

Jorpho wrote:

Sol_HSA wrote:

And as to the "any ddraw game", apparently doing a 100% functional ddraw re-implementation is nearly impossible.

It is? How so?

I don't have any specifics, but this is from discussions with various ddraw wrapper dll devs.

Even microsoft has tons of ddraw-related application-specific hacks, or so I've been lead to believe.

Anyway, feel free to try. The source to ddhack is available. =)

If anyone wants to try out NVIDIA FXAA with DosBox, here you go:
http://www.forum-3dcenter.org/vbulletin/showt … ad.php?t=510658

You just need to get a Direct3D enabled DosBox build like ykhwong's. Results are interesting but mixed.