Contents  Introduction  Some Win32  API Calls  Implementation  References  Download the  Source  Printable version

Introduction

My son's six. Big deal, I know, but let a proud, overzealous Dad continue for a minute. He's just starting to get into playing games on my computer at home. And at the age of six, he's not quite up to playing Quake 3, or Tomb Raider (although he gets a big kick out of watching me play). But games that are more his ability are some of the earlier Sierra games, and, in particular, Hasbro Interactive's Battleship. He really likes that game and can play quite a good game too.

But there's one serious problem with that game. It REQUIRES you to have your desktop running in 256 color mode. Period. It's a DirectX game, sure enough, but it doesn't do the mode switch for you. Not quite sure why, and if anyone out there has any idea why they'd do that, I'd be glad to hear it.

So, picture this. Dad's working away in 16 bit color. He heads to bed and forgets to turn the machine back down to 8 bit before going to bed. Next day, at around 10:00 Dad gets a call at the office from one little PO'd camper, asking why his game won't run. After a few phone calls like that, it was time to correct the situation.

So, after about two evenings of coding, and a weekend of cleaning up the code, here's my results.

Next : Some Win32 API Calls