ignition-compat

A drop-in ddraw.dll that reimplements DirectDraw on Direct3D 11, so Ignition (UDS / Virgin Interactive, 1997) runs on 64-bit Windows 11.

No DOSBox. No virtual machine. No compatibility mode. No crack — the game executable is never modified.

Install

Copy two files next to Ign_win.exe:

ddraw.dll
ign_compat.ini

That's it. Windows searches a program's own folder before System32, and ddraw is not a KnownDLL, so ours loads instead. To uninstall, delete them.

This repository contains no game data. You need your own copy of Ignition.

What it fixes

Problem	Cause	Fix
Black screen	8-bit palettised exclusive-fullscreen DirectDraw	never change the display mode; scale on the GPU
Silent exit at startup	game calls GetDC on a surface	implemented over a DIB section
Grey / quarter-width image	engine writes 8-bit indices into a 32bpp stride	allocate by mode bpp, interpret as P8
Crash entering a race	joyGetDevCapsA/joyGetPosEx AV inside winmmbase.dll	IAT hook reporting no joystick
100% CPU on one core	main loop spins; Sleep is never imported	PeekMessageA hook yields when idle
Fullscreen stuck at 640×480	Windows 640X480 AppCompat shim	remove that shim (see docs/INSTALL.txt)

Configuration — ign_compat.ini

[ignition]
WINDOWED=0        ; 0 = borderless fullscreen, 1 = window
WINDOW_SCALE=2    ; multiplier when WINDOWED=1
SCALING=aspect    ; aspect | integer | stretch
FILTER=sharp      ; sharp | point | linear
VSYNC=1
PIXEL_FORMAT=auto ; auto is correct; p8 | rgb565 | xrgb888 to override
BLOCK_JOYSTICK=1  ; required - the legacy joystick API crashes on Win10/11
BLOCK_MCI=1       ; disables CD redbook music (optional anyway)
CPU_FIX=1         ; stop the main loop pinning a core
TRACE=0           ; 1 = log every DirectDraw call (slow)

FILTER=sharp is sharp-bilinear: nearest-neighbour crispness without the uneven pixel widths a non-integer upscale produces (640 → 1440 is 2.25×).

How it works

Ignition has no Direct3D. No d3d8, d3d9, d3dim, d3drm, no Glide. It is a hand-written x86 software rasterizer that draws every pixel on the CPU and uses DirectDraw only to get the finished image on screen. That last step is the only part modern Windows broke, so that is the only part this replaces.

The frame stays 8-bit all the way to the GPU:

• the framebuffer uploads as an R8_UNORM texture (one byte per pixel)
• the 256-colour palette is a separate 256×1 B8G8R8A8 texture
• a pixel shader does the lookup

which means a palette fade — how this engine does most of its transitions — costs a 1 KB upload instead of reconverting the screen.

SetDisplayMode is accepted and ignored: the desktop stays at native resolution and the GPU scales the output.

About x64

Ign_win.exe is 32-bit and runs under WOW64 — native x86 instructions on your CPU, not emulation. The shim is therefore 32-bit too, because it loads into the game's process. It talks to the same D3D11 and GPU driver as everything else on a 64-bit system.

Build

Needs a 32-bit MinGW-w64 cross compiler:

# Debian/Ubuntu
sudo apt install gcc-mingw-w64-i686
# Arch
sudo pacman -S mingw-w64-gcc

./ign_compat/build.sh          # -> ign_compat/build/{ddraw,dplayx}.dll

Layout

ign_compat/src/common/    D3D11 presenter, IAT hooking, logging
ign_compat/src/ddraw/     the shim - all 4 DirectDraw interfaces
ign_compat/src/dplayx/    2-export stub for machines lacking DirectPlay
ign_compat/src/winmm/     NOT BUILT - a documented dead end, see the header
_re/tools/                capstone-based analysis scripts
_re/notes/                ~3,000 lines of reverse-engineering notes

The analysis tooling needs Python 3 with capstone and pefile:

python3 -m venv .venv && ./.venv/bin/pip install capstone pefile
./.venv/bin/python _re/tools/scan_api.py Ign_win.exe

No Ghidra or radare2 was used. scan_api.py recovers the COM surface by scanning every call [reg+disp], grouping sites by the global that held the interface pointer, and matching each slot set against the published DirectX vtable layouts.

On copy protection

There isn't any. Ignition ships with no disc check — it imports no disc-probing APIs (GetDriveTypeA, GetLogicalDrives, GetVolumeInformationA, DeviceIoControl are all absent), and the "PLEASE INSERT THE IGNITION CD" string is unreachable dead code. Nothing is bypassed here because there is nothing to bypass. The only thing a disc provided was redbook music.

Ign_win.exe is untouched: MD5 527bc475783319ecdd8adae1f97f6759.

Status

Working: boots, races, sound, keyboard, windowed and borderless fullscreen, stable frame pacing, ~20% of one core.

Not done: the software rasterizer itself is still the original 1997 assembly, so the internal rendering resolution is still capped at what the game offers. See docs/ROADMAP.md.

Licence

MIT — see LICENSE. Applies to this compatibility layer only. Ignition itself remains the property of its rights holders.

Write-up: x128.dev