For anyone who's struggled to get the latest version of the original Starcraft working without display distortion under Windows 7, the following site has the fix:
http://go.hopx.net/2010/05/256-color-issues-with-directdraw-and.html
In essence, to get Starcraft version 1.16 to play without distortion, you need to add the following registry key:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\DirectDraw\Compatibility\StarCraft116]"Name"="Starcraft.EXE""ID"=hex:ca,89,65,49"Flags"=hex:00,08,00,00If you have 64 bit Windows 7, you need to add the following registry entry as well:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\DirectDraw\Compatibility\StarCraft116]"Name"="Starcraft.EXE""ID"=hex:ca,89,65,49"Flags"=hex:00,08,00,00In fact, Microsoft included a workaround the DirectDraw errors in Starcraft patch 1.15 with Windows 7, but then Blizzard released patch 1.16 which was then subsequently not covered by the Microsoft workaround.
If you have a look in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\DirectDraw\Compatibility in the registry, you'll see quite a few games with compatibility workarounds. Microsoft has a history of going to amazing lengths to ensure backwards compatibility, a lot of which is documented by Raymond Chen in his "The Old New Thing" blog:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/12/24/45779.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/10/15/55296.aspx
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html
And people say Microsoft is the evil empire!
It's actually quite interesting to see the other apps listed in the Compatibility reg key for DirectDraw, I'm curious how they actually decide which ones are worth the effort.
