By Loyd Case

early four years ago, Microsoft promised a virtual nirvana for game developers and game players. Develop for Windows 95, Redmond told the developers, and you'll never have to write another hardware driver again. Your support costs will be lower because your customers will have fewer problems. Buy Windows 95, users were told. Games will play automatically when the CD is inserted. No more memory hassles. Games will run faster.

The secret to this heaven on Earth is the software known as DirectX. DirectX consists of a number of API layers (applications programming interface) that allow game developers easier access to the high performance features of the underlying hardware. DirectX consists of (five) different parts: DirectDraw, DirectSound, DirectPlay, DirectInput, and Direct3D.

When DirectX games began hitting the streets, however, the promises made by the boys in Redmond seemed hollow. Many people had no problems with them, but when problems did crop up, fixing them was often painful. The two worst culprits were DirectDraw and DirectSound. The major issues revolved around driver support and a mysterious (to most users) driver certification process. These problems were exacerbated by games that would install DirectX without asking for the user's permission. Often, after carefully installing new drivers that worked well with DirectX games, a new game installation would overwrite the player's carefully crafted system, beginning the painful process all over again. In some cases, Windows had to be completely reinstalled.

The problems were alleviated somewhat by the time Microsoft issued DirectX 3.0a. Its version checking process was more robust, and game programmers began writing more intelligent installation scripts. Even driver support grew more widespread (though trying to get a DirectX game running on most laptops today is still something of a chore).