Implementation of WIndows Gaming APIs as GSoC project

[Vincent Povirk]

2010/3/31 Mariusz Pluciński <vshader at gmail.com>:
> 2010/3/30 Dan Kegel <dank at kegel.com>
>>
>> Sounds good to me -- and you could start right now by checking in stubs,
>> if we don't have them already...
>>
>> The question is, though, how useful are these APIs (aside from
>> needing them to play some games)?  Which games make use of them?

Odd, I can't see Dan Kegel's reply.

AFAIK, the API's aren't needed currently to play any games, but many
games use them if they are available.

I would guess that once game developers become comfortable dropping
support for Windows XP (which is inevitable, but you can argue about
how soon it will be), they'll start writing games that require this
API.

I suspect that once the classes exist, games will expect them to
actually work, and adding the stubs will break some games that
currently work. That means that once the stubs are in, it's very
important to add at least a basic implementation. It also means that
adding the classes will be a disruptive process, and it will only get
worse the longer we wait. (Note: I haven't tested this theory, and for
all I know most games will gracefully fall back on the old methods
when they see a non-functional IGameExplorer. I wouldn't count on it
though.)

The project would potentially also include the Game Explorer shell
namespace extension, which will likely be needed for shortcuts to work
correctly. The control panel extension (CLSID_ControlPanel) is
probably a good example. The main task there would be to implement an
IShellFolder object that uses the game explorer database.