CLBrown: How to get F/A-18E Super Hornet Working (tested in Win7x64 and Win8.1x64)
Here's the deal with this program. It requires a different version of DirectX than is available in versions of Windows after Windows XP.
Yes, I know, Microsoft claims that other versions "can't be run" but what they REALLY mean is "Microsoft removed these intentionally."
Well, people have been figuring out means to get around that for a couple of years now, and there are two good solutions available.
Note, the game was released on March 1st, 2000. At that time, Windows 98 was still the biggest "gaming platform" available, with "Windows 2000" a minor footnote. So, my advice is to set "compatibility mode" to "Windows 98" mode. Realize, I have not gone through and tested out what "compatibility fixes" (as implemented with the Compatibility Toolkit)) are really necessary... but likely, some of the things bunched together into the "win98" mode harm performance a bit, so you may want to experiment with the Compatibility Toolkit to make a custom configuration. I'm not going to do that right now, and am merely sticking with "Win98" compatibility mode. I also, as I always do with older programs, set "run as admin" and "disable visual themes." These may not be necessary to the program, but it can't HURT to turn them off when running the program.
Now, on March 1st, 2000, DirectX 7.0 was the current newest release... with 7.0a coming out on the 8th. So, it's a safe bet to say that this program was written to use DirectX 7. And there is NO support for DirectX versions earlier than 9 on Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 10. (Some older games will still run, mind you, because they only use items which are still retained in the later versions, and because they don't "version check," but most won't!)
So... you need to get some means of running (in this case) DirectX7 on your modern machine. And you can't actually install it... this won't work (and wouldn't be a great idea anyway, with how MS hooks DirectX directly into the operating system.
In some cases, it's a simple matter of dropping the earlier DirectX (and usually DirectDraw) dll files into the game directory, but this is not always successful, and I don't generally recommend it (though I did just that for a long time).
Today, there are (at least) two very effective means of running DirectX versions earlier than DX9. One is a program called Dxwnd (for "DirectX in a Window") and the other is called dgVoodoo.
Now, Dxwnd was created as a wrapper to allow you to...as the name suggests... run full-screen-defaulting Direct3D programs in a window. It has since grown to include full emulation capabilities, and works pretty well... but it's a "tweaker's tool" with a TON of things you have to configure, and is not my first choice.
The second option is dgVoodoo (v2.54). Now, as the name suggest, this was initially created to emulate 3DFX GLide (and it still does that very nicely!). However, recent versions have added very effective Direct3D and DirectDraw emulation as well... and this is my "tool of choice" for running almost all of my older programs which require Windows and DirectX. It has fairly simple and straightforward settings... and I simply drop it into the directory with the game executable, run dgVoodoo's confi application to set things up as I like, and then run the game.
I was concerned that F/A-18E Super Hornet would have a 16-bit executable... it isn't a DOS title, so DOSBox wasn't an option (well, not really, though some people have actually created DOSBox installs which actually include Windows inside of them... but that's a huge deal I'm not prepared to address here!). For those who are not familiar, DOSBox is an emulator... a program which behaves as if it's a "virtual DOS computer." There are many versions of DOSBox, and GoG actually bundles DOSBox with many of its older DOS-based programs.
But for 16-bit Windows titles... they can't be run, period, on 64-bit machines, except in a full virtual environment. So it was good to discover that the EXE for this program was not 16-bit. (DOS programs are normally 8-bit by the way.)
So... here's how I recommend running this program.
1) Find and download dgVoodoo v2.54. Extract it to a directory on your desktop.
2) Find the installation directory for F/A-18E Super Hornet. In my case, that's "F:\GoG\GalaxyClient\Games\FA-18E Super Hornet." Your path will almost certainly be different, but will probably be at least a LITTLE similar.
3) Set the compatibility mode for the file titled "F18.exe" to "Windows 98." Windows 95 will also work. You can set compatibility for "Config.exe" and "F18Start.exe" as well, if you wish... but I don't think it's required.
Drop the dgVoodoo files into the same directory where you find those. Note, you do not want to drop "directories" into that location, only the files themselves. Since this game does not use 3DFX, you can ignore the 3dfx files, but if you do drop them in (I usually do anyway) use the 32-bit ones, not the 64-bit ones. Drop ALL the Microsoft DirectX files into that location as well, and everything from the "root" folder (which is mainly reference readme files, but may be nice to look at if you get confused as to how to set things up later on).
In my case, I dropped in the following files:
D3D8.dll
D3DImm.dll
d3drm.dll
DDraw.dll
dgVoodoo.conf
dgVoodooCpl.exe
QuickGuide.html
Readme.html
ReadmeDirectX.html.
I left all the 3DFX/Glide stuff out, as this game can't use those.
Do the above... and the game will run smoothly and flawlessly. At least it does for me.
If you prefer, you can use Dxwnd, but you'll have to get help with that, which I can't provide.
Unfortunately this isn't working anymore withe the new version with the expansion. I can't get dgvoodoo to work properly. The later versions than 2.45 don't work at all and 2.45 will run but it won't increase the resolution strangely. I will keep trying different versions. The joystick won't work properly in Win 10, but works fine in my Win 7 install.
