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The game tries to write settings to its install folder, which fails on Vista and 7 because those set folders read-only by default.  The workaround is to make the folder writable by users, but the real solution is to write to a folder in the user's home directory.  I also need to make the game more tolerant of minor errors instead of exiting outright.

Two things:
1. get the Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Redstributable Package
2. rename the "splash" folder to "splash_" to disable Windows 7's compatibility layer

I have a new executable for everyone to try, focused primarily on the new D3D9 renderer.  The software renderer still works for now, but forces the game into a window.  On the plus side, windowed mode supports the same resolutions as full-screen now.  

This build still performs a CD check like the previous experiemental build, unfortunately.  If that's a problem, I can post an updated version without it later.

Battlezone D3D9

(It's hosted on my NAS like the first one, so transfer rates can be a bit hit or miss.)

In the case of the Flash Cannon, I would try to preserve that "heat ray" effect as much as possible regardless of the underlying implementation.  No one uses that weapon in multiplayer anyway, so it's not like it would draw a lot of controversy. 

It was never a hard problem, just an easy one to neglect or get wrong in the days when 4:3 was the only monitor aspect ratio. 

That's "just" a matter of setting the projection matrix correctly.  I recently changed the calculation to assume square pixels instead of a 4:3 screen, which isn't perfect but should reduce stretching in widescreen views.

(There's the slight complication of monitors and/or graphics cards stretching normally 4:3 resolutions to fill the entire widescreen view.  That kind of thing is impossible for the game to detect automatically.)

Support for full screen rendering is nearly done, though resolution switching doesn't work yet and the application hangs on device lost instead of recovering properly.

I also found out that getting the shell to work in full screen was as simple as turning on GDI support with IDirect3DDevice9::SetDialogBoxMode.  Of course, I discovered that after spending six hours trying to get the shell to draw into the back buffer... 

I don't have either of them.  I have the 1.3 source code used to start the BZ2 revision control database.  Unfortunately, I lost the corresponding game assets and processing tools.

Is this in 1.3? I remember seeing a Flash Cannon in the map that has all those bridge sections hanging in mid air. If you didn't move it looked alot like a beam, but when you moved around, it turned into a bunch of broken cylinders.

It always worked like that, firing a pulse every tenth of a second.  The visual effect persisted for a while to make it look more like a coherent beam.

We have Windows 7 to thank for that, actually.  I should have revisited BZ several years ago, but now is as good a time as any.   

One of these days I'll look into the difference.

In general, the Flash Cannon was a good idea that didn't work as well in practice as we hoped. 

BZ2's fixed simulation rate forced me to change the Flash Cannon into a kind of pulsed energy-beam machine gun.  That might not be a bad idea for BZ1, since the intrinsic frame rate dependency is what makes it so problematic.  I would need to make the beam effect more persistent, but that would help the Blast Cannon and Bolt Buddy effects as a bonus.

BZE's frame rate cap and time step smoothing may have a lot to do with that.

Aniso FTW.   

I may just enable anisotropic filtering and linear mipmapping permanently since it reduces the number of vertex buffer flushes and makes sky sprites look a lot better.  The sprite half-texel shift eliminates the need for point sampling.

I may replace the filtering control flag with a multisampling control flag, since fonts and screen sprites need to turn that off to avoid fuzzy edges.  Updates as events warrant...

I fixed the shadow ground sprites and enabled anisotropic filtering for improved texture detail.

It was more for the future of the series, had it continued.