Having spent a few years trying to write Windows utility software, it is really exhausting to be in an antagonistic relationship with Microsoft and have their updates constantly break your work.
The article mentions ExplorerPatcher -- the changelog [1] of that project is informative. Every release involves fixing a bunch of things that Microsoft broke, intentionally or not. Some of this is understandable given how it (necessarily) messes with low level OS components, but there is still zero transparency and you just need to roll with whatever changes. I can't imagine doing that kind of work anymore.
This seems to be about injecting your own code into a running process and then modifying its behavior. The kinds of things that would break from build to build are VERY DIFFERENT from what typical applications would face.
A lot of basic tweaks to windows behavior require those types of unstable hacks. The point is that developers or users who want to modify their system are forced into sketchy software.
Sounds like the iOS model: your app only exists as long as you are alive and able to pay $99/year. This mentality is a nightmare for software preservation.
I paid for "Square Home" a couple years ago and I'm very happy with it. It's highly customizable. The Windows Phone style layout probably isn't for everyone but it works well for me.
TFix is very nice but unfortunately removes the software renderer described in this article. It's very difficult to get the original exe working on modern systems.
TFix also brings back the spatial audio / EAX support that was broken by Vista, which is a huge part of the experience IMO. Highly recommend installing and configuring OpenAL Soft for this game.
The Win11 start menu used to have a fun bug where pressing Ctrl-Minus would open search with the phrase "zoom out". No other shortcut did this. Just Zoom Out. No idea how a bug like that happens.
The article mentions ExplorerPatcher -- the changelog [1] of that project is informative. Every release involves fixing a bunch of things that Microsoft broke, intentionally or not. Some of this is understandable given how it (necessarily) messes with low level OS components, but there is still zero transparency and you just need to roll with whatever changes. I can't imagine doing that kind of work anymore.
[1] https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher/releases
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