Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

As the most popular computer operating system in the world, Windows has always had a feature that people like to talk about-strong compatibility. Some people have recently found new evidence about this matter.

Not long ago, game producer Kal yoshika posted some of his discoveries on his social media about how Microsoft meticulously solved software compatibility issues.

This article comes from a blog post published by well-known veteran technology blogger Joel Spolsky in 2000, entitled "the problem of Chicken and Egg", which discussed the interdependence between platform and software, and mentioned what Microsoft has done to ensure that the old software can still run on the new system.

Kal noted an example: the original version of "simulated City" written for Windows's third-generation system (released in 1990) contained a BUG that would read some of the memory that had been freed, but there was no problem with the game running on Windows3.x at the time. In later Windows95, this version of "simulated City" did not work because of this "old" BUG.

Then Microsoft launched their spirit of "nitpicking" in this respect. They tracked this vulnerability and added specific code to Win95 for the game version, so that if the game was detected to be running, memory would not be released immediately.

The original article also mentioned that Microsoft has put a lot of effort into testing old software from past systems on Win95, so that 32-bit systems can also run 16-bit software.

Such a situation is not new. A few years ago, Reddit users tested that Win10 could run Internet Explorer 2.0, which was released 26 years ago, without any adjustments, and the event became news.

The same is true of games. In each generation of Windows systems, players come up with old games for compatibility testing. To today's Windows11, many old games of the last century can still run perfectly without any tools. In this regard, users have always been praised continuously, thinking that this is the advantage and convenience brought by the development of Windows system.

Kal yoshika tweets have spread among players, and although Microsoft has heard many similar stories, it has still aroused the interest of many netizens. One of the netizens showed such an example: when testing WinNT compatibility with "final Fantasy 7", as long as you add a compatibility fix "Win95VersionLie", you can make the game "think" that it is running on Win95.

To put it simply, the Windows system will make compatibility changes (or subsequent patches) to some software to make it easy to run, and these are usually considered to be the "credit" of the program itself, such as disabling Alt+Tab switching when opening games, preventing some games from accessing CD drivers while playing, and so on.

In addition to once again lamenting the completeness of the Windows system, many people also said that this is the first time they have found that they can play old games well, and Microsoft's work is also at work.

This article is from the official account of Wechat: game Research Society (ID:yysaag), author: platinum Isia

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