GDI Effects from the PC cracking scene • Hacker News Board

Re: GDI Effects from the PC cracking scene

#31

Post by reactordev » Sun, Jan 04, 2026, 4:53 PM UTC

vardump wrote: post #30

reactordev wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re talking about the songs. I know what a chiptune is, I’m talking about what sits between those. Protracker was how you made them. When embedding into apps, you had to play them. MOD files had to be converted into something. Lookup pocketmod. Some used PCM, some used midi. Windows had a wonderful midi api and synth back then. That’s what I used.

No, the MOD file(s) (embedded in the .exe) were just played as is. There were a lot of MOD player libraries even back then and the CPU load was negligible. The players weighed less than 10 kilobytes.

>”There were a lot of MOD player libraries”

What the hell do you think I’m talking about? I’m done arguing at a brick wall. You basically just validated what I said and yet continue to say I’m wrong. We embedded the music. We needed to play the music. Windows only supoorts PCM and MIDI at the time. Pick one.

Re: GDI Effects from the PC cracking scene

#32

Post by TazeTSchnitzel » Sun, Jan 04, 2026, 5:20 PM UTC

reactordev wrote: post #26

vardump wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most played Protracker, XM, S3M, IT, etc. modules , not MIDI. They typically used very short samples, a style which was called a 'chiptune', songs that were made sound like they came from some eighties microcomputer. More recently the definition of 'chiptune' shifted to specifically mean music from 8-bit sound chips.

You’re talking about the songs. I know what a chiptune is, I’m talking about what sits between those. Protracker was how you made them. When embedding into apps, you had to play them. MOD files had to be converted into something. Lookup pocketmod. Some used PCM, some used midi. Windows had a wonderful midi api and synth back then. That’s what I used.

Oh, so some people actually used DirectMusic's support for DLS? Cool!

Re: GDI Effects from the PC cracking scene

#33

Post by burnt-resistor » Sun, Jan 04, 2026, 5:37 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #24

vintagedave wrote: post #17

For all those effects: is their source available? I see EXE names and I think cracks were distributed that way. I don’t have enough insight into the cracking scene to know if there was any underground open source back then. These days, having the source to these graphic effects would be invaluable!

A ton of these things is handwritten assembly. "All" you need to do is run it through a disassembler and you got the source... the key problem more is that virtually all cracks and keygens come heavily packed. Either to protect the authors of the original software to check if the warez group got the full algorithm or if they have something mildly different from the original that allows the authors to detect a keygen…

Nothing a debugger can't fix. UPX and PKlite packing made keygens and cracks look more sus than they were. It source had been available, that would make them appear even less sus. There were a few drama incidents with Razor where a cracker provided source because of accusations.

Re: GDI Effects from the PC cracking scene

#34

Post by reactordev » Sun, Jan 04, 2026, 5:45 PM UTC

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #32

reactordev wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re talking about the songs. I know what a chiptune is, I’m talking about what sits between those. Protracker was how you made them. When embedding into apps, you had to play them. MOD files had to be converted into something. Lookup pocketmod. Some used PCM, some used midi. Windows had a wonderful midi api and synth back then. That’s what I used.

Oh, so some people actually used DirectMusic's support for DLS? Cool!

GS Synth baby!! Back when ActiveX was cool and everything was exposed through COM.

Re: GDI Effects from the PC cracking scene

#35

Post by monerozcash » Sun, Jan 04, 2026, 5:49 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #10

Website pretty much unusable on Mac/Safari: The viewport is so wide my browser shows about 1/4 of the horizontal content requiring constant horizontal scrolling. Firefox is better, but still requires horizontal scrolling to see the whole page.

Refreshing the page fixed that for me on Safari.

Re: GDI Effects from the PC cracking scene

#36

Post by vardump » Sun, Jan 04, 2026, 6:24 PM UTC

reactordev wrote: post #31

vardump wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the MOD file(s) (embedded in the .exe) were just played as is. There were a lot of MOD player libraries even back then and the CPU load was negligible. The players weighed less than 10 kilobytes.

>”There were a lot of MOD player libraries” What the hell do you think I’m talking about? I’m done arguing at a brick wall. You basically just validated what I said and yet continue to say I’m wrong. We embedded the music. We needed to play the music. Windows only supoorts PCM and MIDI at the time. Pick one.

You can't render MOD songs to MIDI. Not even with modern AI.

Obviously the MOD libraries outputted PCM to WinMM. That's the job of the MOD library.

You're arguing with someone who was actually writing Windows (and DOS if it matters) applications in C/C++/asm the early nineties.

If you really wanted MIDI, the best option in the nineties would have been just to include the original MIDI data. You could of course also generate MIDI data as you go, but why bother?

Re: GDI Effects from the PC cracking scene

#37

Post by ryandrake » Sun, Jan 04, 2026, 6:41 PM UTC

monerozcash wrote: post #35

ryandrake wrote: post #10

Website pretty much unusable on Mac/Safari: The viewport is so wide my browser shows about 1/4 of the horizontal content requiring constant horizontal scrolling. Firefox is better, but still requires horizontal scrolling to see the whole page.

Refreshing the page fixed that for me on Safari.

Yea, I tried that, and it does fix it initially, but as you scroll through the content, the site decides to resize its canvas all by itself, to the point where you have a giant horizontal canvas again soon. Why do web developers have to do this stuff?

Re: GDI Effects from the PC cracking scene

#38

Post by overgard » Sun, Jan 04, 2026, 6:56 PM UTC

stavros wrote: post #11

Oh man, the nostalgia of buying magazines that came with shareware CDs (we didn't have the internet back then where I lived) and going to a net cafe for half an hour to download cracks, because we obviously didn't have any way to either procure or send USD half way around the world... It was a magical time mostly because computers were full of possibilities. Someone gave me a CD with Visual Basic 4 and I figured out…

Funny to think how useful help files and manuals used to be! I learned QBasic mostly from the builtin help system, VBasic mostly from clicking around, and even DirectX from the help files and tutorials. Nowadays documentation is outsourced to the community it seems, for the most part.

Re: GDI Effects from the PC cracking scene

#39

Post by stavros » Sun, Jan 04, 2026, 7:03 PM UTC

overgard wrote: post #38

stavros wrote: post #11

Oh man, the nostalgia of buying magazines that came with shareware CDs (we didn't have the internet back then where I lived) and going to a net cafe for half an hour to download cracks, because we obviously didn't have any way to either procure or send USD half way around the world... It was a magical time mostly because computers were full of possibilities. Someone gave me a CD with Visual Basic 4 and I figured out…

Funny to think how useful help files and manuals used to be! I learned QBasic mostly from the builtin help system, VBasic mostly from clicking around, and even DirectX from the help files and tutorials. Nowadays documentation is outsourced to the community it seems, for the most part.

Yeah, VB4 had tutorials on how to make simple apps, and that's how I learned to program! I can't believe I learned about loops and variables and control flow structures by just reading the documentation.

Re: GDI Effects from the PC cracking scene

#40

Post by bitwize » Sun, Jan 04, 2026, 9:47 PM UTC

I've built games with raw X draw calls, including sprite-based games with XCopyArea and more recently, simulated vector displays with XDrawLine. The fact that there were/are kids doing this kind of thing with Win32 GDI calls tickles some deep aesthetic sweet spot in me.