Certain games can't load dpwsockx.dll despite being present.

[akagemegane]

There are certain games that appear to be finicky with the presence of dpwsockx.dll despite it being in the current game's directory. The only games I know are like this are Fire Fight (1996 game by Chaos Works) and Necrodome (also a 1996 game from Raven Software)

Though in Fire Fight, this log shows the error like this:
1lg_comm(137) net initialized
1ee_netw(301) * Net::open - DirectPlayCreate failure. Error code 80004005

[akagemegane]

The shareware builds here if needed :
https://www.classicdosgames.com/game/Fire_Fight.html
https://archive.org/details/necro_sw

[solemnwarning]

What steps are you going through to set these games up?

Fire Fight silently crashes when I try launching the multiplayer mode and Necrodome won't start due to dplay.dll not being available in Windows 10.

[akagemegane]

What steps are you going through to set these games up?

Fire Fight silently crashes when I try launching the multiplayer mode and Necrodome won't start due to dplay.dll not being available in Windows 10.

Should mention, I recall getting around that when using DxWnd for Firefight.

Also odd about Necrodome because it worked before. I recall renaming dplayx.dll to dplay.dll fixed it?

[akagemegane]

@solemnwarning

I tested the original retail version of Necrodome because the GoG/Steam releases tampered with the .EXE to make multiplayer no longer function.

The DPLAY.DLL I used for this clean install was obtained from the CD itself and now I can provide a much clearer picture on this issue.

ipxwrapper spits out logs and it appears to be present but the provided DPLAY.DLL has trouble loading dpwsockx.dll. I think my only suspicion is that the DLL files for ipxwrapper aren't taking too kindly to games made for DirectPlay 1 (pre-DirectX5)

Doom95 also fails to detect the WinSock IPX option as well.

[akagemegane]

What steps are you going through to set these games up?

Fire Fight silently crashes when I try launching the multiplayer mode and Necrodome won't start due to dplay.dll not being available in Windows 10.

I also should've replied to this part sooner as well. I recall having to grab the DPLAY.DLL from the CD release (can also be grabbed from older DirectX installers)

DPLAY.zip

[WhiteMagicRaven]

yes DirectX incompatibilities.
as on Necrodome example:
this game can't use dplayx.dll directly and excepts earlier version dplay.dll (which last time seen on Windows XP, and lacks in Windows 10 or newer )
so for make support of IPX Wrapper there should be created/ programmed wrapper files named dplay.dll and dpwsock.dll

and before you ask renaming any files will not give you desired results. as DirectX various versions files mixing not works.

renaming dplayx.dll to dplay.dll will show various connection methods in Necrodome (named services in registry)
but none of them will work as Necrodome excepts older DirectX (or precise DirectPlay) and can't work properly with new DirectPlay version. (DirectX versions not backward compatible)
renaming dpwsockx.dll into dpwsock.dll will not give any good results as dplay.dll (if you carry from windowsXP) can't load dpwsock.dll (which is actually dpwsockx.dll) old version file can't load new version of file.

so incompatibility at all levels.
compatibility can be achieved by following patch
old game expects old directx -> loads old dplay.dll -> loads old dpwsock.dll
if there in this sequence a new version of file everything will fail.

so our request is to add compatibility to even older games by creating wrappers for
dplay.dll
and
dpwsock.dll

[akagemegane]

Alright, I figured out Necrodome!

You have to make sure to use the original DPLAY.DLL and DPWSOCKX.DLL files for ipxwrapper to work properly with it. Though in Necrodome's case, there is a bug where hosting causes the game to hang.

The fixed DPLAY.DLL can be found here : https://archive.org/download/oldmaps.-7z/DPLAYFIXALT.7z

As for Fire Fight, I am still trying to figure that one out. For the retail version, the problem I have the most currently involves the LOADER.EXE whenever DirectDraw wrappers are involved. But its possible to do away with DirectDraw by disabling it but scaling is non-existent. I will update on that whenever I figure out the DirectDraw stuff..