W3DNext a D3D11 renderer backend for the Generals / Zero Hour engine

[afm-rayan]

W3DNext — a D3D11 renderer backend for the Generals / Zero Hour engine

Hi everyone — I've been building on top of this tree and wanted to show it here.

W3DNext replaces the original DirectX 8 renderer behind DX8Wrapper with a
Direct3D 11 backend. Since WW3D2 is a fixed-function engine (FVF formats,
multitexture cascade, FF T&L, indexed vertex blending), the port implements a
fixed-function-emulation layer in HLSL — the game code above the wrapper is
unchanged, and it runs against a retail install.

Status: skirmish play works at frame-rate parity with the DX8 path
(29.36 vs 29.38 FPS on the internal capped benchmark), menu rendering is
99.78% byte-identical against DX8. The backend ships off by default
(generalszh.exe -d3d11).

On top of the renderer: a color-grade pass (cinematic brightness/contrast/
saturation + bloom + filmic tone-map + god rays), a night-vision green filter
(F6), an accelerated day/night cycle, and normal-map tooling for terrain and
models. Most recently I migrated the audio engine to the RefCountPtr design
(miles.c fixes included) — release v0.2.0 has the binaries and a Python
normal-map generator.

Docs: RENDERER_PORT.md (port design), docs/architecture/d3d11-parity-log.md
(DX8-vs-D3D11 A/B history), docs/architecture/shader-stack-and-color-grade.md
(shader stack + night-vision math).

Repo: https://github.com/afm-rayan/W3DNext
Release: https://github.com/afm-rayan/W3DNext/releases/tag/v0.2.0

Thanks for keeping this codebase alive and buildable — none of this would
exist without your work on modernizing it. GPL v3, no game assets included.
Happy to share any findings or patches (e.g. the audio refcount fixes) if
they're useful to the project, and very open to feedback.

[927AVIApolk]

There is currently a file available that redirects shader and DirectX 8 processing to DirectX 9. Although considered an unofficial driver, it works very well with Generals; the Project Raptor: War Commanders mod has long utilized it to achieve improved performance.

d3d8.zip

You just need to place it in the Generals ZeroHour folder next to generals.exe, and it will work. However, keep in mind that it is not compatible with GenTool.

https://github.com/crosire/d3d8to9