How good is AI at bringing old code into the 21st century? I’ve undertaken a small project to refactor code from the book Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus, by Andre Lamothe, to see how easy it might be to modernize.
First, some background: back in 2002, I was a General Manager at the Adtech division of Spirent Communications, located in Honolulu, Hawaii. Adtech made telecom test equipment, and I oversaw our division’s P&L through the telecom boom/bust cycle: and what a wild ride that was! It was an extremely stressful job, with long hours and lots of travel; I needed a way to relax in between corporate crises.
Somehow, I came across the legendary Andre Lamothe’s book, Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus, Second Edition. I think that it’s still available on Amazon, if you want to try to get a copy: https://www.amazon.com/Tricks-Windows-Game-Programming-Gurus/dp/0672323699. Although I wasn’t a hardcore programmer at the time, I bought the book, and I was hooked. Andre’s approachable style and great sense of humor made learning some of the basics of Windows game programming easy; there were plenty of source code examples included, and they all compiled nicely using Visual Studio 6 and DirectX 8. I worked my way through the entire book, compiling and running all of his example code, starting with a simple “Hello World” Windows program, and ending with a complete game, “Outpost”.
The book was a groundbreaker at the time: over 1,000 pages of amazing content, I think the first of its kind to teach low-level game programming. We have certainly come a long way since then, with new platforms like Unity, and now even AI writing games on its own. But to learn game design from the bottom up, I can’t think of any better way to have gotten started (at least, back in 2002).
And there’s the rub – the code in Andre’s book is old! 25+ years old, to be precise – the book was published in 2002, but the code on the included CD dates back to 1998 and 1999. All the code was Win32, and it even pre-dated Unicode being used in Windows. And we’re up to DirectX Ultimate, released in 2020, versus DirectX 8.0. I ran all this code on a PC running Windows ME. Would it be possible to port it to Windows 11 with a modern IDE and code base using AI, and how much guidance would AI need to get it right? I decided to find out.
For these experiments, I’m running on Windows 11, with a fresh install of Visual Studio 2022 Community, and GitHub Copilot.
Let’s start with the first version of a Windows “Hello World” program. The 1998 code for this from Andre’s book looks like the below:
// DEMO2_2.CPP - a simple message box
#define WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN
#include <windows.h> // the main windows headers
#include <windowsx.h> // a lot of cool macros
// main entry point for all windows programs
int WINAPI WinMain(HINSTANCE hinstance,
HINSTANCE hprevinstance,
LPSTR lpcmdline,
int ncmdshow)
{
// call message box api with NULL for parent window handle
MessageBox(NULL, "THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!!!",
"MY FIRST WINDOWS PROGRAM",
MB_OK | MB_ICONEXCLAMATION);
// exit program
return(0);
} // end WinMain
To begin the modernization, open up an Empty Project:
Copy and paste in Andre’s code.
Of course, compiling it generates build errors:
I asked for help from GitHub Copilot:
HelloWorld.cpp is Win32 code that was written in 2002. It has build errors, and needs to be refactored to run on Windows 11 with unicode. Can you modernize this code so that it will compile and run on Windows 11?
Certainly. To modernize this Win32 code for Windows 11 and Unicode support, the following changes are required:
- Use the wide-character (Unicode) versions of Win32 APIs by:
- Replacing string literals with wide string literals (prefix with L).
- Changing the WinMain signature to use LPWSTR for the command line argument.
- Ensure the project is set to use Unicode (which is default in modern Visual Studio projects).
- No other major changes are needed for such a simple program.
Here is the refactored code:
// DEMO2_2.CPP - a simple message box
#define WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN
#include <windows.h> // the main windows headers
#include <windowsx.h> // a lot of cool macros
// main entry point for all windows programs (Unicode)
int WINAPI wWinMain(HINSTANCE hinstance,
HINSTANCE hprevinstance,
LPWSTR lpcmdline,
int ncmdshow)
{
// call message box api with NULL for parent window handle
MessageBoxW(NULL, L"THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!!!",
L"MY FIRST WINDOWS PROGRAM",
MB_OK | MB_ICONEXCLAMATION);
// exit program
return 0;
} // end wWinMain
Copilot then creates a nice diff environment within the Code window:
Use the Tab key selectively and the final code is updated to the below, which is the same that was displayed in the Copilot Chat window:
// DEMO2_2.CPP - a simple message box
#define WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN
#include <windows.h> // the main windows headers
#include <windowsx.h> // a lot of cool macros
// main entry point for all windows programs (Unicode)
int WINAPI wWinMain(HINSTANCE hinstance,
HINSTANCE hprevinstance,
LPWSTR lpcmdline,
int ncmdshow)
{
// call message box api with NULL for parent window handle
MessageBoxW(NULL, L"THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!!!",
L"MY FIRST WINDOWS PROGRAM",
MB_OK | MB_ICONEXCLAMATION);
// exit program
return 0;
} // end wWinMain
Compile it again and there’s still an error, with an unresolved external:
Now, this is a common error.
I asked for help from Copilot again:
I have accepted all of your changes, but the compile still fails with LNK2019 and LNK1120 unresolved externals error messages. Can you help me with that?
Yes, I can help. The linker errors LNK2019 and LNK1120 typically mean that the linker cannot find the entry point or other required symbols. In this case, the most common cause is that the project is still configured to use WinMain as the entry point, but your code now uses wWinMain for Unicode.
How to fix:
- Ensure the project is set to use Unicode:
- In Visual Studio, go to Project > Properties.Navigate to Configuration Properties > General.
- Set Character Set to Use Unicode Character Set.
- Set the correct entry point:
- Go to Configuration Properties > Linker > System.Ensure Subsystem is set to Windows (/SUBSYSTEM:WINDOWS).
- If you still get errors, explicitly set the entry point:
- Go to Configuration Properties > Linker > Advanced.
- Set Entry Point to wWinMainCRTStartup.
- Rebuild the project.
Why this works:
- wWinMain is the Unicode entry point, and the CRT startup code expects to call wWinMainCRTStartup when Unicode is enabled.
- If the entry point is not set correctly, the linker cannot find the function to start your program, resulting in LNK2019/LNK1120.
Summary of steps:
- Set the project to use Unicode.
- Set the entry point to wWinMainCRTStartup if needed.
Try these steps and rebuild. If you still see errors, please provide the full error messages for further assistance.
In my opinion, #1 seems unlikely. And besides, I can’t find Character Set in the Project Properties (I believe that was superceded in my most current version of VS):
So going on to #2, I find in fact that the Linker Subsystem is not correctly set:
I saw that error 25 years ago. It’s strange that it’s still there – you would think the system would be able to auto-correct that. And although I asked Copilot to go ahead and change it, it refused – it said it doesn’t have access to my HelloWorld.vcxproj project file:
I do not currently have access to your HelloWorld.vcxproj project file, so I cannot directly check the Linker Subsystem setting.
Anyway, I made the change suggested, and it compiled and ran successfully!
This took only about five minutes to get through – amazing!
Just for fun, I decided to have the same interaction with ChatGPT 5:
Thought for 11s
Here’s a tiny, modernized version that compiles on Visual Studio 2022 (Community), runs on Windows 11, and uses Unicode explicitly:
// A minimal Unicode Win32 app that shows a message box.
// Build: Visual Studio 2022 (Community)
// Platform: Windows 11 (works on earlier versions too)
#define WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN
#include <windows.h>
// Unicode entry point (no console)
int APIENTRY wWinMain(_In_ HINSTANCE hInstance,
_In_opt_ HINSTANCE /*hPrevInstance*/,
_In_ PWSTR /*lpCmdLine*/,
_In_ int /*nCmdShow*/)
{
MessageBoxW(nullptr,
L”THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!!!”,
L”MY FIRST WINDOWS PROGRAM”,
MB_OK | MB_ICONEXCLAMATION);
return 0;
}
Why this works now
- Uses the Unicode entry point wWinMain and wide‐char Windows API (MessageBoxW) instead of ANSI.
- Drops the old <windowsx.h> macros you don’t need for this sample.
- Avoids deprecated/ambiguous types like LPSTR in the entry point.
Visual Studio 2022 setup (quick)
- File → New → Project → Windows Desktop Application (C++).
- Name the project, then Create.
- In Project → Properties (for All Configurations):
- General → Character Set: Use Unicode Character Set.
- (Optional) C/C++ → Language → Conformance mode: Yes (default).
- Replace the auto-generated .cpp with the main.cpp above.
- Build → Build Solution (Ctrl+Shift+B), then Debug → Start Without Debugging (Ctrl+F5).
That’s it—clean, Unicode-safe, and ready for Win11 with VS2022.
That compiled and ran like a charm!
It’s interesting that ChatGPT removed the deprecated #include <windowsx.h>, whereas Copilot just seemed to ignore it.
I also like the fact that ChatGPT used the Source (Code) Annotation Language (SAL) – for example, the _In_ and _In_opt_. It make the code much more readable. And finally, it used the more modern PWSTR, versus the legacy LPWSTR, as the pointer to the wide character string.
So, the winner is ChatGPT, at least for now.
To wrap this up, there are dozens and dozens of examples on the CD that was included with the book, in its original form. It might be hard to find that CD now, but I have the original source. Here are the contents for all 15 chapters:
In my spare time, I plan to go through much of the content of the book again and modernize the code. Many of the older .exe files that Andre included in the book’s CD don’t run anymore (although some of them do – which is amazing!) so over time I’ll bring them all into Windows 11 and the 21st century.
