I love the old game Shadow President. I am considering Decompiling it and writing some patches to add features, then recompile it for XP/Vista, or even rewritting it in Java. Anyway, here's my question: How much of an effort would it be just to de-compile an old dos game and recompile it for Windows?

Quote:Original post by Efuddy
I love the old game Shadow President. I am considering Decompiling it and writing some patches to add features, then recompile it for XP/Vista, or even rewritting it in Java.

That's likely illegal.

Quote:Original post by Efuddy
How much of an effort would it be just to de-compile an old dos game and recompile it for Windows?

A lot. First, decompiling is very difficult to do, and most of the applications available that can do it are pretty limited.
Second, the DOS game was probably written at least partly in assembly, so most of that code would need rewritten for Windows.

Writing it from scratch would probably be easiest - although unless you make your own artwork or use public domain art, it's likely against the EULA, and therefore illegal.

If you only want to do this so you can run the game in Windows, try DOSBOX.