Midtown Madness Trial (Angel Studios / Microsoft, 1999)

App id midtown_madness_trial; candidate midtown-madness-trial in test/candidate-corpus/manifest.json. Direct3D (IDirect3D3/Device3) city racer, trial build with one Chicago race.

Licence

The Microsoft trial EULA (EULA.RTF, inside the package) allows non-commercial redistribution of complete copies, with notices and the EULA attached. It is still registered localOnly until someone decides on deployment.

Install layout

MMDemo.zip (archive.org MidtownMadness_1020) holds MMDemo.exe, a self-extractor whose .rsrc/CABFILE is an MSZIP/LZX CAB. 7z x MMDemo.exe unpacks it directly into MIDTRIAL.EXE, MIDTRIAL.AR (85 MB data archive), EULA.RTF, the DirectX setup DLLs and UNINSTAL.EXE. The manifest's single extractArchive step does exactly that. The game reads the registry key Software\Microsoft\Microsoft Games\Midtown Madness\1.0 but runs without it.

Startup route (headless, --batch-size=50000, default 200 ms/batch clock)

1. First-run MessageBox "Click OK to have Midtown Madness detect the presence of a hardware accelerator card": keydown:13 at batch 20.
2. Device probe: three 640×480 windows, then IDirect3D3::EnumDevices. The callback at 0x517010 keeps the device whose name matches the string that [obj+0x1c] selects (bits 0x400/0x800/0x1000/0x2000 → "Ramp Emulation"/"RGB Emulation"/"Direct3D HAL"/"MMX Emulation"; detection picks HAL here, 0x1032). With no match the UI never starts: "FATAL ERROR: Can't start UI, this should never happen." (check at 0x40190b). Fixed 2026-10-11 by enumerating the Windows names and descriptions.
3. Main menu by ~b260. It is keyboard- and mouse-driven: Enter at b280 takes Quick Race to the Vehicles screen (Ford Mustang GT).
4. The menu cursor comes from an absolute-axis DirectInput mouse (SetProperty(DIPROP_AXISMODE, DIPROPAXISMODE_ABS=0), GetDeviceState 16 bytes into 0x713af0). relmousemove moves it 1:1 from about (330,250). "Go Drive!" is reached with relmousemove:240:175:8 and then di-mousedown:1/di-mouseup:1.
5. Loading screen with a progress bar (reading MIDTRIAL.AR); the countdown and race start at ~b1400.
6. The default controller is the Mouse: Throttle = left button, Brakes = right button, steer with mouse X (Options → Control Options). Holding di-mousedown:1 from b1420 drives; checkpoint 1 is reached by ~b1640. Keyboard keys are camera/HUD keys (W = wide angle, C = camera, Tab = map).

Emulator fixes this app needed (2026-10-11)

• D3D1-7 EnumDevices passed names "hal"/"rgb"/"ramp" with short descriptions. Windows passes "Direct3D HAL"/"RGB Emulation"/"Ramp Emulation" with "Microsoft Direct3D ..." descriptions.
• DIPROP_AXISMODE was stored inverted, and absolute mode was ignored. Absolute mice now report accumulated position in GetDeviceState and in buffered X/Y events.
• IDirectInput::CreateDevice succeeded with an inert device for any GUID. The game creates a "joystick" from an EnumDevices buffer that nothing filled, so unknown GUIDs now return DIERR_DEVICENOTREG.
• Acquire required SetCooperativeLevel. The game never sets one on its keyboard, so the keyboard was never acquired. The default level is background non-exclusive.

The keyboard table poll is at 0x545610 (it returns 0x713b00). Its retry path re-acquires the mouse device [0x713c54], not the keyboard [0x713c58].