I had this same itch lately and persevered for a couple hours and got it to work on windows 10, give this a try:
1. get the
iso
2. mount the iso (I used
winCDEmu, but any other im sure is good)
3. as in above guide: find Setup.exe. Right click on it and change compatibility mode to windows 95. Run this file with administration permission and install the game to your hard drive
4*. I found an old star trek game website armadafleetcommand.com which is has a pre-setup DXWnd for all their mods and games here:
www.armadafleetcommand.com/onscreen/botf/viewtopic.php?t=3179
i. Download the
FULLSCREEN setting version
ii. Open it up and select the top entry in the list (Birth of the Federation) and go edit > modify
iii. change the path to point to your beasts.exe location where you installed it, clear the launch path, change the Name (optional)
iv. as in above guide, go to DirectX tab and set DirectX Version Hook to DirectX1~6, and tick both the AERO handling check boxes in that same tab, I left everything else as is.
That worked for me, running fullscreen and smooth with good colours on windows 10, dont forget cd/iso needs to be mounted for game to work.
WAHEEYYYY! zooka! *pfft*
*following the original dxwnd advice didnt work for me, either it was laggy, or it ran smooth but the color palette was messed up (green and blues where they shouldnt be in brighter ranges), i was messing with settings until I realised its better to see if someone had figured some optimal settings for other old 90s games, i got lucky it worked first try with that star trek games site, hope it works out for you, I never completed b&b when I was a kid so I'm pretty excited to play it again now in my old age.