Hello all

I recently tested a dll that negated the sloppy directdraw emulation found in windows 8and 8.1 .
While lightmaps had to remain disabled, I am happy to report framerates of around 60 or higher.

Please bare with me as I'm on a phone and linking is dodggy at best.

Scroll down to the second solution on this page.

http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/post.php?topic=99477&post=1202630

Please note that there are 2 separate dlls within the zip, one for win8 and the other for 8.1

If any of you have success with this, sound off.

Neat! Just in time for Joe's Halloween BloodBath.

I don't think there was a change in FPS for me. Also, I don't believe there is a ddraw.dll to replace. Perhaps i'm doing something wrong?

Also, I wonder when we will see a more general fix for old games. I've heard of dll wrappers and emulators\virtualization. However, everything that has been created so far is incomplete (in the virtualization's case, they barely support games). Have you guys heard of any more options? Is there a really good wrapper or virtualizer that i haven't heard about?

I'm pretty sure we will NEED a good option eventually (especially for a site like gog). It is already getting bad enough to where there is no way the games can work without alot of modification. In blood 2's case, I don't think a modification even exists(unless this dll works).

For the record, windows 8 dropped directdraw support(that's why Blood 2 won't work well on W8). I'm certain there is more than just directdraw that we have to worry about when it comes to older games in general.

There was some musing about Wine for Windows. I imagine that might do it, but there wasn't much traction for it when I checked on it last.

Addendum: Poking around a bit I found this WineD3D project that has a build of Wine on Windows:
http://www.nongnu.org/wined3d/

Apologies, I don't know what other wrappers/virtualizers you've heard about. It might be good to have a running list of things that work with Blood 2 someplace. It could be that Z's links contain the selfsame DLLs that WindD3D has.

I think the best option is to get a hold of an old PC and designate that as your GOG gaming system. I'm in the works of doing that myself. When windows 10 comes out im sure it'll get worse for a lot of these games here at GOG. But u never know, it could make things better. But I doubt that.

William Feelys's DXGL was loading b2 all the way to the first level with no rendering, just the hud and sound fx when I last tested version 0.1.5.5. Lately his page just freezes up for me though. ddraw execution was scheduled for the next release.

Yeah sounds like the best option but is quite inconvenient.

DXGL looks very promising but of course is fairly incomplete.
Also, Wine for Windows would seem to be another solution but I haven't seen any dedicated developers.

Why can't Microsoft actually make a useful version of compatibility mode? lol

They just don't care about compatibility because if they did a lot of there new software would be looked over if the previous version still did the job. Lotus 123 still does a better job at certain things then the latest excel. But of course it wont work on modern win OSs. Go figure.

Well at the very least they could take the old gaming related assets and make them functional with compatibility mode. Maybe it doesn't work like that... Even if it did, M$ still probably wouldn't do something like that because it probably doesn't bring the profits they want.

So no one else tried the ddraw dll? It works great on my system.

Nope, we are all talk. =]

I have one confirmation via another forum that Ddraw dll can speed up the frame rate on windows 8. I also have confirmation that turning off lightmaps helps on some built in gfx chips.

Did you just put the file in your main directory and what kind of increase in frame rate did you see? Is it playable now? (I already tried it didn't work very well)

I just put the ddraw dll in the same directory as the client/exe. got a doubling of frame rate . Got rid of the stutter by turning off lightmaps. kil3r, you're my evidence that this doesn't always work.


sorry about that. fps went from 30 to 60 at least, playable minus the purdy lightmaps.

ddraw.dll isn't of much help to me, as it seems to mess with the launcher advanced settings (it always reverts to default setting once I start the game). I put it in the main directory. However, as with quite a lot of other games under 8.1, the first solution (using Application Comp. Toolkit) works well as long as I disable light mapping, as you said. Otherwise, the framerate is unstable. Still, the interface flickers a lot.

Microsoft could sure do a better job, but overall I don't find 8.1 more or less of an issue than 7, although fixes and issues are different (less crashes, better colours, performance problems though). BUT, Blood 2... and generally speaking the first Lithtech games (before AvP2)... they really need a 100% efficient way to be launched windowed or something (DxWnd? DXGL?? Wine? Tried all of them a few months ago, no luck, but they may have been updated). And Blood 2 is the worst in my experience.