Newish DirectDraw wrapper: DDrawCompat

Instructions are in the readme on the linked page.

Quoting myself from another post:

"Unfortunately it seems that in v0.1.2 I partially broke the mouse cursor (leaves trails on the help screen), so I recommend using v0.1.1 or v0.1.0 for now.

Other than that, the only issue I've noticed is that occasionally the game locks up at the start of the intro video. If this happens, just press Ctrl-Alt-Del and kill it from Task Manager, then try running it again."

So far it works for me on Windows 8.1 and for another user on Windows 7, but one user reported having black screens everywhere instead.

Update: v0.2.0 fixes the mouse trail issues, Windows 10 compatibility and some other problems, so I recommend using this version now instead of the older ones.

If this fix doesn't resolve the problems for you (or causes more), please post the following info:
- Windows version
- Graphics card(s) in your system
- Any compatibility settings already applied to the game and whether you're running the game as an administrator

When this happens to me, I hit the space bar 5 times to skip past 5 intro screens/videos, then hit ESC. Deadlock 2 exits, showing me it wasn't locked up. I'm seeing a blank screen all the way through. I'm running Windows 10 64-bit, using an NVidea GeForce GTX 970M processor (laptop). Occurs both with and without running as administrator.

Alternatively, I can run DEADLOCK.EXE -w and it stays confined to a window. In windowed mode, the cursor trails a black square that erases wherever it touches. But in this mode, the intro video plays normally while the other screens have wire frame graphics and incorrect colors.

On Windows 10 64-bit, also tried v.0.1.0 and v.0.1.2 of ddraw.dll. Same thing as above for windowed and full screen modes (trailing erase with window, blank screens with full screen).

Thanks for the feedback. If you could assist me a bit further with some debug info, that would be great. Please check your chat messages.

Windowed mode is definitely broken with DDrawCompat too, so it's not really worth checking. The fix is intended for full screen mode only.

Thanks for working on ddraw.dll to make good old PC games better. I don't want to start a long cycle of back and forth, where only one of us can reproduce the Windows 10 problem. If you had a Windows 10 machine that reproduced the problem, I'd be willing to try it. But I'm not going to be the only source of seeing the problem. I guess another way to put it - if you can't reproduce the problem, how do you know if you have a fix?

If you have a spare Windows 7 or 8 machine, you can check if the free upgrade to Windows 10 is still available. Microsoft says you can roll back to your original OS (Win 7 or 8) later if you don't want to remain on Windows 10.

Yeah, I will upgrade eventually, I haven't decided exactly when yet. But even then there's a chance that I won't have the same problem as you. So far there is no indication that the problem is specific to Windows 10. I guess I'll wait for some more feedback first. Maybe someone else who has the same issue will be willing to assist in debugging it also (as you suspect it will probably take a few back-and-forth test iterations, unless I manage to find a way to reproduce the issue meanwhile).

Of course, if and when I upgrade to Windows 10, I'll lose access to a test system for Windows 8, so then there is that. (I'm not planning on downgrading.) Hopefully this will become less of a problem as more people upgrade to 10.

Now I have an idea... DDrawCompat uses a hardware color fill to fix a particular issue and it's currently also needed for fixing the issue with Deadlock 2.
Now, I seriously doubt that your GTX 970M does not have hardware color fill support, BUT it may be using Optimus technology, which means if you also have integrated graphics in your laptop (and I assume you do), then Deadlock 2 may be running on that instead of your discrete Nvidia card.

I was actually able to reproduce your issue by disabling the color fill fix in DDrawCompat.

Could you try forcing the game to run on Nvidia instead of integrated graphics? It may be available simply from the right-click menu on deadlock.exe ("Run with Graphics Processor").
Here's a more extensive guide: http://docs.nvidia.com/gameworks/content/technologies/desktop/optimus.htm (check the "Application Profile Settings").

I've never seen "Run with graphics processor" on a right click menu, but I checked just to be sure - not there.

You should take a look at "dxwnd", a tool to run old games. I've downloaded it and tried dozens of flags on my own, randomly, without fixing the issue. With your experiencing making fixes to ddraw.dll, you might have some insights on which flags to try - and there are a lot of flags. For example, a few of the "DirectX" flags:
"Blit from BackBuffer"
"Suppress Clipper"
"Plette update don't Blit"
"Don't fix the Pixel Format"
"by default set no ALPHACHANNEL"

Without any DirectX experience, they make no sense to me. There's "Direct3D", "Video" and "Libs" groupings of flags as well. Feel free to pick out 5-10 flags and I'll give those a try.

That you don't have the option in the context menu doesn't mean you don't have two GPU options. The context menu might need to be enabled in Nvidia Control Panel. The screenshot on the bottom of this support page shows where (maybe your version is different though): https://support.lenovo.com/gb/en/documents/ht082304 Check this thread for DxWnd: http://sourceforge.net/p/dxwnd/discussion/general/thread/b25ff4aa/
If that doesn't help, gho may be able to help you further on that forum, I'm not really familiar with DxWnd settings myself.

New version of DDrawCompat (v0.1.3) fixes mouse trail issues that were introduced in v0.1.2, and should also eliminate the occasional lock-ups when Alt-Tabbing. There is also no dependency on hardware color fill anymore, which will hopefully fix the problem mentioned by sneakcity.

This fix is still only good for full screen mode. Let me know if it works correctly now.

Using the new v0.1.3 version still shows a blank screen in full screen mode on Windows 10 64-bit.

While Deadlock 2 remains unplayable, I'm using DxWnd to try and suffer through. On the DirectX tab, in the "Emulation" section, I select "Locked Surface" and then run the game in full screen mode. That gives me the same streaking of black blocks I see in windowed mode, and I just suffer through it. I click on the zoom in/zoom out to refresh the screen. I'm familiar enough with the game I figure I can play it despite the graphical problems.

Are there any failures in ddraw.log? Actually, copy the whole content here please.

Incidentally, if you happen to have the game called Nox and you happen to have the flashing/corrupted main screen issue in it, could you check if DDrawCompat fixes that?

Edit: Nevermind, I upgraded to Windows 10 and now I can reproduce the problem. I'll post again when it's fixed.

I've added a temporary release for testing a preliminary Windows 10 compatibility fix (v0.2.0pre). It works fine on my Windows 10 PC now.
I've tested it only with Deadlock 2 and I don't recommend using it for other games until the final v0.2.0 version is released.
As usual, only full screen mode is supported for now.

Could you please give this a try, sneakcity? (Or anyone else using Windows 10 and experiencing problems with the previous releases).

Very nice! Your new release of ddrawl.dll (v0.2.0pre) fixes Deadlock 2 for me on Windows 10!

Now in fullscreen mode, I move the cursor on both the main menu and within the game, and there's no blanking of the screen and no trail of black boxes. Game plays like it used to - thanks!

EDIT: I have Nox (gog version 2.0.0.20), so I gave it a try per your request. Without using ddraw.dll, I could find no problems. On Windows 10 64-bit I didn't see any problems. I installed and played for a few minutes without seeing a blank screen or graphics problems.

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Hi, Narzoul, I'm GHO and I was particularly interested in your improvement about Deadlock 2.
I wrote a message for you in the SF board
This is what I wrote:

@Narzoul: you did a wonderful job. To me, it seems that the overall idea is similar to the one implemented by the DxWnd "Emulate device context" flag, but with something extra that eliminates flickering and black trails.
It seems possible that the trick is in the new files CompatGdiDc.cpp and is related to a caching of the DC surface to manage clipped regions, maybe owned by other threads, to allow recovering black-filled regions.
I'd like to replicate your schema in DxWnd, also because it's not possible to run DxWnd and your ddraw wrapper contemporarily (I tried, but the result was not good!).
Since the inner structure of DxWnd and your ddraw wrapper are quite different, I can't simply ask permission to copy your code in my project. May I ask you, instead, to explain the basic idea behind the fix so that I could try to reimplement it within DxWnd?
Of course, you'll deserve my public thanks.

Feel free to continue the thread either here or on SF as you prefer.