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dgVoodoo 2.55: Glide, DirectDraw/Direct3D and D3D8 to Direct3D11 Wrapper
Released: March 24, 2018
Author: Dege

Copyright (c) 2013-2018
===============================================================================

 

Table of contents

1. Redistribution rights
2. Features
3. Requirements
4. Test results
5. Usage
6. Configuring
7. Resolution overriding
8. General Control Panel (CPL) options
9. General additional options
10. General tips and known issues
11. Special release version with debug layer
12. Change log

===============================================================================

 

 

1. Redistribution rights

Files of dgVoodoo can be redistributed freely as far as they are kept together, remain unmodified and unrenamed. Namely, only the full package can be redistributed in the form as it is!

If you would like to utilize them in publicly available custom solutions or packages, like game patches or anything else, then PLEASE ask me for permission, furthermore mention its original source in your package along with the following download link:

http://dege.fw.hu/

Official dgVoodoo forum where you can contact me and the dgVoodoo community is at:

http://www.vogons.org/viewforum.php?f=59/

Tip: See topic "WIP versions" for checking out new dgVoodoo versions that are not officially released. 
 

---------------------- !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ----------------------

Very BIG THANKS must go to the community of Vogons for helping me a lot in testing during the development! Thanks Guys, I couldn't have proceed so far without such a great quality assurance!

And I append a new sentence here to emphasize it again, especially for testing my DX8 implementation and supplying me with ideas, tips and various informations on several games!!!

---------------------- !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ----------------------

 

2. Features

dgVoodoo 2 is a wrapper for old graphics API's for Windows Vista/7/8/10. 

This wrapper can use Direct3D 11 with different device types as wrapping output:

  • Hardware rendering at GPU feature level 10.1 (recommended)
  • Hardware rendering at GPU feature level 10.0 (there are some restrictions)
  • Software rendering through Microsoft WARP renderer

The API's it currently can wrap are:

  • Glide 2.11, Glide 2.45, Glide 3.1 and Glide 3.1 Napalm
  • DirectX 1-7 (all versions of DirectDraw and Direct3D up to version 7)
  • Direct3D 8.1

For both Glide and DirectX, dgVoodoo pushes as many emulation work to the GPU as possbile. Thus, the entire internal 3Dfx GPU logic is mapped to pixel shaders for Glide emulation, and all the fixed function vertex & pixel processing pipeline is implemented by shaders for DirectX emulation (when possible).
dgVoodoo basically can work in two ways:

  • Using its precompiled shaders - it is the less efficient mode (legacy) and doesn't provide DX8-level vertex/pixel pipeline functionality
  • Using an external HLSL shader compiler - this is the most efficient and recommended mode and referred as 'dynamic shader compiling'

 

If dynamic shader compiling is available (see Usage) then dgVoodoo can work with specialized shaders requiring much less GPU power, providing much better performance, especially on weaker video cards.

 

3. Requirements

  • Operating system: Windows Vista/7/8/10
  • Hardware: GPU supporting DirectX feature level 10.0.

Optional and recommended:

  • GPU supporting DirectX feature level 10.1
  • HLSL shader compiler (D3DCompiler_43 or D3DCompiler_47)
    (note that D3DCompiler_47 is part of Windows 10)

 

4. Test results

We can examine this in two aspects:

  • Used hardware and performance
    I've tested and run different versions of dgVoodoo2 on the following GPU's:
    • Intel HD 2000 (feature level 10.0 only)
    • GeForce 8600 GT (feature level 10.0 only)
    • Intel HD 4000
    • Geforce GT 610
    • AMD HD 6450
    • Intel HD Graphics 530
    • GeForce GTS 450
    • AMD HD 7850
    • GeForce GTX Ti560 (RIP)
    • AMD R7 360
    • GeForce GTX 1060
    If dynamic shader compiling is utilized then dgVoodoo generally performs quite well on all hardware except integrated chips (like Intel HD 2000 and 4000).
    Using only precompiled shaders requires a mid-class video card at least, and the low-end ones (intended for office-like usage) like Geforce GT 610 and AMD HD 6450 are not recommended.

  • Accuracy of the emulation, individual games and applications
    Of course it's not perfect but I think I got very nice results in general. I maintain expanding lists for games and demos, for DirectX emulation:
    Games
    Demos

 

5. Usage

There is no installer for dgVoodoo beacuse you can copy its dlls anywhere you want (to use). If u like it and want to use as the only global Glide wrapper on your machine then copy Glide dlls to the system folder. For DirectX emulation only a local installation is possible since the DirectX dlls CANNOT be copied to the system folder (see DirectX readme).

A Glide wrapped application can start up either in windowed or full screen mode (it is controlled by the Control Panel, see later). Also, you can switch between them during the gameplay by Alt-Enter. See 'Known issues' for more.

The same is true for wrapped DirectX applications, but it is a more complicated case, see DirectX readme.

Glide and DirectX dlls can co-work inside a process so the same versions of them have to be used within a folder. If one of them detects the other with different version then it refuses to initialize and work. Co-work is useful for applications that use DirectDraw for some initial in-game menu and Glide for 3D rendering.

If you use dgVoodoo on Windows 10 then dynamic shader compiling is automatically available because D3DCompiler_47 is part of the operating system.
For preceding Windows versions (Vista, 7, ? you need to download it manually and then, you can copy this dll into each game folder next to the wrapper dlls but the best practice is to copy it into

  • Windows\System32 folder for 32 bit operating systems
  • Windows\SysWOW64 folder for 64 bit operating systems

if it is not already there by the result of the installation of some other software.
Note that dgVoodoo supports both D3DCompiler_43 and D3DCompiler_47. _43 is supported only because of compatibility with users having it downloaded and copied into their system folder previously.

Utilizing dynamic shader compiling is strongly recommended and even unavoidable to get all DX8 level features to work. If dgVoodoo cannot find D3DCompiler then it can use only its generalized precompiled shaders just like versions before 2.5. If dgVoodoo finds a supported compiler dll then it can adapt to the current circumstances and compile specialized shaders providing maximum GPU performance.

 

6. Configuring

As different options might wanted to be used for particular applications, I kept the concept of local/global configurations (might be familiar from old dgVoodoo). Current configuration is stored in a file named 'dgVoodoo.conf'. Its format can either be binary or a textual INI-file for manual editing.

When the Glide or DirectX wrapped application starts, dgVoodoo tries to read config data. The search paths and the order for the config file are the following:

  • Folder of the wrapper DLL
  • Folder of the application (EXE)
  • User application data folder

If the config file can be found in none of them then the default config is used.

 

For modifying config files, you can either use dgVoodoo Control Panel (dgVoodooCpl) or edit it manually with a text editor. dgVoodooCPL provides convenient GUI interface for the most relevant options while manual editing gives you free access to special options. In dgVoodooCpl you can choose a folder where you can load (from) and save the current configuration. Once you chose a folder, it remains in the list permanently. If the CPL application finds a valid config file in its own folder (where the app itself is located) then it automatically places the folder into the list and selects the folder. Otherwise the user's application data folder is selected, by default.

Note that

  • CPL always writes INI format config file (unlike previous versions) - and you can edit it manually, passing over the CPL
  • CPL doesn't expose all the available configuration options but only the most common used ones. Rarely used and special ones (referenced as additional ones) can be changed manually.

 

If an application tolerates losing focus without closing/minimizing itself, you can configure it dynamically: when the CPL starts up it builds a list of detected running Glide/DirectX wrapped applications and insert it into the folder selector combobox. When you select such a running instance then the current state of the application is read as config and most of the options can also be changed. So, you can set resolution, msaa, brightness, etc on the spot without restarting the application (configurable items depend on emulation type). When an option changes, it takes effect at once. If the dialog gets cancelled or an other config folder/instance is selected, all the changes gets cancelled as well.

You can always use the 'Apply' button to save the current config to the selected folder or running application without exiting the CPL application. Important to note:

  • If the wrapped app and the CPL runs on different privilege levels (admin/nonadmin) then the app won't appear in the instance list or they cannot communicate to each other. Sorry for the inconvenience.

  • Switching resolution or MSAA can only be performed perfectly if the application re-renders everything on each frame. If it uses or keeps previously (once-)rendered things like cockpits or similars then they will be missing as will not get re-rendered. (Glide only)

A folder inserted formerly into the list can be removed. Also, list of the running instances can be refreshed.

 

7. Resolution and refresh rate overriding

You can override the application resolution and refresh rate both for Glide and DirectX rendering.
There are three types of resolution overriding, and, the 'Resolution' comboboxes contain two types of elements in the enumerated list:

  • Static resolutions

    Those are enumerated by your videocard for the selected display output. Select any of them, and the wrapper will force that one (along with the selected refresh rate), no matter what resolution the application wants to set.
    Resolution 'Unforced' means always using the current application resolution, so there is no overriding at all.


  • Dynamic resolutions

    First, a little explanation on what the practical problems are with static resolutions (especially for DirectX applications).

    • The application may use multiple resolutions for different parts like movies, menus and ingame. The statically chosen resolution may not have the same aspect ratio as those of them. For app-resolutions with different aspect ratios like 4:3 vs 16:9 it's a problem because one of them will be displayed hugely distorted.

    • Even if the app uses only one resolution, and you can select or type another one with the same aspect ratio, then selecting the proper resolution is still not an easy task:
      a) you don't necessarily know what resolution the app uses
      B) you don't necessarily know what the max resolution your display is capable of
      c) even if you know both of them, you may have to calculate manually the desired resolution.

    (My own problem was the following: I sat down in front of a new computer with a 4K monitor and wanted to try out some stuffs through dgVoodoo. I faced the fact that I didn't know the exact monitor resolution, I also didn't know what res the stuffs to try were using. I just wanted the maximum available resolution to be forced that keeps the aspect ratio.)

    Dynamic resolution is the synonim of "let the wrapper choose the current resolution for you". The maximum, and also the base used for calculating the current resolution, is your desktop resolution. The base rule is that the wrapper always calculates the maximum available resolution for the given scaling mode, but

    • you can restrict the base maximum to FullHD (1920x1080) or QHD (2560x1440) for weaker GPUs (like low-end cards or maybe, integrated chips) with large-res display outputs, and

    • you can restrict the scale factor to integer numbers.
      (ISF - integer scale factor)

    So, dynamic resolutions are the following:
    • 2x, 3x, ...: Integer multiples of application resolutions; doubled, tripled, etc.
    • Max: Maximum resolution available
    • Max ISF: Maximum resolution with integer scale factor available
    • Max FHD: Maximum resolution available (but restricted to 1920x1080)
    • Max FHD ISF: Maximum resolution with integer scale factor available (but restricted to 1920x1080)
    • Max QHD: Maximum resolution available (but restricted to 2560x1440)
    • Max QHD ISF: Maximum resolution with integer scale factor available (but restricted to 2560x1440)

    By default, dynamic resolutions don't have refresh rate even if enumerating refresh rates is enabled. When working with a dynamic resolution, then the refresh rate is undefined and it is up to the wrapper and the video card that what rate will be used (probably the one at which desktop is driven).

  • Custom resolutions

    A custom resolution is either a static one that is not in the enumerated list, or one that is partially overridden. Defining a custom resolution through the CPL is about typing the string -manually into the combo box- describing the resolution/refresh rate pair.
    Resolution and refresh rate can be overridden independently on each other. Here are some examples (don't type quotation marks):

    • "128x128, 60" - means static resolution 128x128 at forced rate of 60Hz
    • "128x128, 0" or just "128x128" - means static resolution 128x128 without overridden refresh rate
    • "0x0, 75" or "unforced, 75" - means unforced (static) resolution with forced 75Hz
    • "max isf, 83" - means Max ISF dynamic resolution with forced 83Hz

    If your resolution and refresh rate is in the list then it is better to select it from there than typing it manually. It is because e.g. 60Hz is not exactly 60Hz in practice but 60.01Hz or 59.95Hz or so, depending on your display hardware. dgVoodoo always handles the refresh rates in their exact rational form but it cannot do that with manually typed ones.
    When displaying a refresh rate in the combo box, dgVoodoo truncates the value. So, for example, 59.95Hz will appear as 59Hz in the list, while the display manufacturer probably claims that your display supports 60Hz. Don't let it mislead you. It is all about truncating or rounding the values.

     

If you are terribly interested in how the current dynamic resolution is calculated then a little technical part comes here. Otherwise you can skip this section. 
 

? desktop resolution
F: FullHD resolution (1920x1080)
Q: QHD resolution (2560x1440)
A: application resolution
AS (x, y): stretched from x to y, with aspect ratio
IAS (x, y): stretched from x to y, with aspect ratio, integer scale factor

 

  Unspecified Centered Stretched Stretch with AR
Max AS (A, D) AS (A, D) D AS (A, D)
Max ISF IAS (A, D) IAS (A, D) * remarks IAS (A, D)
Max FHD AS (A, min (D,F)) AS (A, min (D,F)) min (D,F) AS (A, min (D,F))
Max FHD ISF IAS (A, min (D,F)) IAS (A, min (D,F)) * remarks IAS (A, min (D,F))
Max QHD AS (A, min (D,Q)) AS (A, min (D,Q)) min (Q,F) AS (A, min (D,Q))
Max QHD ISF IAS (A, min (D,Q)) IAS (A, min (D,Q)) * remarks IAS (A, min (D,Q))


Remarks:

  • Resolution is calculated in the same way for scaling mode 'Unspecified', 'Centered' and 'Stretch with AR'.

  • Stretched scaling mode with ISF tries to stretch to min([D|F|Q]) and the scale factor for both direction is the integer part of the minimum of
    min ([Dx|Fx|Qx])/Ax and min ([Dy|Fy|Qy])/Ay (ratios of X/Y directions).

I'd like to say some words about what happens on multimonitor systems with dynamic resolution forcing:

  • Glide: when switching from windowed mode to fullscreen then a new forced resolution is calculated by the wrapper, based on the native res of the display on which the full screen output will appear.

  • DX: It's not so flexible at all, unfortunately. Since DX impl doesn't support changing resolution during its working, it cannot do the same as Glide when switching into fullscreen. Also, since display outputs are enumerated to the application, resolution calculation can rely only on the native res of the output on which DX is initialized (so changing the output of a running DX emulated app from the CPL application is without avail, won't affect the next resolution calculation).

 

8. General Control Panel (CPL) options


Options on the General tab affects all wrapped APIs, that is, currently Glide and DirectX.

  • Output API
    Three output API's are available:
    • Direct3D11 feature level 10.1

    • Direct3D11 feature level 10.0

    • Direct3D11 Microsoft WARP renderer

      D3D11 with FL10.0 is designed to be used with late DX 10.0 hardware and has some limitations:

      • No mipmapping in Glide rendering
      • Limited operations on Z-buffers
        • Buffers with forced MSAA can only be rendering targets; they cannot be used as
          • depth textures
          • source of copy operations (Blit in DDraw)
          • locked for CPU-access (Lock in DDraw/ LockRect in D3D8)
        • Faces of 3D-rendered cube-depth buffers cannot be
          • source of copy operations (Blit in DDraw)
          • locked for CPU-access (Lock in DDraw/ LockRect in D3D8)

      WARP is a software renderer, I intended it to be kind of a reference driver but I experienced some rendering errors with it unfortunately.

       

  • Video card (adapter)
    In case you have more than one, then

    • Glide: which one to use for rendering. Option 'All of them' is equivalent to selecting the first video card in the list.
    • DirectX: it is a multi-device capable API so you can choose which adapter(s) are to be enabled for the emulation.

     

  • Monitor (output)
    If you have multiple monitors then you can choose which one(s) (connected to the selected adapter):

    • Glide: which monitor is used for fullscreen output. When 'Default' is selected then switching from windowed to fullscreen during playing a game selects the monitor containing the largest part of the game window.
      It can be overridden dynamically on a running Glide wrapped application and it also affects dynamic resolution calculating (see resolution overriding).
    • DirectX: which monitor(s) to enable to appear as DX devices to the application. 'Default' enables all the monitors connected to the selected adapter. When the game or application goes into fullscreen then it always happens on the monitor (device) that the game/application selected for use. In case of a multidevice environment games and applications often (and silently) selects the first available device which generally corresponds to the primary monitor, but advanced apps allows the user to configure it through the app itself. 
      It can be overridden dynamically on a running DirectX-wrapped application however it only affects the output, it is all about pure visuality. It doesn't affects dynamic resolution calculating (see resolution overriding) and also, the application shall continue to see the corresponding device in it original state (keep in mind that it can conflict with the app).

     

  • Full Screen / Windowed
    See section "Usage".

  • Unspecified/Centered/Scaled/Scaled with Aspect Ratio kept, for full screen
    If the current resolution the wrapped app using does not match any natural resolution your adapter supports then the display can be strethed out to fit all the screen or its size can be left unchanged but centered. NOTE that if your video card supports overriding the scaling method of applications, and you'd like to apply a scaling with aspect ratio then it is recommended to set dgVoodoo's scaling method to 'Unspecified' + set the scaling mode on your video card control panel because dgVoodoo's internal scaling is unfortunately not a sterling one. It implies that you may experience various problems like wrong mouse cursor or glitches in rendering in certain applications. Scaling can only be done well (transparently) on the GPU/display side. 
    C64-like output: well, if you are not a former C64 owner and fan, don't even try it, I'm sure you won't like it at all. As dgVoodoo is my main hobby programming playground these times I tried some algorhytms as part of it. It's not really a feature, but the result of some former experimenting and can be funny for some scene demos.

  • Progressive scanline order
    Default scanline order is interlaced or progressive. It is up to the output display device which one to choose altough it chooses progressive when it is possible, I think, so that when the device is capable of displaying a given resolution with a given refresh rate with progressive order. Otherwise it might choose interlaced order with halved physical refresh rate. If this option is enabled, you can only see enumerated resolutions that are displayable with progressive order. However, if a custom resolution is defined then it may causes the output device to use lower physical resolution than the wrapper set.

  • Enumerate refresh rates
    Enables the CPL application to enumerate refresh rates for each resolution and enables the wrapper to override the default refresh rate of the application.However using other than the app default can cause heavy animation lagging or glitches!

  • Color adjustments
    Brightness, color intensity (saturation) and contrast can be finetuned here. The defaults are good in general so treat this as a cool extra. (I'm using it in some cases for making colors more vital to get a bit cartoon-like effect.)

  • Inherit Color Profile in full screen mode
    When this option is enabled then dgVoodoo won't change the physical gamma ramp of the screen but instead it solves the color adjustments just like in windowed mode and so your pre-configured color profile(s) for the given monitor(s) remain(s) preserved. Color adjustments are relative to the predefined color profile in that case.

  • Keep window aspect ratio
    In windowed mode, when sizing the window, you can keep the aspect ratio of the current resolution.

  • Capture mouse
    It's useful mainly (but not only) for multimonitor systems. If this is enabled then the mouse cursor is forced into the application window to prevent accidental mis-clicks outside of it.

  • Center app window
    When a game controlling the mouse input is being run in windowed mode then it's a pain to move it's window into the screen, so I thought it's a valuable option (was a request too), but it can conflict with the mouse input or the app itself.

 

9. General additional options

  • DesktopResolution

    dgVoodoo takes the current desktop resolution as a base to do its calculations for self-done output scaling and other things like automatic pixel multiplying factor value. There some games however that pre-set the desktop resolution (typically to some low resolution) before dgVoodoo gets in action, spoiling the rendering. You can define your native desktop resolution here for such cases. If defined then this resolution is used for all outputs of the desktop.

  • DeframerSize

    When resolution is forced to other than the app default then a black frame is drawn around the output image coming from a wrapped API to remove scaling artifacts - frame thickness can be defined in pixels (max 16, 0 = disable) (default is 1).

  • ImageScaleFactor

    Integer factor for scaling the output image coming from a wrapped API (pixel multiplying). This is independent on scaling mode. 0 = maximum available factor. Default is 1 (no multiplying). Separate factors can be defined for horizontal and vertical directions.

  • ForceNearestPointFilter

    When the scaling is done by the wrapper for the given scaling mode, you can force nearest point filtering instead of bilinear one.

  • FreeMouse

    When enabled, physical mouse is free to move inside the game window when using emulated scaling and/or application and forced resolution differs; can be useful when a game relies on the physical window size.

 

10. General tips and known issues

  • Forcing things (like resolution, antialiasing, texture filtering, etc) is not a healthy thing. If an application or game uses low resolution or point sampled textures or anything dissonant to the eye then it has reasons for that. It is not because the programmers were so lame but of avoiding artifacts that would otherwise get brought in (typical example is a bilinear filtered texture with colorkey based transparency). If you force anything then potentially get one of those artifacts. If you can live with it then it is ok, use the wrapper in forced mode. If not then disable all forcings and use the particular game or application in the mode it was designed for, because no general method exists to fix such type of artifacts.
  • Controlling antialiasing cannot be done on per-primitive basis in Direct3D 11 when feature set larger than 10.0 is used. That is why antialiased drawing is not emulated in Glide automatically in this version in any way (per-primitive or per-edge). It can only be forced globally in the CPL application.
  • Fullscreen gamma ramp may not be supported by your card. nVidia and ATI seem to handle it as expected but (e.g.) Intel does not.
  • When an application is being run in compatibility mode (Win98/XP etc) then the user's application data folder is different than the OS default. Therefore dgVoodoo cannot read the global config file and the default config gets applied if no local config file is present. The preferred way is creating a local config for such cases if other than the default needed. (Perhaps using the user's appdata folder is not a too good idea after all, I might change it later.)
  • If you have a multimonitor system then always try a game to run on the primary one for the first time. Some games lock the mouse cursor to the screen area where game window is assumed to be (the left-top corner of the desktop). If such a game is being forced onto another monitor then clicking in the game causes application focus loss because its window is not under the mouse cursor.
  • I don't know why but overriding refresh rates by arbitrary values (in the resolution selector combo box) does not seem to work for DirectX emulation. It is still subject to investigation because the code handling this is common for both Glide and DirectX. :(

 

11. Special release version with debug layer

Special release version of dgVoodoo contains an additional validator and report layer. Its purpose is

  • 1) giving feedback to the user about potential error conditions, what currently is happening, and, how dgVoodoo is driven by the application at all
  • 2) helping debugging a given application/game by the (extensive) feedback and opening the possibility to break into the debugger

dgVoodoo currently has 2 main types for debug feedback

  • Simple messages with 3 subtypes which can be disabled or associated with a debugger break
    • INFO: harmless message about various events like creating/releasing an API object, reading a config file, loading a module, etc.
    • WARNING: a message about a potential error condition
    • ERROR: a message about an API driving error or an internal error of dgVoodoo. The latter is fatal, while the prior one may be normal.

  • Tracing - means the full logging of API calls made to dgVoodoo and some additional information of dgVoodoo internals.
    • Level 0: Tracing disabled
    • Level 1: Logging of API calls
    • Level 2: Logging of API calls + some additional info

Messages and tracing are independent on each other. Tracing is mainly for devs, for quick and average usage only the messages are recommended.
All of them are written to the debug output, logging to file is not yet implemented.

So, I recommend you to use DebugView or much more DebugView++. They are very cool applications for cases when no any debugger is available. Also, if you have more than one monitors then you can watch the log in realtime: put DebugView++ on one display and run the game on another.

Messages have a '[dgVoodoo]' prefix so the best way to check out a game with dgVoodoo's debug layer is enabling filtering to the 'dgVoodoo' substring (Crtl-L in DebugView and F5 in DebugView++). Every single log output appear in new lines in DebugView/DebugView++ - this is nice, except for some tracing messages written to the output part by part, like D3D8 disassembled shaders. Unfortunately they appear nastily because of that.

It's not really a big problem however because I cannot recommend you to enable tracing. It's much more intended for developers but if you want to use it after all then do it with DebugView++ or a debugger like Visual Studio 2015 because feedback is so tremendous that only tools with asynchronous debug output window are able to handle it. Tools with synchronous debug output like DebugView won't be able to keep up with it and make your game/app crawl at speed near zero.

I must emphasize:

  • Do not look for a miracle when using the debug layer! If some game doesn't work for you then it can give you some useful feedback on what's going on, or you can see if dgVoodoo is utilized at all but won't necessarily tell you why the game crashes, for example.
    Also, if you see an ERROR entry in the log then it doesn't necessarily mean you did something wrong or there is a problem with your game. Many games rely on error codes got back from an API. So, for example if you see such a log like the following snippet
    ...
    [15500] [dgVoodoo] INFO: Direct3DDevice (0D3967D8)::EnumTextureFormats: Format XRGB8888 is enumerated to the application.
    [15500] [dgVoodoo] INFO: Direct3DDevice (0D3967D8)::EnumTextureFormats: Format ARGB8888 is enumerated to the application.
    [15500] [dgVoodoo] INFO: Direct3DDevice (0D3967D8) is released.
    [15500] [dgVoodoo] ERROR: DirectDrawSurface (0D2380C8)::DeleteAttachedSurface: Failed, HRESULT: DDERR_SURFACENOTATTACHED
    [15500] [dgVoodoo] INFO: DirectDrawSurface (0D2380C8) Plain offscreen rendertarget is released.
    [15500] [dgVoodoo] INFO: Direct3D (0ABC87B0)::EnumDevices: Device enumerated, Name: "Direct3D HAL", Description: "dgVoodoo Hardware A...
    ...
            
    Then the error entry about failed 'DeleteAttachedSurface' is not really an error. The application tried to delete a potential attached z-buffer, just to make sure, and doesn't care about the result. dgVoodoo however treat it as an error because it caused an error in an API method. It's really impossible to make a decision about classifying some conditions as an error or just a plain warning.
    But let's look at another case: one of my game just crashes right at startup. What could be the reason? The debug output is:
    ...
    [21964] [dgVoodoo] INFO: Direct3D8 (077BCEC8) Virtual video card is 'dgVoodoo Virtual 3D Accelerated' with 64MB onboard memory.
    [21964] [dgVoodoo] ERROR: Direct3D8 (077BCEC8): Validation of D3D8 swapchain presentation parameters failed.
                              Reason: display mode "800x600, 72Hz" is required but not supported by output device: 0, DeviceType: D3DDEVT...
    [21964] [dgVoodoo] ERROR: Direct3DDevice8 (0EE99530)::Init: Cannot create device implicit swapchain.
    [21964] [dgVoodoo] ERROR: Direct3D8 (077BCEC8)::CreateDevice: Initializing Direct3DDevice8 (0EE99530) failed.
    ...
            
    Ah, OK. Previously I configured the game to run on a display at 72Hz but now I'm trying to run it on another that does not support this refresh rate at this resolution, so D3D8 initialization failed in dgVoodoo and so the game crashed due to lack of error checking.

  • Use the spec release only for trying to solve an extant problem with an applicaiton. Spec release does some extra checking and validation compared to normal dgVoodoo releases and it can bite off from the speed or cause stuttering.

 

 

12. Change log

  • 2.55
    • Special release of dgVoodoo with DebugLayer providing feedback information is now available
      • INFO, WARNING and ERROR type messages with severity levels, including breaking into debugger
      • API call tracing with detailed information
    • Migrating to INI format configuration files - also, adding rarely needed/used configuration options for advanced users and game hacking like
      • Dithering for both Glide and DirectX
      • Deframer
      • Pixel multiplied output with arbitrary or automatic scale factor
      • Arbitrary extra DirectX resolutions
    • New scaling mode for centered appearance, scaling is done by the wrapper
    • New dynamic resolution modes (2x, 3x, ...) are added
    • Fixes for scaled output done by the wrapper ('Stretched, * AR' and 'Centered, AR' modes with larger than max of display-supported output images)
    • Fix for 'Best available one' output type when only WARP is available
    • Improved shader handling:
      • Resource cache for reuse of D3D8 compiled shaders
      • Dynamic shader compiling is moved to a background thread to avoid/minimize lags
        Glide: for all compiled shaders
        DirectX: for all compiled shaders that can be substituted by precompiled ones; also, unneeded shader variants could be unnecessary compiled, fixed
    • Control Panel App
      • Folder/location list handling code is rewritten
      • Appearance is now PerMonitorAwareV2 for DPI scaling
      • Cosmetics: missing logo bitmap when monitor scale is >150%, fixed
    • DirectX
      • DllMain detection along with warning messages through the debug layer
      • Surface/texture lock incompatibilites fixed (Zombie Shooter, The Mystery of the Druids)
      • DirectDraw surface-create, cooperative level, PageLock error and other incompatibility fix (Zero Comico, RC de Go, A Bug's Life, Wartorn, Message in a Haunted Mansion, Micro Machines v3)
      • 24 bit surface creation issue in DirectDraw is fixed (Blade Of Darkness lava)
      • Support for partial Z-buffer copy in DirectDraw (The Revenant)
      • Option for disabling the default and classic resolutions
      • Possibility of extra resolutions enumerable to applications is added
      • Bugs causing crash and black screen are fixed (Empires Dawn of The Modern World, Honour & Freedom)
      • Some effort for avoiding app deadlocks in DirectDraw and QuartzHookLayer
      • D3D FVF and other parameter validation incompatibility, fixed (Praetorians, Earthworm Jim 3D)
      • D3D state block incompatibility, fixed (Soldiers of Anarchy)
      • D3D non-W-friendly matrix in ComputeSphereVisibility calcs, fixed (Pac-Man Adventures in Time)
      • Old D3D-lighting incompatibility, fixed (when revising code and docs)
      • D3D lighting issue is fixed (flashing lights in Tomb Raider 4 and hopefully King Of The Roads)
      • Fixing range based fog hw calculations (The Chosen: Well of Souls)
      • ATI and GeForce profiles are modified to force W-pixelfog (compatibility with old drivers)
      • Minor D3D DDI bug fixed (Bear Hero)
      • Minor internal D3D state/lighting bugs fixed (Tonko4)
      • D3D device type 'Software MMX' is removed from Direct3D7 for better compatibility (3D Blitz)
      • Disabling 32 bit z-buffers for Direct3D3/5 (e.g. Shadows of The Empire)
      • D3D FPU state handling incompatibility fix (for general cases, and it fixed nVidia demos Creature, Toy Soldiers and Crystal Ball)
      • D3D colorkey bug fixed (Sponge Bob - Employee of The Month)
      • Minor D3D/D3D8 bugs, D3D11 leaks fixed (my own tests)
      • D3D/D3D8 ProcessVertices and general software vertex processing incompatibility, fixed (RIM - Battle Planets, Mafia with multipass rendering, Micro Commandos)
      • Issue of mixed type D3D8 stream sources is fixed (missing player characters in Final Fantasy XI)
      • D3D8 shader validator bug resulted in uncreated shaders, fixed (Mace Griffin Bounty Hunter)
      • Implementing D3D8 ValidateVertexShader and ValidatePixelShader for Microsoft Shader Assembler (Shadow of Destiny)
      • D3D8 cursor handling and viewport depth scaling bugs fixed (WildFire)
      • D3D8 GetFrontBuffer bug, fixed (Rome Total War) (movies only, ingame still has the old issues)
      • D3D8 device reset fix (S.W.I.N.E.)
      • Some D3D8 thing is fixed (The Gladiators Demo)
      • D3D8 some object handling incompatibility fix (TOCA Racing Drive)
      • Improvements for rendering with incompatible rendertarget/depthstencil buffers (TOCA Racing Drive)
      • Changed behavior of window activating and entering fullscreen mode to
        • Avoid OS issue appearing with Windows 10 Fall Creators Update (e.g. Splinter Cell)

What's New in Version 2.8   See changelog

Released

Latest version added - release March 15, 2023

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