Some older games (like Incoming or Darkstone) are broken with Catalysts newer than 13.1. 😠
BTW, AMD wanted feedback on their drivers some time ago, I sent them a message about that issue. 🤣

Firtasik wrote:

Some older games (like Incoming or Darkstone) are broken with Catalysts newer than 13.1. 😠
BTW, AMD wanted feedback on their drivers some time ago, I sent them a message about that issue. 🤣

AFAIK AMD dropped support for older iterations of DirectX. You can usually fix it by putting an earlier version of atiumdag.dll into the game folder.

http://www.file-upload.net/download-9759205/A … iumdag.zip.html

AMD is not that good with OpenGL backwards compatibility either, or OpenGL at all.

Also someone said we should be careful not to blame Nvidia issues on Windows, but I feel the opposite happens too. We need to be sure before assigning blame to anyone at all.

obobskivich wrote:

That's one thing in response to the "is there a need for an XP box" - I don't think it's fair to say that there's a game that absolutely will never work under Windows 7 that runs in XP, but IME there's plenty of games that "just work" in XP that require more intervention, hacking, modding, etc to get working in 7. Having an XP box, or even a dual-boot if your Windows 7 machine supports it, can eliminate a lot of that time-spending in the long-run.

Dual boot is not really a solution. Spend 5 minutes getting a game working in Win7/8 or close down everything you're working on each time you want to play the game. I think that's an easy choice.

Sure a dedicated WinXP computer might help, but if you wanted to setup a dedicated computer for backwards compatibility I would go with Win9x

teleguy wrote:

Firtasik wrote:

Some older games (like Incoming or Darkstone) are broken with Catalysts newer than 13.1. 😠
BTW, AMD wanted feedback on their drivers some time ago, I sent them a message about that issue. 🤣

AFAIK AMD dropped support for older iterations of DirectX. You can usually fix it by putting an earlier version of atiumdag.dll into the game folder.

I don't think MS even allows them to do that. Their drivers wouldn't meet WHQL requirements, I think.
They may be buggy... I found issues with the GeForce drivers on Windows XP as well (but not on Vista and newer, oh the irony).
But they should have basic support for all versions of DirectX.

Still my best tip for Win8/8.1 is to try the ACT fix or DDRAW.dll file found here: http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/post.php? … 77&post=1202630

It's made about 30-40 games on my system super smooth, including really old ones. Basically anything from DirectX2-DirectX7 may benefit, if they're struggling at 30fps or so on Win8/8.1

VirtuaIceMan wrote:

Still my best tip for Win8/8.1 is to try the ACT fix or DDRAW.dll file found here: http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/post.php? … 77&post=1202630

It's made about 30-40 games on my system super smooth, including really old ones. Basically anything from DirectX2-DirectX7 may benefit, if they're struggling at 30fps or so on Win8/8.1

Why are you suggesting ACT over the modified ddraw.dll? It's a huge hassle of multiple steps you have to go through for every application vs simply replacing ddraw.dll, once.

Using the ddraw.dll excludes using any other ddraw.dll , and if we're going to use one for each compatibility flag we want to use... That just does not work.

30 seconds is a huge hassle?

obobskivich wrote:

mirh wrote:

That unfortuntately might even apply to ATI/AMD users.
In particular I remember splinter cell broken shadowing

This game needs to "die" as a discussion topic, because it's been done TO DEATH. 😵 The "broken shadowing" is not actually broken, it's an nVidia-specific feature that is only fully supported on certain nVidia GPUs/drivers. Otherwise you're running the game with "normal" shadows that will work fine on basically any compatible 3D hardware (e.g. ATi, non-NV20 GeForce, etc).

In SC1 you have normal shadow "fallback" mode.. but this is not the case in pandora tomorrow

obobskivich wrote:

Hopefully this can help

That is 100% unrelated and irrelevant to my situation, but thanks anyways. 😊 Something that did remind me of though: Oblivion will not run properly if certain versions of Nero are running in the background.

That's probably due to SecuROM drm..

obobskivich wrote:

http://www.save-ee.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=5532
http://www.save-ee.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1029
http://www.save-ee.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=5748

I'm not using Windows 8 - just Windows 7. The game installs just fine off the CD, and when set to run as admin + compatibility mode it will start-up just fine, and allow me to set any options I like (and will default to hardware TnL). The performance is just worse than it should be relative to the machine's specifications; the same hardware with Windows XP runs the game much better. I'm not sure what the root of that is, and it isn't that the game is unplayable on 7, but I'd rather have higher performance when available - so I go with XP and don't worry about it. 😊

I was going to say it's almost certainly due to old directx version being emulated on newer windows...
But then I saw EE is using direct3d 8... which iirc should still be handled natively

obobskivich wrote:

That's one thing in response to the "is there a need for an XP box" - I don't think it's fair to say that there's a game that absolutely will never work under Windows 7 that runs in XP, but IME there's plenty of games that "just work" in XP that require more intervention, hacking, modding, etc to get working in 7. Having an XP box, or even a dual-boot if your Windows 7 machine supports it, can eliminate a lot of that time-spending in the long-run.

Well, the biggest annoyance (imho) that one may face is having to google for minutes (and sometimes even hours).
This is why I love so much pcgamingwiki :p

ZellSF wrote:

AMD is not that good with OpenGL backwards compatibility either, or OpenGL at all.

Also someone said we should be careful not to blame Nvidia issues on Windows, but I feel the opposite happens too. We need to be sure before assigning blame to anyone at all.

There's nothing like "opengl backwards compatibility". You just support it.
On the other hand past proprietary extensions (like npatches for example) could be compromised on newer systems/hardware

Scali wrote:

I don't think MS even allows them to do that. Their drivers wouldn't meet WHQL requirements, I think.
They may be buggy... I found issues with the GeForce drivers on Windows XP as well (but not on Vista and newer, oh the irony).
But they should have basic support for all versions of DirectX.

WHQL is just about stability afaik. And it's just a driver signed with a certificate that doesn't trigger the "do you want to install this driver" warning

awgamer wrote:

VirtuaIceMan wrote:

Still my best tip for Win8/8.1 is to try the ACT fix or DDRAW.dll file found here: http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/post.php? … 77&post=1202630

It's made about 30-40 games on my system super smooth, including really old ones. Basically anything from DirectX2-DirectX7 may benefit, if they're struggling at 30fps or so on Win8/8.1

Why are you suggesting ACT over the modified ddraw.dll? It's a huge hassle of multiple steps you have to go through for every application vs simply replacing ddraw.dll, once.

Because using system native functions is usually better than using some community made dll that may not be an complete product.
Besides, if you google a bit, there will be probably somebody else that will have already found the right settings

mirh wrote:

ZellSF wrote:

AMD is not that good with OpenGL backwards compatibility either, or OpenGL at all.

Also someone said we should be careful not to blame Nvidia issues on Windows, but I feel the opposite happens too. We need to be sure before assigning blame to anyone at all.

There's nothing like "opengl backwards compatibility". You just support it.
On the other hand past proprietary extensions (like npatches for example) could be compromised on newer systems/hardware

If you fail to support it though, you need to support the ugly hacks people used to get it working on your hardware in the first place... or backwards compatibility breaks.

awgamer wrote:

VirtuaIceMan wrote:

Still my best tip for Win8/8.1 is to try the ACT fix or DDRAW.dll file found here: http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/post.php? … 77&post=1202630

It's made about 30-40 games on my system super smooth, including really old ones. Basically anything from DirectX2-DirectX7 may benefit, if they're struggling at 30fps or so on Win8/8.1

Why are you suggesting ACT over the modified ddraw.dll? It's a huge hassle of multiple steps you have to go through for every application vs simply replacing ddraw.dll, once.

I prefer ACT as when DX12 comes out, that hacked DDRAW.dll may not be compatible, etc, but the ACT approach is more likely to be forward compatible. Plus it means I don't have to keep track of which games I've used the fix on (in case I want to know later) as it's all in ACT.

But yeah, replacing ddraw.dll completely isn't ideal, as it works well for DX8+.

Scali wrote:

I don't think MS even allows them to do that. Their drivers wouldn't meet WHQL requirements, I think.
They may be buggy... I found issues with the GeForce drivers on Windows XP as well (but not on Vista and newer, oh the irony).
But they should have basic support for all versions of DirectX.

Pretty sure this is correct. Anecdotally, I've had various "old" games (using D3D prior to 9_3) work just fine on modern graphics adapters, with modern drivers, etc in Windows Vista and 7. It's much more likely an individual game is "broken" because it relies on some hack that only applies to a certain driver or family of drivers or what-have-you and the developer is either long gone or otherwise unable/unwilling to fix/address the problem in response to newer releases (be it hardware or software).

mirh wrote:

In SC1 you have normal shadow "fallback" mode.. but this is not the case in pandora tomorrow

Meaning there's no shadows whatsoever? Or what?

That's probably due to SecuROM drm..

Oh most likely. DRM is great at breaking things!

WHQL is just about stability afaik. And it's just a driver signed with a certificate that doesn't trigger the "do you want to install this driver" warning

WHQL means different things for different versions of Windows and classes of hardware, but it is more than "just about stability" or "just a signed driver." Generally a device has specific compatibility requirements that it must meet to pass certification, which defines both software and hardware functions.

All Starforce titles from 2004-2006 😀

which really sucks because they don't work on XP x64 either, and the 'cracks' out there are virtual CD workarounds that still rely on the starforce driver which is so toxic and evil and should be eliminated.

leileilol wrote:

All Starforce titles from 2004-2006 😀

which really sucks because they don't work on XP x64 either, and the 'cracks' out there are virtual CD workarounds that still rely on the starforce driver which is so toxic and evil and should be eliminated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Watch_%28video_game%29

2005 Starforce v3 game. Works perfectly in Win8. So definitely not all Starforce titles, if that obscure game is cracked properly, I'm guessing more Starforce v3 games are too. And anything after 4.5 works in Windows 8.

obobskivich wrote:

mirh wrote:

In SC1 you have normal shadow "fallback" mode.. but this is not the case in pandora tomorrow

Meaning there's no shadows whatsoever? Or what?

Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow

obobskivich wrote:

That's probably due to SecuROM drm..

Oh most likely. DRM is great at breaking things!

Don't tell me.. I just lost the last 3 days trying to make TAGES 5.2 x64 drivers work under windows 7 64 bit...

obobskivich wrote:

WHQL is just about stability afaik. And it's just a driver signed with a certificate that doesn't trigger the "do you want to install this driver" warning

WHQL means different things for different versions of Windows and classes of hardware, but it is more than "just about stability" or "just a signed driver." Generally a device has specific compatibility requirements that it must meet to pass certification, which defines both software and hardware functions.

Wikipedia claims is just to ensure compatibility

leileilol wrote:

All Starforce titles from 2004-2006 😀

which really sucks because they don't work on XP x64 either, and the 'cracks' out there are virtual CD workarounds that still rely on the starforce driver which is so toxic and evil and should be eliminated.

Are you sure?
Because -whatever people may claim- they seem a pretty sympathetic company.
And I would dare to say that (contrarily to goddamn Tagès) they would be pleased to reply your doubts

I often wonder if the Starforce boycott was organized by the Securom people or something like that.

Not that I mind Starforce being gone, I just wish the boycott would move on to other equally shitty copy protections after it. Which it logically should have, if something else wasn't driving it...

mirh wrote:

Are you sure?

Read this and this.
Unfortunately 90% of US/EU starforce protected games use SF 3.3-3.7.16 and are incompatible with Windows 7 because of this.
Of course the new MS "OS" is even more incompatible (versions before 4.5 will never work).

mirh wrote:

Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow

Admittedly skimmed, but it looks like it works with older nV/ATi drivers on supported hardware either way. I have the game somewhere on DVD (it came with some hardware item; I've never taken it out of its package 🤣 ). In theory I could try it with my 290X or X1600 and see what it does, but after spending time testing shadows for the original I'm kind of put-off by it.

Don't tell me.. I just lost the last 3 days trying to make TAGES 5.2 x64 drivers work under windows 7 64 bit...

😢

Wikipedia claims is just to ensure compatibility

How is this different from what I said? 😕 "Generally a device has specific compatibility requirements that it must meet to pass certification, which defines both software and hardware functions." It certainly, however, goes far beyond "just about stability" and "just a driver signed with a certificate."

You can read about WHQL right from the horse's mouth if you're really curious: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hard … e/gg463010.aspx

The compatibility features are defined by Microsoft relative to whatever version of Windows the device is attempting to get logo certified for (there are different requirements for Windows XP vs Windows 8.1, for example).

To the point in this thread, breaking DirectX support will equal a fail in WHQL, as Scali guessed. The only graphics manufacturer I'm aware of that consistently shirked WHQL was 3DLabs, but their drivers were usually externally validated on a per-application basis by various software vendors.

Gamecollector wrote:

mirh wrote:

Are you sure?

Read this and this.
Unfortunately 90% of US/EU starforce protected games use SF 3.3-3.7.16 and are incompatible with Windows 7 because of this.

Eh, I'm really doubting only 10% of Starforce games got proper cracks.

I got all the Starforce games working on my 64bit PC, I just installed them, ran the Starforce removal tool to check nothing was installed, then used no CD executables. The only one with issues is Colin McRae Really 2005, as the no CD crack introduces some Polish text here and there.

Which for me was: McRae 2005, Cross Racing Championship 2005, ToCA Race Driver 2 & 3, World Racing 2, Colin McRae Dirt, Micro Machines V4, LA Rush... And possibly a few other games.

I've yet to try out Dreamcast Collection (disc not Steam version), but that should be okay too.