Major slowdown caused by dgvoodoo in skylanders spyros adventure \ VOGONS

Major slowdown caused by dgvoodoo in skylanders spyros adventure

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First post, by damoton

Posted on 2026-01-05, 03:01

damoton Offline

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The pc version of skylanders spyros adventure runs normally at a steady 60 fps at all times, but with dgvoodoo it suffers from frame drops and can dip to as low as 17 fps.
This is without any changes in config, just adding the required files in the game directory (exe, config & ms/x86 files).

The game lacks any AA so I want to use dgvoodoo to implement either MSAA or SSAA into the game. Both methods work and look good ingame, so I want to use dgvoodoo but without the slowdown.

I've tried to fix it by tinkering with the config, but to no avail. I have looked at other methods of implementing AA but haven't found anything besides dgvoodoo that actually works.
Any solutions?

Reply 1 of 7, by Dege

Posted on 2026-01-05, 21:49

Dege Offline

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I'll try to look into it. But is it right that this game cannot be run without a real Portal USB rig?

Reply 2 of 7, by damoton

Posted on 2026-01-05, 22:24

damoton Offline

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Dege wrote on 2026-01-05, 21:49:

I'll try to look into it. But is it right that this game cannot be run without a real Portal USB rig?

Yeah, the game needs a portal to work. Any portal will work, including ones from later games, as long as its not a xbox360/xboxone portal.

Reply 3 of 7, by Dege

Posted on 2026-01-06, 18:55

Dege Offline

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Ok, thanks. Unfortunately that's what I don't have. So I'll have to figure out something.
Till then, do you see any error messages in the dgvoodoo log when you run the game with the _dbg version of dgvoodoo?

Reply 4 of 7, by damoton

Posted on 2026-01-10, 18:06

damoton Offline

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Sorry for replying late. The log shows the same warning message repeated many times during the slowdown:
[17676] [dgVoodoo] WARNING: Direct3DVertexBuffer9 (22E52968)::Lock: Invalid parameters: D3DLOCK_DISCARD or D3DLOCK_NOOVERWRITE is specified but buffer type is not dynamic.

There is also the error message:
[17676] [dgVoodoo] ERROR: Direct3DDevice9 (08E06C20)::CreateTexture: Creating texture has failed.

Reply 5 of 7, by Dege

Posted on Yesterday, 16:01

Dege Offline

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Thanks!
Could you plz enable MaxTraceLevel=1 to see the failed CreateTexture API call?
You can also set Warning=disable to suppress that warning message.
I'm not sure but the game might always tries to re-create that failed texture and that's what causes the slowdown.

Unfortunately this game cannot even be run without a physical DVD image so currently I have no idea how to test it.

Reply 6 of 7, by damoton

Posted on Yesterday, 18:19

damoton Offline

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Heres the log with the warnings disabled and MaxTraceLevel set to 1. The opening logos lag a lot with this turned on and I can barely enter the menus because of the lag.
It gives the texture error:
[16520] [dgVoodoo] ERROR: Direct3DDevice9 (0295B110)::CreateTexture: Creating texture has failed.

Reply 7 of 7, by Dege

Posted on Yesterday, 19:58

Dege Offline

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Thanks!
I don't know why the game tries to create a depth-stencil texture with RENDERTARGET usage, but that's indeed invalid.

However as I can see, it calls GetAdapterIdentifier, maybe that's what misleads the game renderer.
What if you choose the GF 9800GT instead of the default dgvoodoo virtual card?

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