JunglePredator wrote:

Would you be able to look into getting Drakensang 2 to work on WIndows 10? It works for some & not others based on... what I don't know.

Chances are the people it doesn't work for have some conflicting background software, haven't actually installed DirectX or some problem with their Windows installation. If it was me I would figure it out, because it's likely not going to be the last game that will give you a problem with it.

JunglePredator wrote:

dgVoodoo seems like the most likely project for it to get working under but I've been unable to find a setting to work.

It's a D3D9 game so you need the WIP:
WIP versions
It "works" out of the box, using the common Drakensang troubleshooting tip of running it -windowed , but since that has problems of its own then running it in forced borderless in dgVoodoo2 is better. That sadly for now involves editing dgVoodoo.conf manually, these are the important settings:

FullScreenMode = false
WindowedAttributes = Borderless, FullscreenSize
AppControlledScreenMode = false
DisableAltEnterToToggleScreenMode = false

Mouse coordinates in menus will (probably) be wrong until you set game resolution to match desktop resolution. I would personally advice against using WIP software to run a lengthy RPG when the game should run natively (good general rule: if it works for others and not you, you're doing something wrong).

ZellSF wrote:

<snip></snip>

Thanks for trying to help however most of this is old notes already expressed on the Steam forums & not very helpful.

The only thing mentioned that might have helped was

ZellSF wrote:

WindowedAttributes = Borderless, FullscreenSize

but alas it changed nothing.
MS ACT is suggested by one person with the change of "simple window" applied... likely it already had such changes to it but the setting was tested anyways... just in case.

The game is a 50/50 chance to work for people... likely it'll need someone like Dege to actually look at how it's accessing the memory.

From what I've been able to tell from forum posts is that the DVD edition is more likely to work than the Steam edition & each build of Windows 10 may break it for some & fix it for others (i.e. if it's running for one person when windows updates & the game may no longer run).

JunglePredator wrote:

The only thing mentioned that might have helped was […]
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The only thing mentioned that might have helped was

ZellSF wrote:

WindowedAttributes = Borderless, FullscreenSize

but alas it changed nothing.
MS ACT is suggested by one person with the change of "simple window" applied... likely it already had such changes to it but the setting was tested anyways... just in case.

The purpose of simple window in this case is to make the window borderless if the -windowed command line switch is used. Itself it doesn't make a difference in the game working or not.

BTW both games (Steam versions) work fine for me on Windows 10 with and without dgVoodoo.
What kind of hardware do you have?

JunglePredator wrote:

Thanks for trying to help however most of this is old notes already expressed on the Steam forums & not very helpful.

If it's old notes, you still have to write down whether or not you tried them. Detail all the troubleshooting steps you have already done, then we can consider moving on to the next step, rather than starting from scratch.

I can't even at this point tell whether or not you tried with the latest WIP, nor the exact failure you get with the latest WIP, which would probably be Dege's main concern; his priority seems to be developing dgVoodoo not hacking games to work on newer OSes.

JunglePredator wrote:

From what I've been able to tell from forum posts is that the DVD edition is more likely to work than the Steam edition & each build of Windows 10 may break it for some & fix it for others (i.e. if it's running for one person when windows updates & the game may no longer run).

Both the DVD version works (for me) and the Steam version works (for teleguy), eliminating the Windows 10 version issue is fairly unproblematic, just run Windows Update. It runs fine on fully updated 1809 and 1903.

Those aren't the problem. Look for other variables in your setup.

teleguy wrote:

BTW both games (Steam versions) work fine for me on Windows 10 with and without dgVoodoo.

Yeah; if you can run the DVD edition the Steam edition is almost guaranteed to run it seems.
Threads like https://steamcommunity.com/app/12640/discussi … 97653307567432/ & https://steamcommunity.com/app/33770/discussi … 40247772952269/ give info on people trying both.
If you can't run the Steam edition the DVD is more likely to run but also a good chance you'll still receive whatever errors you get from the Steam edition.
However I'm not in a position to try the DVD edition.

teleguy wrote:

What kind of hardware do you have?

The pertinent 4 items would be OS, CPU, GPU & SRAM: Win. 10 b.1511, I7 octcore something, 1050 TI & 16GB DDR5.
I wouldn't post if I didn't meet the minimum specs. of course. The odd one out there is Windows 10; it's not officially supported.
Based on what I can find on forums hardware barely matters to whatever the error is; I've seen posts of people with 1xxxx cards of the same model as each other able to run it & not able to run it on the same Windows 10 build.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/12640/discussi … 97653307567432/ has the best information for things people have tried; it seems to be the best thread for an overview of troubleshooting... if it's even hinted at there I've tried it as well as: replacing the files with the 1.12 patch files (that's sort of hinted at on page 2 but they only talk about the command line options the patch uses like -reset), Wine DLL replacements, dgvoodoo with various command line options (like the once mentioned -D3D9 option), removing the Drakensang 2 profile (not that it matters... it's remade each time the game starts but it's blank because the game crashes with the assert error as soon as the blink32 video player ends), the 1.12 patch had an indicator they remove virtual store files (namely a virtualstorecleaner.exe).... sadly there's nothing on my system relate to Drakensang 2 there.

JunglePredator wrote:

teleguy wrote:

BTW both games (Steam versions) work fine for me on Windows 10 with and without dgVoodoo.

Yeah; if you can run the DVD edition the Steam edition is almost guaranteed to run it seems.
Threads like https://steamcommunity.com/app/12640/discussi … 97653307567432/ & https://steamcommunity.com/app/33770/discussi … 40247772952269/ give info on people trying both.

Um, those discussions are about different issues than the one you linked to in the first post (failure in GetDeviceCaps() function).

How about you just say exactly what you have tried, and exactly what goes wrong already?

Drakensang also works for me, usable only in windowed mode though (natively and with dgVoodoo).
I thought I tried the first part but by the screenshot it turned out (for me) to be the second.

I don't know if all todays graphics cards/drivers are compatible natively with this game, but I think it should just run through dgVoodoo.
Plz download the spec-release (debug) version of dgVoodoo, give it a go with Drakensang and attach the log.
According to the symptoms you described, I have a feeling the game loads system D3D9 instead of dgVoodoo for some reason.

Dege wrote:

Drakensang also works for me, usable only in windowed mode though (natively and with dgVoodoo). I thought I tried the first part […]
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Drakensang also works for me, usable only in windowed mode though (natively and with dgVoodoo).
I thought I tried the first part but by the screenshot it turned out (for me) to be the second.

I don't know if all todays graphics cards/drivers are compatible natively with this game, but I think it should just run through dgVoodoo.
Plz download the spec-release (debug) version of dgVoodoo, give it a go with Drakensang and attach the log.
According to the symptoms you described, I have a feeling the game loads system D3D9 instead of dgVoodoo for some reason.

Attached.

Thanks!
So, I was wrong and dgVoodoo gets activized for you. According to the log nothing abnormal happens but the game just exists at some point (ok'ing the error dialog popping up?).
I read through the forums you linked. Experimentally I modified dgVoodoo to give back an error for Device::GetBackBuffer. Indeed, I got the error dialog and the game behaved as 'expected'. On the other side, I cannot understand how it could return an error code under normal circumstances.
Parameters of that call are not hardcoded into the game, so the only possible case is some memory corruption somewhere.

Are you sure you don't have any unusual things installed (compared to a clean OS installation) that injects code or some dll's into the processes?
Like an AV (my favorite *** ***** type of software) or maybe a vendor specific preinstalled stuff for "making mouse handling and easy task switching smart" and alike?

To clear it up, looking at the dlls loaded into the game process would worth a go.

Dege wrote:

Thanks! So, I was wrong and dgVoodoo gets activized for you. According to the log nothing abnormal happens but the game just exi […]
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Thanks!
So, I was wrong and dgVoodoo gets activized for you. According to the log nothing abnormal happens but the game just exists at some point (ok'ing the error dialog popping up?).
I read through the forums you linked. Experimentally I modified dgVoodoo to give back an error for Device::GetBackBuffer. Indeed, I got the error dialog and the game behaved as 'expected'. On the other side, I cannot understand how it could return an error code under normal circumstances.
Parameters of that call are not hardcoded into the game, so the only possible case is some memory corruption somewhere.

Are you sure you don't have any unusual things installed (compared to a clean OS installation) that injects code or some dll's into the processes?
Like an AV (my favorite *** ***** type of software) or maybe a vendor specific preinstalled stuff for "making mouse handling and easy task switching smart" and alike?

To clear it up, looking at the dlls loaded into the game process would worth a go.

I'll look at my AV... I never thought about it. It only gives me grief when games don't close deal with ports well/correctly & are full screen.

Other then that I don't have anything 'unusual' at the moment... nothing doing hooks that I'm aware of.
There's a shit ton of MSI processes for the motherboard... I don't know what they do as they lack descriptions & I don't know which are 'safe' to turn off... there could be a memory interference there if it's caching or something.

Beyond that it's normal stuff... have to have Steam running (as you saw in the log) because of the game's DRM, usually have EA's Origin running...

00000030 73.92550659 [7432] [dgVoodoo] INFO: Direct3D9 (01163FA0) Virtual video card is 'GeForce FX 5700 Ultra' with 256MB onboard memory.

1) Use the default config when troubleshooting (copy dgVoodoo.conf from the archive to the game directory). Do not make any config changes you're not explicitly asked to.

2) A GeForce FX 5700 Ultra does not support shader model 3.0, which Drakensang 2 requires. Always stick with the default "dgVoodoo Virtual 3D Accelerated Card" unless you have a very good reason not to.

My first guess was the same but I tried the game with GeForce FX 5700 Ultra, 256MB and it worked.

Personally I'd go back to my original suggestion then for JunglePredator then: write EXACTLY what happens IN DETAILS.

Well a list of loaded DLLs is at https://pastebin.com/5Ni5RuSf
If you feel like helping that'd be cool or you can close the topic since it's not dgvoodoo focused anymore.
All the DLLs are signed except the ones in the Drakensang 2 directory... dll list is with out dgvoodoo loaded just to get a 'pure' list.
No idea how to stop it from loading any of those & most look fine... only a couple make me go "why?"... like SETUPAPI.DLL
Tried deactivating the real time scanner of the AV & no joy... only step further I could go there is to uninstall it but that's not an option since it's also my firewall which I do need.
Steam Overlay still loads but isn't selected to be used in options.

You haven't actually said what the problem is yet; is it what you posted to about in the OP or one of the ones posted about in the Steam forum links? In which case which of them?

Tried deactivating the real time scanner of the AV & no joy... only step further I could go there is to uninstall it but that's not an option since it's also my firewall which I do need.

Windows has a firewall built-in since Windows XP., and an AV since Windows 8.

You can uninstall your AV/Firewall bundle.

You can use msconfig to launch Windows in diagnostic mode with only basic processes and services running.

teleguy wrote:

You can use msconfig to launch Windows in diagnostic mode with only basic processes and services running.

Good idea; I'll post on that later tonight.

Edit: Wasn't feasible... game didn't load with out directsound initializing & wasn't worth going through the couple hundred drivers & services to check which might have an impact.

I tried it with Windows 11 and the game doesn't work in fullscreen and there is only a black screen during the intro without a third-party wrapper. It works mostly perfectly with dgVoodoo2, though. I don't know if it's fixable, but If you don't uncheck "Disable Alt-Enter to toggle screen state" there is a double cursor and it throws you back at the desktop if you try to click on anything.