I just did some tests and the CLSID issue I mentioned seems to be what is going on. If I just drop the DSound.dll from IndirectSound into Age of Wonder's root folder, the game still loads the system dll instead. After I applied the registry fix mentioned in their readme, the game loaded the IndirectSound DLL instead.

Does anyone know what CLSIDs are used for loading the DLLs dgVoodoo replaces? I think this problem will be solved once I apply the same tweak for those.

You can find them by running Regedit and searchin for 'ddraw.dll'.
You'll see entries like

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{3C305196-50DB-11D3-9CFE-00C04FD930C5}\InprocServer32

You can also modify the default key values from %SystemRoot%\system32\ddraw.dll to plain ddraw.dll to bypass the system folder (but it needs ProcessHacker with TrustedInstaller plugin).

You can use this reg file from DDrawCompat: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/narzoul/DDr … Redirection.reg
It should have all the ddraw-related keys, both for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows versions. It installs them under HKEY_CURRENT_USER, so no TrustedInstaller hacks are needed.

Thanks for the help. That Reg file worked perfectly and you don't need TrustedInstaller privileges to make these changes to the HKCU hive.

I've encountered some new issues though. First, I've upgraded to dgVoodoo v2.75.

In the game's options, you can either select a fullscreen resolution or you can choose Windowed:

If I choose any resolution, the main menu looks like this:

This is what it's supposed to look like, which I get by choosing the game's "Window" video mode. Strangely, the dgVoodoo watermark isn't appearing even though Process Explorer says that the game is loading dgVoodoo's DDraw.dll:

These tests were done using an unmodified config file except for MaxTraceLevel set to 2. If it helps, I've attached some debug logs from the two tests.

What happens when you run the game through D3D12?

The problem seems to be the same as
https://github.com/dege-diosg/dgVoodoo2/issues/16

Dege wrote on 2021-07-14, 15:27:

What happens when you run the game through D3D12?

The problem seems to be the same as
https://github.com/dege-diosg/dgVoodoo2/issues/16

Sorry about that. My laptop has two GPUs in it: A low powered AMD GPU integrated into the APU and a discreet Nvidia GPU. Any games I play are supposed to run on the Nvidia GPU and this is what I assumed was happening. To answer your question: Running the game through DX12 fixed that problem. Conversely, forcing the game to run on the Nvidia GPU like it was supposed to also fixes the problem.

I was also having some error messages and crashes after loading a game but haven't been able to make one happen since forcing the game onto the Nvidia GPU. I'll post here again if I find anything. Thanks for the help.