America's 10 Most Wanted
This is a game from 2004, and it doesn't install fully and so requies disk in the drive.
Now you will say that many games did that, but this thing also uses old version of Safedisc riskware, the SECDRV.SYS version of one, thus not working under Windows 10.

Unknown Nomad wrote on 2020-01-20, 14:08:

America's 10 Most Wanted
This is a game from 2004, and it doesn't install fully and so requies disk in the drive.
Now you will say that many games did that, but this thing also uses old version of Safedisc riskware, the SECDRV.SYS version of one, thus not working under Windows 10.

Is really requiring a game crack "problematic to run" or are you saying this game doesn't have one?

Two things to note, one secdrv is actually old versions of SecuROM, second you can re-enable secdrv on Windows 10. It's complicated to do, but once you do the games run flawlessly.

On that subject there are two games worth mentioning:

• Future Tactics - has a crack, but the crack (not the game) has a weird compatibility issue with Windows 10 where it only runs occasionally.
• Shikigami no Shiro III - has a crack, but only removes the cdrom check, not the dependency on secdrv.

Both games obviously run great on Windows 10 if you re-enable secdrv.

HunterZ wrote on 2020-01-19, 04:12:

Baldur's Gate 1 - modern setups can have rendering glitches; workarounds include BG:EE or mod BG2 to include BG1 content

Both those workarounds radically alter the gameplay, so they're not good workarounds. There are other workarounds that should work though:

• Application Compatibility Toolkit (ForceDirectDrawEmulation)
• ddrawcompat
• ddwrapper (ForceDirectDrawEmulation)
• dgVoodoo (I had some weird performance issues with this)
• DxWnd (up to v2.05.32)
• Wine ddraw

I use DxWnd since it has good performance and allows for some scaling flexibility. It can do integer scaling, and if you set the desktop resolution to the integer scale, you can get GPU scaling to do the rest. I have a 2160p monitor though, so I just integer scale from 720p since that's the resolution that has the best UI mod (though I had to modify that mod slightly due to load screen flickering).

Is really requiring a game crack "problematic to run" or are you saying this game doesn't have one?

It doesn't have one as the game installs only partialy. The disk is about 1500 MB, yet game installs only around 500 MB and the game is shipped on a DVD, so no CD audio for example.

Speaking of broken games, Midnight Outlaw: 6 Hours to SunUp, also known as RPM Tuning is essecialy broken on NVIDIA graphic cards. With DGVoodoo2 you can launch it, but most textures will not render correctly (they will be transparent), resulting in an unplayable game. What's worse, this game is STILL SOLD ON STEAM! You can read the reviews there.

virtualbox or qemu to solve the safedisc issue?

virtualbox or qemu to solve the safedisc issue?

If you are using virtual machine with Windows XP installed for example, you are not runing it under Windows 10 anymore.

Running everything bare on Windows 10 isn't what OP asked for, but listing problem games and workarounds to run them from windows 10, which includes virtual machines.

There is janes iaf and usaf

awgamer wrote on 2020-01-21, 12:18:

Running everything bare on Windows 10 isn't what OP asked for, but listing problem games and workarounds to run them from windows 10, which includes virtual machines.

Goal posts moving much?

Also virtual machine software can update and regress guest support. VirtualBox's no longer a good "run game win10" candidate anymore for example, and "PCI passthrough" is all duct-tape hype...

You also can't assume all users also legally own the media of the older operating systems to VM with either.

You're talking nonsense.

awgamer wrote on 2020-01-21, 11:19:

virtualbox or qemu to solve the safedisc issue?

Re-enabling secdrv isn't easy, but much easier than installing a full VM to deal with the problem.

Gruntz. The game gets to main menu and to level selection well. But in-game, it's painfully slow. It's about 7 seconds per frame. I've tried a lot of DirectDraw wrappers and i only got great results with dgVoodoo. VM using Windows XP is also a solution.

benadnam wrote on 2020-01-22, 10:15:

Gruntz. The game gets to main menu and to level selection well. But in-game, it's painfully slow. It's about 7 seconds per frame. I've tried a lot of DirectDraw wrappers and i only got great results with dgVoodoo. VM using Windows XP is also a solution.

Seems to work fine with DXWrapper's Dd7to9 and DxWnd. DXGL sort of works (have to alt-tab to view movies).

IMO a game that has several solutions isn't problematic.

ZellSF wrote on 2020-01-22, 18:07:

Seems to work fine with DXWrapper's Dd7to9 and DxWnd. DXGL sort of works (have to alt-tab to view movies).

Tried three of them. DXGL also has issues with the windows that pop-up outisde of the game (options, select save/load) and i need to alt+tab to get to them. DxWnd doesn't work with full-screen in my experience. However, DxWrapper seemed to work more efficiently. The pop-up window issue was better in this because it stayed on the resolution the game is in and didn't had to alt+tab to get access. I believe that this is not really the wrapper's fault and more likely the game's fault.

I guess you're right about it not being problematic when it has solutions.

Someone developed a pretty solid solution for AMBER: Journeys Beyond some time ago.

I was going to mention Simcity 2000 Network Edition, but I recall someone also solved that as well.

Sanitarium is on Steam, but maybe it's a new port? (It's also on Android and iOS these days.)

benadnam wrote on 2020-01-22, 19:07:

ZellSF wrote on 2020-01-22, 18:07:

Seems to work fine with DXWrapper's Dd7to9 and DxWnd. DXGL sort of works (have to alt-tab to view movies).

DxWnd doesn't work with full-screen in my experience.

You're not supposed to use it in fullscreen. Set it to scale the window to desktop and check "Keep aspect ratio" and "Hide desktop background", if that has scaling artifacts switch desktop resolution to an integer scale factor of the game before starting it, if that's too pixelated set desktop resolution to the game's resolution before starting (or enable "Full bilinear filter", though that has a performance cost). Should also mention the game needs "Compensate Flip emulation" set (if any game has cursor trailing in DxWnd it probably needs this option).

I would probably call DxWnd the second most important compatibility tool (after dgVoodoo) so it's worth learning to use.

Unknown Nomad wrote on 2020-01-21, 11:06:

Speaking of broken games, Midnight Outlaw: 6 Hours to SunUp, also known as RPM Tuning is essecialy broken on NVIDIA graphic cards. With DGVoodoo2 you can launch it, but most textures will not render correctly (they will be transparent), resulting in an unplayable game. What's worse, this game is STILL SOLD ON STEAM! You can read the reviews there.

Why not post about it on the dgVoodoo forum (that's here on Vogons)?

I also don't see any transparent textures when I try, though I see a lack of reflective textures. WineD3D (4.5) seems to work fine though. DXVK also seems to render the game fine, but crashes on FMVs. Unless I'm missing something (which is pretty likely).

I had some problems with aspect ratio so I had to run the game directly (bypassing the launcher) with "mainSSE2.exe 2880 2160 32 true 3 1" (width, height, color depth, fullscreen, language and sound), in case anyone is wondering how to get the game running in high resolution without dgVoodoo.

Jorpho wrote on 2020-01-22, 19:18:

Sanitarium is on Steam, but maybe it's a new port? (It's also on Android and iOS these days.)

It's a new port that's probably better to avoid (the sound timing issues in the opening didn't convince me to play it any further).

It's also a DotEmu port. Given how much they don't even care about their thrown-up Neo Geo emulator+roms releases being lazy, badly configurable emulators worse than NeoRageX, I wouldn't hold any trust in them either. SNK's certainly regretting it.

awgamer wrote on 2020-01-21, 12:18:

Running everything bare on Windows 10 isn't what OP asked for, but listing problem games and workarounds to run them from windows 10, which includes virtual machines.

VMs are OK to suggest as a workaround if the game has been tested with them and there are no major performance/compatibility/etc. issues.

ZellSF wrote on 2020-01-22, 18:07:

benadnam wrote on 2020-01-22, 10:15:

Gruntz. The game gets to main menu and to level selection well. But in-game, it's painfully slow. It's about 7 seconds per frame. I've tried a lot of DirectDraw wrappers and i only got great results with dgVoodoo. VM using Windows XP is also a solution.

Seems to work fine with DXWrapper's Dd7to9 and DxWnd. DXGL sort of works (have to alt-tab to view movies).

IMO a game that has several solutions isn't problematic.

I consider a game problematic if there are notable issues when installing just the vanilla game + official patches. If graphics wrappers are known to work then I'd like to capture that as a viable workaround.

Jorpho wrote on 2020-01-22, 19:18:

Someone developed a pretty solid solution for AMBER: Journeys Beyond some time ago.

I was going to mention Simcity 2000 Network Edition, but I recall someone also solved that as well.

Would be good to get some details/links on the workarounds for these.

Sanitarium is on Steam, but maybe it's a new port? (It's also on Android and iOS these days.)

Steam sells plenty of games that don't run at all on Windows 10.

ZellSF wrote on 2020-01-22, 19:50:

benadnam wrote on 2020-01-22, 19:07:

ZellSF wrote on 2020-01-22, 18:07:

Seems to work fine with DXWrapper's Dd7to9 and DxWnd. DXGL sort of works (have to alt-tab to view movies).

DxWnd doesn't work with full-screen in my experience.

You're not supposed to use it in fullscreen. Set it to scale the window to desktop and check "Keep aspect ratio" and "Hide desktop background", if that has scaling artifacts switch desktop resolution to an integer scale factor of the game before starting it, if that's too pixelated set desktop resolution to the game's resolution before starting (or enable "Full bilinear filter", though that has a performance cost). Should also mention the game needs "Compensate Flip emulation" set (if any game has cursor trailing in DxWnd it probably needs this option).

You seem to know a ton about these wrappers. Would be awesome if you could write a guide or something. It seems like a lot of us (myself included) have had more mixed results with them.