DirectDraw emulation still broken in Windows 10

I'm trying to put together a list of games here that are thought to be ddraw performance issue that worked fine on WIndows 7 but not WIndows 8/10. I'm not looking for other issues, just this one. If you have a non-related issue to ddraw, start a new post to address.

So far:

Age of Empires I

Age of Empires II -> I'm not seeing an issue on the AOE II HD version from steam, is this from disc version?

Panzer General 3SE -> Where are you playing from? a disc. I see a gog version but it might not be the same, please confirm.

Sims 4? -> This is a dx9c game I believe

Commandos 3 -> I'll give the steam version a try.

more? please add to my list with details to where you are playing from, steam, origin, disc, gog etc..

Thanks.

For Commandos 3 I've tried the cd version and gog version, both have the same issues, the sniper mission is the first level of the Stalingrad campaign, also the mission Get to the engine (which is the 4th mission of central Europe campaign), the graphics are completely screwed up which makes it unplayable, as you can see in this screenshot I uploaded here:

https://i.gyazo.com/06d12c56339f3b8d69eb3ec7412ba06f.png

And as for Panzer General 3SE that is a different game to PG3D on gog, I believe 3SE isn't available to buy digitally at the moment

Just like to point out that I am talking about SimCity 4, not Sims 4.

Sims 4 is actually a new game, with expansion packs still being released, and I think it requires DX10 or 11.

SimCity 4 uses extended DirectDraw in DX7 (ie: it creates a DirectDrawEx surface, then use D3D7 to draw on it, and uses DDraw to query the video card and do some texture and GUI stuff).

SimCity 4 renderer works by rendering the buildings textures on some box-shaped models (with some exceptions, there are certain buildings that are true 3D models), then it converts those to a 2D texture that is pasted on the screen, since the camera is "fixed" and use a trigonometric projection, scrolling the camera around only moves the buildings, without changing any other details, thus you don't need to re-render their 3D model, you only need to blit the last render again to the screen, thus why the DDraw + D3D combination.

But Win8 and 10 seemly handle that very badly.

This is also visible in all "Infinity Engine" games (Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Planescape Torment...), Arcanum of Steamworks and Magika Obscura, and some others, usually the symtom you will notice most easily is parts of the screen rendering black (usually UI, or 2D terrain tiles)

People made various Direct Draw wrappers that help, but those are not a real fix (And many users wrecked their windows installs by accidentally replacing the system32 ddraw with a wrapper dll).

By the way: Mech Commander 1, and 2, neither work properly either, but I don't checked if it is a DDraw issue or something else... those are specially aggravating because they are Microsoft-made games, you would expect them to behave better. (also they show the same symtons as the other games: parts of the screen, usually involving 2D rendering, becoming solid black)

Is it not possible just to revert back to the way Windows 7 handled pre DX9 games? Why was this even changed in 8/10?

Regarding my own experience, I beg to differ on some games at least. Age of Empires I, Baldur's Gate I and II, Icewind Dale I and II, Neverwinter Nights I and II, Planescape Torment, Arcanum: Those are all running very nice on my Windows 10 system, without any of the DDraw symptoms noted by others. As some of them were installed on an external harddisk at Windows 7 times - and are running (from this external drive) as good or glitchy as ever -, I don't exactly see any major influence of game handling changes between Windows 7 and 10. Maybe there is one in other games not tested by me. Maybe there are other influences, too (what comes first into my mind, are changes in video cards / drivers).

FYI: ASUS ROG 751JY laptop, Intel i7-4720HQ, NVidia GeForce GTX 980M (4 GB VRAM), 16 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD, 2 TB SATA III HD, 2 TB external HD.

Neverwinter Nights also work here...

It doesn't use Infinity Engine.

Also Baldur's Gate I and II you used the old versiond, or the "Enhanced Edition" ? the EE works on Windows 10 because it is intended to.

I don't tried AoE, have no idea if it works or not.

Arcanum... no luck without Wine DLLs here, on any machine that runs Win 8 or 10.