Low FPS from an old game

Question

I'm trying to play OuterBound Games' Demolition Derby and Figure 8 race on a windows 10 gaming PC. It took a while to get it running and now I can run it fine - the only problem is that the framerate is very low - about 5 FPS - and is therefore unplayable. It's obviously an issue with the modern versions of DirectX or Windows, but I can't figure out what is wrong. I've tried running it in compatibility mode (Windows 95, ME, and XP) but the problem persists. Can I fix this?

Edit: I just had a thought. Since the game can run fine apart from the framerate, I imagine using DirectX rather than CPU rendering would improve it. The game crashes when using directX 12 (as I currently have on my computer) but the system requirements for the game mention DirectX 7. Am I able to download DirectX 7 and tell the computer to use DirectX 7 for this game only, while continuing to use DX12 for all my other games?

Nelson · Answer

Based on a bit of research, this game's requirement is Windows 95/98/2000/ME/NT.

http://www.ign.com/games/demolition-derby/pc-663943

It is possible you may get better results going with DosBOX or some level of emulation than running natively because the Windows line of OS changed significantly at Windows XP.  Without getting bogged down in details, Windows XP can never really emulate the environment that Windows 95-ME provided for a system.

madmax1100 · Answer

I have been modding DDF8 for about 8 years now. DDF8 will work just fine on everything from Windows95 to Windows7. However with Windows8 , microsoft made a goof up with the emulation of directx. Its remains backwards compatible much like Windows7 and Vista through software emulation, however, the framerate is painfully slow and unplayable. Windows10 has not fixed this goofup, and it remains unclear if they intend to fix the issue. The problem lies in how Windows8 and 10 handle directdraw. THis is a problem for versions of Directx9 and lower. The purpose of the direct x video was to maintain backwards compatibility. With regards to the video displays. With Vista and Windows7 on most computers you can only use 640 by 480 settings in the game. There are some computers I have had that could display 800 by 600 settings. I very much enjoy this game, and well, I keep XP and older computers around to play it , so that I can use higher resolutions and see the dust and smoke. Something the software emulation cannot do. There are currently 50 tracks made and 1400 cars available to download. There are Windows8 forums that are keeping tabs on the progress of Windows 8 and 10 and it appears that they may be getting some traction with Microsoft to fix the glitch. Cause that's whats holding this game back on 10.

Answered by madmax1100 on March 7, 2021

MorusLeaf · Answer

I had the same issue when playing 三国霸业 on windows 10. Inspired by madmax1100's answer, I found a solution, i.e., disabling DirectDraw Acceleration. Here's how:

win+R then run regedit
Find ComputerHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREWOW6432NodeMicrosoftDirectDraw
you'll find an entry EmulationOnly under it. Change its value from 0 to 1.

Now my old game runs smoothly. (Remember to change the value back after closing the game)

Low FPS from an old game

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