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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?

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  • What graphics card do you have?
    – Comic Sans Seraphim
    Commented Oct 19, 2015 at 16:20
  • @Studoku AMD Radeon R7 200 series
    – imulsion
    Commented Oct 19, 2015 at 16:29
  • Is there any graphic options in game or out of it? I wonder if it might be using CPU rendering (Which technicly isn't an issue with modern CPUs) but since it's an older game (Looks like 98/XP release) it's possible that a modern muti-core CPU is incompatible for generic CPU rendering. (When at this point in time, we where barely over the 1Gz mark.)
    – NBN-Alex
    Commented Oct 19, 2015 at 19:16
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    @NBN-Alex The graphics options are limited to say the least - I can pick 640x480 or 800x600 resolution, as well as "low" "medium" or "high" graphic presets. No combination makes any difference. However, when the game refused to launch I went into the ini files and changed the "VideoDriver" parameter from "Direct3D" to "software". Does this give you any clues?
    – imulsion
    Commented Oct 19, 2015 at 19:19
  • Oh yeah, "software" is CPU rendering. (which you would think it could handle without issue). I guess now the main question is why it crashes on Direct3D and if there's any way to fix/patch that on your current system. Is there any error codes or logs created on crash?
    – NBN-Alex
    Commented Oct 19, 2015 at 19:22

3 Answers 3

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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.

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  • So there is no hope (currently) of fixing the game on Windows 10?
    – imulsion
    Commented Dec 27, 2015 at 0:19
  • First the Good News. Game Mechanics is doing a modern version of DDF8 that will work on Windows 8 and 10. gamemechanics.com/projects/demo-derby
    – madmax1100
    Commented Feb 19, 2016 at 2:49
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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.

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  • I've tried using DosBOX but all it gives me is "this program cannot be run in DOS mode". Any ideas?
    – imulsion
    Commented Oct 20, 2015 at 11:23
  • @imulsion This is a guess, so I am rather hesitant to post it as an answer, but (assuming you have a multi-core CPU) try setting the game's "CPU Affinity" (how many cores are running on it) to only one core. You can do this from the task manager in older versions of Windows, no idea how to do it in Windows 10. By the way I hate to say it, but unfortunately Windows 10 caused a lot of graphics driver issues with certain games. You might reconsider using it immediately until a little later in its lifespan.
    – Lucas Leblanc
    Commented Oct 20, 2015 at 14:11
  • @LucasLeblanc I checked it out and it had already been using only one of my six processors. I also tried it with all 6 processors being used to no effect.
    – imulsion
    Commented Oct 20, 2015 at 14:58
  • Hmm. That's a tough situation. Generally when it comes to running dated 3D games, it's best to avoid using Direct3D to render because the dated-ness of the drivers makes things a mess. This makes CPU/software rendering generally the best for backwards compatibility, but obviously your framerate issues leave much to be desired. Maybe there are some community wrappers for old Direct3D games that translate the dated Direct3D API calls to modern DirectX calls? They would be .dll files that you put in the same folder as your game executable. That's about all I can offer for advice.
    – Lucas Leblanc
    Commented Oct 20, 2015 at 16:24
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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:

  1. win+R then run regedit
  2. Find Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\DirectDraw
  3. 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)

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  • Can you edit your answer to remove the foreign characters? We only allow posts in english on this site.
    – Kyle Rone
    Commented Sep 15, 2020 at 17:49

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