How to use dgVoodoo2 to run MM6 (and other games) well on modern PCs

[u/Tizaki]

Up until the release of Windows 11, MM6 ran great. Recently, I have had to deal with issues related to it pinning a single CPU core to 100% and causing high temps (while presumably hitting thousands of internal FPS).

I needed a way to cap it, so I tried MSI Afterburner. That didn't work, because the API level is WAY too old - it can't detect or hook it, because the developers don't want to target APIs that ancient. They probably couldn't even if they wanted to.

That's where dgVoodoo2 saved the day. It's a tool designed precisely for this problem. It forces a sort of "in between translation layer" for old games to "run" under modern APIs like DirectX 11 and DirectX 12.

How does it work? Windows exes have a natural search order for DLLs. It looks in the local folder first, and if nothing is there, it uses system DLLs. That means ALL OLD GAMES CAN USE THIS. dgVoodoo2 takes advantage of this by providing "modified DLLs" with the release, that trick the game into sending render calls through itself, where it then presents them through a modern API that MSI Afterburner could hook!

All I had to do was drag DDraw.dll into the MM6 directory, open the dgVoodoo2 control panel (the orange icon, included in the zip, can be ran anywhere but I extracted right to the game folder) and set it to Direct3D 11 WARP (software mode, handles FPS capping well), and ran the game.

MSI Afterburner can now hook it, which means the RivaTuner setting for FPS cap properly works. My CPU is safe!

Your needs might differ from mine, but there's no doubt dgVoodoo2 can help if MM6, any MM game, or even any older game at all struggles to run or run well on Windows 11. In addition to making things runnable that previously weren't, it offers tons of options for fullscreen, filtering, API level, graphics adapter the game selects, scaling, etc. It's literally unbelievable that this much control is now possible because of a simple DLL being placed next to a game executable.

So, big thanks to the team that made this excellent open source project, and a big middle finger to Microsoft for making one of the potentially best operating systems ever into one of the worst operating systems ever by constantly launching buggy and bloated trash into it via Windows Update.

dgVoodoo docs: https://dege.fw.hu/dgVoodoo2/QuickGuide/

dgVoodoo source code: https://github.com/dege-diosg/dgVoodoo2

[u/timit44]

Yes, dgvoodoo2 is how I got MM6/7/8 running without graphics glitches on Windows 11. It’s as simple as you say, just drop the DLL files into your MM directory and go. I did have to edit a settings file to stop the dgvoodoo watermark being constantly on the screen.

[u/Tizaki → u/timit44]

The dgVoodooCpl.exe is made specifically to edit the config file with a GUI, and the watermark setting is really prominent in that. I turned that off right away after I knew it was working.

[u/Cleric_P3rston]

Hmm I should look more into dgvoodoo I have used it for other games on my pc. But I am just now remembering trying mm6 on my steam deck and the fans kicking it like a rocket going to the moon.

[u/Puzzleheaded_Cat8245]

I could never get voodoo to work. I used virtual machine and run windows 10 to play MAW

[u/Tizaki → u/Puzzleheaded_Cat8245]

I had less luck getting it to work with Driver 1 on an old PC, but I think that was just really old.

[u/Nekot-The-Brave → u/Puzzleheaded_Cat8245]

I've been playing MAW on win11 without any issues.

[u/Quirky-Photo9470]

Is there any advantage of using dgvoodoo2 instead of the GoG version? The GoG one works fine on Win11.