DXGL is a free replacement for the Windows ddraw.dll library, running on OpenGL. It is designed to overcome driver bugs, particularly in Windows Vista and newer operating systems. It also adds various enhancements to the graphics output such as display scaling and filtering options. DXGL supports the DirectX 7.0 graphics APIs, however it is currently under development and many programs are not yet compatible with DXGL.
If you upgrade from DXGL 0.5.8 or earlier, the configuration format will be changed, and earlier versions of DXGL will no longer recognize the profiles. In addition, any profiles generated by older versions of DXGL going forward will not be recognized by DXGL 0.5.9 or later. If you wish to migrate any old profiles generated after installing DXGL 0.5.9 or later, you will need to use Regedit to delete the “Configuration Version” registry value from the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\DXGL registry key to force the upgrade to be run again. In order to re-run the upgrade, re-run the DXGL installer.
DXGL 0.5.13 fixes up the default value for the “Add color depths” option, because version 0.5.12 and earlier had a default not compatible with current versions. This one-time conversion resets the value for AddColorDepths in the registry entries to 1+4+16 which corresponds to enabling color depths 8-bit, 16-bit, and 32-bit, in order to ensure compatibility with Windows 8 and above.
The “Configuration Version” registry value in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\DXGL will be incremented to 2 in order to indicate this fix has been applied.
Due to a bug found in the method used to uniquely identify profile paths, DXGL 0.5.17 and above will perform a one-time renaming of the profile registry keys. These new profiles will no longer be compatible with DXGL 0.5.16 or below.
The “Configuration Version” (“Configuration Version x64” for the x64 version) registry value in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\DXGL will be incremented to 3 in order to indicate this fix has been applied. If you need to migrate more version 2 profiles, change “Configuration Version” to 2 and re-run the installer.
The 64-bit build of DXGL is intended solely for targeting 64-bit DirectDraw programs. For usage with 32-bit programs, please download the 32-bit build. The 32- and 64-bit versions of DXGL install in separate folders and Start Menu entries, and have separate profiles. The configuration program will not create profiles for mismatched platforms; you can only add profiles for 64-bit programs in the 64-bit build, and 32-bit programs in the 32-bit build.
These instructions assume that you do not have any of the required software installed. If you already have any or all of this software installed and set up, skip those steps.
The Debug Trace build has been removed from the project files for DXGL. Instead, DXGL now supports debug tracing files in all builds. To enable tracing in DXGL create a file named dxgl.cfg or dxgl.ini in you game folder and add the following to it:
[debug]
DebugTraceLevel=3This can be added to the [debug] section of any existing configuration file. Change back to 0 to disable tracing.
For detailed progress information, please check https://www.williamfeely.info/wiki/DXGL_Features What works:
What partially works:
What doesn't work:
Run the installer. When the installer completes, open DXGL Config and add your program files to the config program. To uninstall, go to the Add/Remove Programs or Programs and Features control panel and uninstall.
Source code for DXGL is available at https://github.com/dxgldotorg/dxgl
An AppDB system (similar to that on winehq.org) is now available at: https://dxgl.org/appdb/
This requires a user account separate from the other services.
Please note that the AppDB is now deprecated and will be made read-only once the new DXGL Wiki launches.
You may discuss DXGL at: https://forum.dxgl.info
You must create a forum account to post content. For bug reports, please refer to the next section.
Please report bugs via the GitHub Issues system: https://github.com/dxgldotorg/dxgl/issues A GitHub account is required to file issues.