D7VK version 1.2 brings more Direct3D 6 improvements and a little Direct3D 5 too

Entering the land of what the developer calls diminishing returns, D7VK version 1.2 has rolled out delivering a bunch of Direct3D 6 improvements.

What is it? A reminder: forked from DXVK it's a Vulkan-based translation layer for Direct3D 6 and 7 to run more games with Proton / Wine and with the latest release there's even some Direct3D 5 work going in now too since DIrect3D 6 is "a bit less experimental now".

The developer is keen to temper expectations though noting "Don't get too excited though, because this D3D archeological expedition has reached its final stopping point. Even with D3D6/5 we are firmly in the land of diminishing returns, where most games offer better rendering capabilities on Glide, aren't even working at all in Wine due to various cursed reasons which are unrelated to graphics, or are simply doing things so cursed that there's no plausible approach for supporting them in D7VK".

Some highlights from the release notes:

• A somewhat fundamental rewrite of our DDraw wrapping logic, which was needed because I did not anticipate adding support for earlier APIs when I started this project, and everything was an absolute mess. The end effect is transparent to end users, albeit it does come with the side effect of better memory management. Granted, memory pressure has never been a problem in the context of these early APIs.
• Added an alternative deployment option for Wine/Linux which allows some stubborn games to load D7VK from the system path, as they would otherwise ignore it. More details can be found in the readme. Note that this will NOT work on Windows.
• Fixed device capability reporting, which allows Conquest: Frontier Wars to properly detect D3D7 support and enables in-game resolution switching.
• Added a vertex processing workaround which helps 1NSANE get full levels of performance regardless of T&L HAL/HAL device choice.
• The Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit and Need For Speed: High Stakes modern patch now fully works with D7VK, both with its D3D7 and D3D6 renderers, both of which offer better capability support than the D3D8 renderer (lack of fogging being the most obvious gripe in the latter).
• Added an IClassFactory implementation for DDraw since some games (mainly D3D6/5 titles) were relying on it to properly instantiate DirectDraw (for whatever odd design choice) and crashed on startup otherwise.
• Various compatibility fixes to get 3DMark 99 Max in working order out of the box (you need no "modern patch/ fixed exe" with D7VK now), see #66 . Thanks to @archeYR for that bit of investigative work.

Pictured - Battlezone II: Combat Commander

The developer also noted some Direct3D 6 titles that have been working well:

• Drakan: Order of the Flame
• Battlezone II: Combat Commander
• Earth 2150
• Expendable
• Rayman 2: The Great Escape
• Tomb Raider: Chronicles
• Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine
• Star Wars: Rogue Squadron
• Tachyon: The Fringe
• Arabian Nights
• Panzer Elite

Source: GitHub