D7VK version 1.7 brings even more retro Direct3D gaming to Linux

D7VK is a Vulkan-based translation layer for D7VK 3, 5, 6, 7 to run with Wine / Proton on Linux and version 1.7 further improves running retro games. Linux is truly becoming the platform for game preservation of all forms.

For this release the developer noted that this release brings work for "legacy (D3D6 and earlier) vertex transformations, clipping and lighting". As a result more games should see their graphics render as you would expect like O.R.B: Off-World Resource Base, Requiem: Avenging Angel and Warhammer: Dark Omen. The developer mentioned some work is still to be done on "legacy fixed function lighting" so expect more releases of D7VK to come.

Pictured - O.R.B: Off-World Resource Base

Pictured - Requiem: Avenging Angel

Other noted fixes and additions:

• Implemented legacy fixed function light attenuation for D3D6 and earlier.
• Thanks to @CkNoSFeRaTU, viewport transformations, clipping as well as D3D3 execute buffer transforms are also implemented, with a few remaining features to be ironed out in the future. This means quite a few early D3D3 and later titles are now in a somewhat playable state, for example Resident Evil, Revenant, Forsaken and many others.
• Worked around an iClassFactory initialization quirk to make Requiem: Avenging Angel happy, to the point where it starts up properly instead of complaining about missing D3D support.
• Thanks to @CkNoSFeRaTU, implemented a blit-instead-of-flip presentation workaround which happens to be very useful for handling the particularly odd way Warhammer: Dark Omen goes about setting up its presentation swapchain. It will now play back intros and gameplay just fine, instead of only a black screen. Note that the game is still affected by several Wine surface blit bugs, which cause missing/flipped menu elements.
• Vastly improved the reference counting situation, which may ultimately help with Windows compatibility. Mind you, Windows is still an unofficially supported platform that gets absolutely no testing with D7VK, so your mileage may vary.
• Fixed an oversight which prevented proper video memory reporting on GPUs with less than 2GB of VRAM and some iGPUs.
• Added a minimal ComputeSphereVisibility implementation, enough to get Space Empires V going (thanks to @Duneathor).
• Fixed a D3D6 viewport clear problem which affected sky color in Need For Speed III: Hot Pursuit (with the modern patch), thanks again to @CkNoSFeRaTU's investigative skills.
• Fixed several obscure device teardown issues which caused crashes on game exit in Incoming.
• Fixed missing 2D backgrounds in Return to Krondor.
• Reworked D7VK's D3D9 backend modifications in order to play nicely with the existing D3D8/9 implementation, for concurrent use. This has streamlined the integration between D7VK and DXVK code, and opened up a way for... downstreaming (of sorts)! Read the next section for more information on that angle.

Additionally, while it's not likely to be pulled upstream into the main DXVK project that's part of Valve's Proton, it has been pulled into DXVK-Sarek which is designed for people with older GPUs. DXVK-Sarek is directly supported on the CachyOS Proton build. The developer of DXVK-Sarek mentioned they dropped their own special Proton build with it due to a lack of time.

Source: Changelog