Updated 08.06.2020
- Added more details on the settings and steps required
- Added screenshots comparison
- Added a package with all the files required to make the game run in Direct3D mode with Reshade enabled to make your life easier.
- Everything was double checked on Win10

Hey good people,

Long story short you have to use dgVoodoo wrapper to make it happen.

You may ask yourself why do you need to run the game in Direct3D mode as you can play it in Software?
There are couple of benefits:
- The game looks much better in general and runs smoother (25 fps locked).
- You will get animated 3D avatar in the equip menu
- You don't have to mess around with Advanced settings to make the game run properly without glitches. (disable Z-Buffer, disable Fast Surface Lock etc.). It just works.

Actions required to make the game run in Direct 3D mode:

1. Download latest dgVoodoo for regular usage (tested with 2.55.4.1+)
_http://dege.freeweb.hu/dgVoodoo2/dgVoodoo2.html

2. Copy all the files from <MS/x86> directory from the dgVoodoo archive to the game dir where <Revenant.exe> is located. (You may skip MS\x86\D3D9.dll).
- MS\x86\D3D8.dll
- MS\x86\D3DImm.dll
- MS\x86\DDraw.dll

4. Disable "Windows 95 Compatibility" for Revenant.exe file. Otherwise it won't work with dgVoodoo.

5. Run the game (You may do it through GOG launcher or just by double clicking directly on Revenant.exe file.)
- Mouse cursor will work properly
- You can turn on Enhanced 3D lighting

Additional improvements:

1. Edit <revenant.ini> file via a text editor of your choice to enable additional Direct3D renderer features and settings:

Under [Lighting] section:
- EnhancedLighting=Yes

Under [Options] section:
- Software3D=No
This will enable "Real Time Lightings". Can be enabled through the game menu. You have to actually start a new game or load a saved game to write the change into the ini file.

Under [Options] section:
- EnhancedLighting=Yes
This will enable "Enchanced 3D lighting". Can be enabled through the game menu after you enable "Real Time Lightings". You have to actually start a new game or load a saved game to write the change into the ini file.

Under [Options] section:
GammaLevel=4
Increase gamma as the game looks darker in Direct3D mode

Under [Launcher] section:
- PreloadSize=7
- CacheSize=24
- Detail=5
Do not use game launcher <Launcher.exe> to run the game as it will reset all the changes for the [Launcher] section.

Do not run the game through Revenant's launcher as it will wipe all the changes to the defaults.

2. Use ReShade to emulate CRT look. This will hide jaggies and hard pixelation of the game and make the game look like it has been playing on a CRT monitor of that time period.
- download latest ReShade (tested with 4.3.0+)
_https://reshade.me/

- Install it into the game dir where <revenant.exe> is located using DX10+ option and download AdvancedCRT shader when promted. You don't have to download all of the available shaders in the list.

- Run the game and hit <Home> button to edit your ReShade settings.
Adjust <resolution> setting to your taste.
2.800 - will make it look like on Hi-Res TV
4.200 - will make it look like on CTR Monitor (for 1080p resolution screen / 16:9 aspect ratio of you LCD Monitor)
4.700 - will make it look like on CTR Monitor (for 1200p resolution screen / 16:10 aspect ratio of you LCD Monitor)

- Increase shader's Brightness option to 2 to compensate darkness.

3. You can disable dgVoodoo logo using <dgVoodooCpl.exe> file from its archive. Just copy it to the game dir and run.
- go to the DirectX tab and uncheck <dgVoodoo Watermark> setting.

4. Other dgVoodoo settings for the best quality:
- Scaling Mode: Stretched, keep Aspect Ratio
- Resolution: Max ISF
- Enable "Fast video memory access" (Use this only if you experience low performance on your PC)

Screenshot comparison between original pixelated look and CRT Shader enabled:
_https://imgsli.com/MTc1MTQ

Video that demonstrates how the game should look in Direct 3D and ReShade enabled (not the best CRT settings thou)
_https://youtu.be/lhilbjUPk_U

All-in-One package (password protected due to how google treats djVooDoo wrapper). Just extract it to the game dir and run the game. But still you will have to disable "Windows 95 compatibility" mode for Revenant.exe. If you don't want to use ReShade or your PC can't handle it just press "END" key to disable all the effects while the game is running. They will stay disabled next time you start the game.
_https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/17UBeQdHJQoPVNZnabwMYENY8ONPgcfdu
password: revenant

Thanks for the tip, friend!

That helped me a lot. Now i can play this awesome game one more time just like the first (which means A LOT OF LIGHT EFFECTS and advances magic effects). But still, there is another side of the coin: enabling enchansed light and real-time light makes this game choke with top-low fps i've ever seen - like i'm trying to play it back in 2000 with my old PC.

Is there any chance to fix this?

Hey man, I followed the instructions, but my game now runs in a small window at the top left of my screen, anyway to get it to go full screen with these awesome effects?

Thanks

Hey, friend, i've met the same problem, but was able to solve it simply by clicking game's icon several times on windows' panel. It forced the game to roll fullscreen.
Also, try to run "Revenant" via another .exe (means if it's "lancher.exe" - try "revenant.exe" e.c.t)

Fullscreen mode should be handled by dgVoodoo.
Doublecheck you settings in "Appearance" section under "General" tab. It should be set to "Full Screen". I have scaling mode set to "Unspecified" but fill free to play around with it.

You may also try to resize game resolution by dgVoodo.
Go to "DirectX" tab and change Resolution from "Unspecified" (default) to "Max ISF"

Also check scaling mode in your monitor settings. I have it set to "Fill preserving aspect ratio". But you can do it through a control panel of your video card.
- for Nvidia: Display -> Adjust desktop size and position

@ShellDNMS
Doublecheck if you have any "Compatibility mode" turned off for <Revenant.exe> in its properties. I had the same issue with performance as well until I turned that off. Other settings like "Reduced color mode, run in 640x480 etc." has no effect on the game as I'm aware.

The game runs at 25 fps locked through dgVoodo and Reshade enabled.

Hey Great Dragona

I played around a little bit to no avail but then tried something completely different

by enabling d3d directly through the Revenant launcher and it worked like a jiffy popcorn door knob charm!

No need for all those extra programs it seems,

Enjoying this great game!

Freedom!

Yeah I saw your message in other thread. I'm glad you could make it. However it seems that solution has its drawbacks as well. Not everyone can select "DirectDraw HAL" in the launcher. It seems this option is completely missing for newer builds of Win10. Or that option is available only for AMD's graphic cards users for some reason. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Actually brother all I did was follow the instructions of checkboxing all the disable bla bla bla options

its still set to primary driver in the top

its great for what it does, makes the game look a little better, lucky that we can do that at this point.

such a great game, happy I picked it up again after all this time, I just never was able to get into it much back in the day for some reason, I think it used to crash on me alot or something.


in a total side note I made chicken and waffles today.

Cowabunga!

Well if you checked all those 'Disable' checkboxes and didn't have DDERR message pop up you are a lucky guy.
But that doesn't make the game run in D3D.
You still can't enable enchanced 3D lighting and your avatar model is not animated, isn't it?

Here is the video showing how the game looks with all bells and whistles enabled:
youtu.be/lhilbjUPk_U

Thank you for the tutorial! Yes, I agree, this game is quite finicky about it's settings.

Just wanted to add that you really need to remove the compatibility setting from the main .exe if you're running the game with dgVoodoo. If you don't then game performance will be bad and there won't be a mouse cursor (at least for me).

Also it seems that most of the other crashes (crash at startup and missing .cpp) are somehow related to the 8.3 naming convention (which is disabled by default on modern Windows setups). My game wouldn't even start in it's default install location. I'll try testing this out in the following days.

So my GPU broke, and I´m stuck with just my 4790k cpu only.

I was struggling to launch Revenant all day. The only way it will work is with "Real time lights" disabled and a few of those check marks checked. It works pretty well, but minimap doesn´t display.

I tried dgVooDoo, minimap is working properly there, but game performance in general doesn´t work well for me.
In Software mode the game runs seemingly fast, but frames are drawn choppy, some textures aren´t displayed correctly and overall look and feel is laggy.
In D3D mode the game runs extremely slow, unplayable. I played around with all the options in the launcher and dgVooDoo combined, but couldn´t make it run better.

Any ideas?

Sup. You can normalize your ingame perfomance with D3D through disabling "surface locks" through game launcher. It worked for me.

so the game loads and it works for about 5 mins and then crashes but theres no error message it just starts repeating sound and stops responding any thing you can think about how to fix this i have a geforce 1070ti windows 8.1 and an asus hero mobo do you think it could just be graphics card settings???