Divine Divinity and Beyond Divinity are well known for lacking a native way to play through a window. While it is true that there's methods to force the games to run windowed, these generally involve editing the executable of the game, which on itself can be dangerous if not done correctly and it is something that the average user won't even attempt. Besides that, there's also a risk of any future update overwritting the executable and thus the whole process starts anew.

There's confirmation that both games can be run through wrappers such as DgVoodoo2, but the later heavily depends on the process to even create a window in the first place if one wants to play in such a way. This brings us to DxWnd, which is a program with the sole purpose of running old games through a window as it "hijacks" the process and emulates the calls needed, even if there's no window created initially by said process.

However, there's a big issue in the current day where a lack of information, or rather disposal of, makes the endeavor of using DxWnd for some games more difficult than it should be. This brings us to Beyond Divinity, which unfortunately is one of the games hit by the passage of time in this regard

The following guide has been thus made with the purpose of sharing information to make the process of running this game windowed far less complicated and to maintain a hard documentation for future reference so anyone can have directions on where to start

The method described here should work with both Steam and GOG versions of the game as both use the same executable. I don't know if it will work with the retail disc as I don't own that version, but it should work as well

DxWnd indeed works for playing Beyond Divinity through a window, but there's a catch: newer versions of the software effectively are incapable of doing so due to under the hood changes in the way hooks interact with games.

So what to do? We get the version that actually works with the game.

The last known version of DxWnd which works without issues with this game is version 2.04.74, which you can download here from the source[sourceforge.net]. You'll need either WinRAR or 7-Zip to uncompress the file

Since I do have a local copy of the latest DxWnd for use with most other games, these copies I prefer to put them directly within the game's directory for ease of management. The guide then will use this setup but you can use whatever is more convenient for you



Now as for the program, the first thing you need to do is to open it, and then right-click inside the window to Add a new program to the task list



You'll be presented with a window to fill out with the information. We'll start by first filling the name and the process we want, in this case being Beyond Divinity. You can give it any name, but for the Path and Launch fields you must select the game's executable (div.exe) by clicking on the dot buttons



After that's done, we need to check some options in the tabs:

• No banner
  
• Run in window
  
• Keep aspect ratio
  
• Desktop center
  
• For window initial position and size, you should input the current resolution of the game. I use 1280x720, but I substract 40px because my screen is somewhat small so I need to optimize the size a little

• Thin frame (this is personal preference, I don't like the window with thick borders)
  
• Monitor native modes
  
• Initial resolution, this one must match your game's internal resolution, which in my case is 1280x720

All of these options can stay on the program's default checks, but I checked the following just to make sure nothing weird happens

• Cursor visibility: Hide
  
• Cursor clipper: ON
  
• Correct mouse position
  
• Keep cursor within window

• Set 16BPP RGB 565 encoding (This is important as the game uses a 16-bit color mode)

Everything else can stay as defaults, for now. Click on "Ok" to save the configuration

The next thing we need to do is to configure the hook. For this, we need to go to the Options button and click on "Expert mode"



After that, we enter once again to the game's configuration by right-clicking the icon in the window and then click on "Modify". This time we'll have many more tabs to check, but the most important one is the Hook tab, since we need to tell the program how to "talk" to the game. The options that need to be checked are "Inject suspended process" and IAT aligment must be "Word"



Finally, we go to the Compat. tab and check "Limit available resources"


Note: If the game has performance hiccups, you should also check "Set single core process affinity", also in the Compat. tab

Click on "Ok" to save the configuration, and in the File menu select "Save" so that the configuration is stored in disk

Now, you can run the game directly from DxWnd, or you can keep DxWnd open and then run the game, but we want to make a clean way to play on a window without having to micromanage the utility. For that, we can make a batch file or a shortcut that helps us do just that, using the available options in DxWnd.

I personally prefer the batch file because I can use relative paths so it will always work no matter where I install the game as long as DxWnd is stored inside of it, so I'll share the code used for it:


the "/R:1" parameter can be used on a shortcut's Launch path but this way has the disadvantage of not being able to use relative paths

The results speak by themselves. The game should also have better performance on top:

There's a few considerations to take regarding this method to run Beyond Divinity: firstly, the cinemas will maintain the focus on the window no matter what so you'll be able to Alt+Tab once a cinema is done playing or if you skip them

Another consideration is regarding loading. There's no appreciable difference in load times, but it may sometimes look like the game hangs. Its ok, the game is not crashing, is just finishing loading, which you can see if you use the alternate method for windowed mode that involves enabling Debug mode

As a fun little detail, this same configuration works with Divine Divinity too, same DxWnd version and all, but the performance in DX6 is not that good and there's tearing due to not being filtered. I'd say software rendering with cnc-ddraw is the way to go for that game anyways, but now you know DxWnd works for it too without much change

Finally, for those who have used DxWnd before, bear in mind that the proxies do not work with these games, so you'll have to use either a batch or a shortcut to DxWnd to run the games windowed

All in all, this guide should make sure that anyone looking for this specific topic gets a good start on what to do, and how. You can fiddle with the configurations to better suit your needs

If you don't want to deal with the hassle, you can have my .dxw file.[drive.google.com] Just import it to DxWnd and change the Path and Launch to your game install, and the resolution to what suits your game's configuration