Creatures 2 - Windows 10 Lag Fix

I recently posted a topic on Creatures Caves about this fix, so thought I'd share it on here too!

As everyone knows, Creatures 2 is incredibly picky out what system it runs on; up until the GOG.com releases, we had to rely on hex editing in order to run it on Windows 7. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Windows 10, and the game suffers from numerous issues.The first is the Black Box of Doom, but thanks to Issy, a solution for fixing it has been found.

But what about those who experience serious lag when running the game? Well, this problem arises from the way Windows 10 emulates DirectDraw. I'm no expert, but it is apparently very poorly coded and so cannot handle high resolutions very well at all, leading to severe lag. So how can we fix it?

Well, to get rid of the lag, simply change your screen resolution to 1280x720, relaunch Creatures 2, and the game should run much smoother. It will obviously look a lot lower res now, but it's really not much of a bother, especially as most people first played the game on those horrible CRT monitors at horrendously low resolutions anyway. Besides, your creatures will be bigger on-screen!

Now, there are several issues with the game that are not related to the lag. Firstly, certain parts of the game such as the Status Bar and tool-tips will be very buggy, or just won't appear at all. I don't know why this occurs, I'm afraid, but the game is still perfectly playable.

I should also mention I have emailed GOG.com about these issues, and I'm currently awaiting a response. I'd recommend everybody else does the same. It might not receive a response, but at least we'll have tried!

 I hope this guide has helped people. If anyone has any questions or additional problems, feel free to leave them in the comments.

Edit: It seems the highest resolution the game is willing to run at without suffering from lag is 1366 x 768. I have no idea why running the game at 1080p in Windows 10 causes lag whereas it runs perfectly fine on Windows 7, but I think the issue might be DirectDraw related.