holoiso VS dxwrapper

exclusive to the deck for now, unofficial ports exist, and official support is coming soontm

HoloISO: https://github.com/theVakhovskeIsTaken/holoiso

if you haven't seen it yet, some dedicated members of the community already made a working desktop iso (amd only obviously)

I don't recommend installing SteamOS because it may not have the drivers, I'd recommend HoloISO if you want something more akin to SteamOS, or just use the new Big Picture mode.

Then, download this and place the files inside the game directory (C:\Program Files\Maxis\SimCity Classic).

There's also dxwrapper that implements old DirectDraw/3D interfaces with newer D3D9 api for better compatibility with newer Windows versions:

https://github.com/elishacloud/dxwrapper

FYI: The Space Bar re-release features Elisha Riedlinger's DxWrapper (https://github.com/elishacloud/dxwrapper), whose config file is otherwise stock with just FullScreen enabled. I strongly believe they didn't properly test it.

RTX Remix uses a custom d3d9.dll though so you additionally need another wrapper such as https://github.com/elishacloud/dxwrapper to customize which dll should be loaded since by default d3d8to9 uses the default system file which will result in translated calls not being redirected to the path tracer used by Remix.

If you have a GPU that supports DXVK (Basically it forces DXVK to run the game in Vulkan intsead of it's usual DirectX 9, which the DX9 version hates GTA IV and while GTA IV hates DX9 back) and has more than 2GB of VRAM (DirectX Vulkan), then I HIGHLY recommend it: https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/releases (Use this guide to install it: http://ant-sh.blogspot.com/2020/07/gta-4-stutter-choppiness-fix.html. If you want aliasing AND DXVK, use this guide: http://ant-sh.blogspot.com/2021/01/antialiasing-with-dxvk-and-gta-iv.html. If your GPU doesn't support Vulkan, use DxWrapper: https://github.com/elishacloud/dxwrapper/releases).