winutil VS dxwrapper

This was the debloater tool I used on my Surface Go 3 - runs well, only minor side-effect was I needed to use an automatic fix to get defender working correctly: https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil

Back to WinUtil, the link above goes to Chris's most recent YouTube video on the script. Here's a link to the project on GitHub as well, if you want to inspect the code or ask the devs and contributors questions before running it. I recommend this script to everyone who I hear complaining about Windows being bloated and slow. It fixes almost everything that I hate about Windows, to the point that after using it I actually consider Windows to be an acceptable operating system to be running full time on one of my laptops.

Stuff has been uninstalled from Settings and Control Panel and CTT's Utility (to enable some settings I would've enabled through Terminal commands already) and Sycnex's Debloater (to uninstall some apps) have been used. It's nothing major as I only uninstalled apps I could download from the store if necessary and made sure not to delete any major system components except Edge maybe. I have read through every menu and setting any of these utilities has brought up thoroughly to ensure I didn't do so. I believe I did my research before enabling/disabling a setting.

Chris's Github: https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil

You can use Chris Titus Tech's Windows Utility: https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil

The Tweaks section has a checkbox for removing Edge. I removed mine using that.

Humbly submitting Chris Titus' Debloat tool as well for comparison. I've enjoyed using Chris' tool, as the GUI design makes it easy to a-la-carte select which you want removed and not, along with recommendations. Makes it very clear to see what's being removed.

https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil

The only thing different here are some inbox apps are removed and Steam + assorted drivers are installed out of the box, all of which you can do with a community installer script and community tweaking tools.

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).