Running RT3 in Windows 11 (2025)

I just got my shiny new computer running Windows 11. First thing, I downloaded RT3 from Steam. Nope, didn't work. I was getting an error on start up that hardware acceleration DirectX 8.1 was not detected.

I searched the forums and found that the following Windows 10 solutions worked:
1) from the folder C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam, copy Steam.dll to folder C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Railroad Tycoon 3
This did not solve the DirectX problem, but for Steam players seems to be necessary.

2) Next I went to
https://hawkdawg.com/forums/viewtopic.p ... bff#p47402
to download the voodoo_dll_files.zip. This contains the following four dll files:
D3d8.dll
D3D9.dll
D3DImm.dll
DDraw.dll
Extraction was not necessary for me. I copy-pasted these dll files to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Railroad Tycoon 3.

And viol-la

And Thank you Gumboots!

Hello everyone never realized such a large community still existed for this game!!! Me my father and my wife all enjoy playing this game so I'm happy to find others likewise enthused.

Anyways as the above post mentioned everything stated above does work but I've noticed 2 issues. after initially loading the game the mouse cursor does not line up properly on the screen after finally bumbling into settings I noticed my resolution is locked at 640x480 making everything very fuzzy and you have to turn off mouse acceleration to get the mouse cursor working properly. Afterwards the game appears to play fine with no major issues.

What I'm trying to find out is if there is anyway to fix the ability of adjusting the screen resolution in game so that its cleaned up some. This is for my wifes new Laptop its a Lenovo Ideapad Gaming 3 Amd Ryzen 5600H an Nvidia Geforce1650 (only in use if connected to screen via hdmi port otherwise has and onboard AMD APU) 120hz 1920x1080 display. Any assistance is greatly appreciated. On a side note I have a Lenovo legion 5 with a 3050ti and windows 11, no on board APU and this game ran beautifully right off the steam download no modifications needed

Hi. Sorry about the late post approval. Things are slow here, so I sometimes skip a few days.

Ok, first things first: are you using the Steam version of the game? Or one of the other versions?
I only have experience with running it from an original disc installation, but some of the others have tried Steam, etc.

Regarding resolution: the trick there is not to try and change it via dgVoodoo settings. You can edit the Data/Configuration/engine.cfg file to get custom resolutions. I run mine on 2560x1440 and it's fine.

The file in the attached zip should work for 1920x1080. The folder structure in the zip is correct.

Just be aware that if you go from full screen to windowed mode and back again it can screw up custom resolutions. It's one of the quirks of the game. The way around it is this:

a/ Once you load the custom resolution file - do NOT mess with resolution in game settings or dgVoodoo settings. It will say 640x480 in game settings, but that doesn't matter.

b/ If going from full screen to windowed, and back again, kicks the game into a genuine 640x480 - exit the game, reload the custom engine.cfg, then restart the game. This should work.

My custom locomotives - My custom cargo cars

Слава Україні! Героям слава!