https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8051
--- Comment #138 from Luke Horwell luke_horwell@hotmail.co.uk --- It seems there are far less severe rendering glitches when using the latest game version (EP9 / Mansion & Garden Stuff / © 2008) - Here's another video showing it in action, both with SM2 and SM3: https://youtu.be/h9rZPdNLd6I
I suppose the rendering engine has changed since it's initial release back in 2004 as testing so far shows. Granted, the game can crash at unpredictable moments, and there are a couple more fixmes to see. This is the best we/I have seen this game play so far under Wine. It's definitely more playable now but will forever stay garbage in AppDB until there's changes upstream that won't negatively affect other games.
So, to get this game to work under vanilla Wine: For starters, perhaps there could be a registry key that can override the fixed value of 256 shaders? Then, possibly look into implementing "dummy code" for the undocumented validator interface (d3d9:uisv_*) as demonstrated by the patch and explained in comment 124?
For reference, I have attached a text file pinpointing the FIXMEs the game desires.