well, for what i know of that code 'dd_gbl' should never be null. If it's NULL you may have a huge integrity problem in ddraw ;(
Have anyone the same behavior ?
I never saw this. But well, a '+ddraw' trace could only help us debug the issue (because just a GDB backtrace is usually not enough to understand when and where the problem occured).
So could you (nor Raphaƫl :-) ) send to the list if not too big or to me in private a +ddraw log up to the point where the game crashes.
Lionel