The points re Clear and render sound all good, now bake them into a test!
E.g. 1) clear the ddraw render target using ddraw directly to color 12345678 2) invoke d3drm::clear 3) check that the color in the target was changed 4) clear with ddraw directly to some other color 5) invoke d3drm::render 6) check that the color was unchanged
Or with less direct ddraw involvement: 1) set background color 12345678 2) d3drm::clear 3) check color in ddraw surface 4) set background color deadbeef 5) d3drm::render 6) check color in ddraw surface
Copy some of the ddraw test helpers if they are not there already. Don't bother sharing the test helper function code though.