The dynamical cluster-decay model (DCM), using the well-known pocket formula of Blocki et al. [Ann. Phys. (NY) 105, 427 (1977)] for nuclear proximity potential, is extended to the use of various other nuclear proximity potentials with effects of deformations included up to hexadecapole (β 4 ) and "compact" orientations taken for both coplanar ( = 0) and non-coplanar ( = 0) configurations of nuclei for the first time. The other nuclear proximity potentials used are those derived from the Skyrme-energy-density-formalism-based semiclassical extended Thomas Fermi method under frozen density approximation for a compound nucleus, using SIII and GSkI Skyrme forces. This is in addition to extending the Blocki et al. interaction to "compact" and non-coplanar nuclei. Application of the method is made to the study of the decay of the hot and rotating compound nucleus 164 Yb * , formed in the heavy-ion reaction 64 Ni + 100 Mo at both below-and above-barrier energies. For the best fitted measured evaporation residue cross-sections, consisting of x neutrons (x = 1-4), the interesting result of including the degree of freedom is to increase the neck-length parameter of the model which results in the decrease of reaction time as well as the "barrier-lowering" parameter responsible for fusion hindrance effect. In other words, the fusion hindrance effect, a built-in property of DCM, though different for different nuclear interactions, reduces for the non-coplanar nuclei, and this reduction is more at higher center-of-mass energies. In the case of fusion-fission, only the CASCADE cross sections are available, which, when fitted simultaneously to another neck-length parameter, result in different components of a fusion-fission cross section for different nuclear interactions, including also the possibility of quasifission at the highest energy and the symmetric fission alone, that is, no intermediate-mass fragments, etc. The non-coplanar degree of freedom also plays an important role in changing the constituents of the fusion-fission cross section significantly, say, from intermediate and heavy-mass fragments plus the symmetric fission to simply the intermediate-mass fragments plus near-symmetric fission. This situation calls for the data for fusion-fission cross sections.