Overview
I made this guide primarily for myself so that I can still enjoy this awesome game on modern hardware. Sadly the game/engine has a multitude of problems on PC which were never fixed by the developers. Almost all of them are fixable now thanks to the fan community of the game. It should also be noted that many of the fixes only work on Nvidia and Inspektor.
List of problems and their fixes:
Low FPS:
This issue can be caused by several things. First off, most of the time it is caused by HID drivers which are basically drivers used by stuff like mouses and keyboards. Almost all things use these nowadays but the engine seems to have a problem with it. There is a easy fix by downloading a dll and copying it to the game exe place located directly in the Prototype game folder.
Download: www.mediafireXcom/file/m87juthswhbemfb/Prototype+Low+FPS+HID+Fix.zip/file
(Replace X with a dot “.”)
Another fix to improve FPS is to fix the Refreshrate. By default the game always runs at 100hz and this can cause bad performance or stuttering on some screens that can’t handle it. I also recommend to disable the ingame Vsync. Use Gsync/Freesync or if you don’t have that force Vsync with your driver. On top of that, to fix the Refreshrate, use Nvidia Inspektor, go to the Prototype game profile, scroll down to Prefered Refreshrate and write into the field the hz rate that your screen has like 60 or 144. Hit Enter and apply changes. Inspektor will automatically convert your number to a hex value.
A third fix, which should be applied after the other two I described before, is to set a FPS limit to 60. The game engine cannot run at more than 60FPS anyway and so far there is no fix to unlock FPS rates above that. However, when the game runs over 60FPS, it can cause mouse and performance issues so I recommend to lock the FPS to 60 for this game. This can also be done in Nvidia Inspektor exactly like before but now you search for the setting called Frame Rate Limiter V3. In that field select 60FPS and apply changes.
Resolution problems (such as unsupported Resolutions, Ultrawide):
If you have unsupported resolutions such as an ultrawide 21:9 or even 32:9, there is a way to force the game to run at desktop resolution via another dll file. Also it seems like that all GPUs with more than 2GB VRAM need this too since not all resolutions are available. I also hex edited the files already to support more memory for the stack allocator which supposedly can fix crashes and improve performance further. If you want the game to have the same FOV as vanilla, use the original FOV version. If you need High FOV (recommended for 21:9 screens or people who think vanilla isn’t big enough), use the High version. The highest version is only for multi monitor and 32:9 setups.
Download: [link]
(Replace X with a dot “.”)
Sound problems (Such as low volume, chipmunk, crackling):
The game has a multitude of sound problems since the engine enforces 48000khz and 5.1 audio, even on Stereo systems. First off you should make sure to change your audio device in Windows to 24bit 48000khz. Sometimes this can also be done in the sound card.
The next problem is usually low volume, which is caused by that mentioned 5.1 audio. Fixing this, is actually not that easy and I personally do not have this problem on my hardware right now since I upgraded my soundcard to a Creative G6, which supports its own surround audio anyway. This issue mostly occurs on onboard audio. To fix this on onboard sound chips, you would have to try downloading tools that change surround simulation. I only know of Razor Surround. As I said I dont need this and do not have this problem anymore but it might be worth a try if you suffer from this. Alternatively maybe try just pushing the volume to the max.
Anti Aliasing:
The game does support MSAA, however, this most of the time only works up to 2xMSAA on modern hardware since the game fails at recognizing the VRAM on modern GPUs. It is supposed to unlock 4xMSAA for GPUs with at least 2GB VRAM but since it cannot recognize this, it only allows 2xMSAA. No worries. There is a work around to get fancy Anti Aliasing that I actually figured out myself and didn’t read anywhere. First make sure that the ingame setting of the Anti Aliasing is at least on 2xMSAA since enhancing AA via Nvidia Inspektor only seems to work when it is on. After this go into Inspektor and search for the Antialising compability line. Change the number behind this to “0x004012C5”. Next on scroll down and search for “Antialiasing – Behaviour Flags”. Here change the setting to NONE. A bit below that search for “Antialiasing – Mode” and change this to “Enhance the application setting”. Further down is another needed setting named “Antialising – Transparency Supersampling”. Change this to 4x Sparse Grid Supersampling. Now the game should already look a lot less aliasy. If you want you can also add FXAA on top of this but this is preference. In Inspektor search for the setting “Toggle FXAA on or off” and set it to On.
Improved Texture Filtering:
And finally since we are here already, also inside Inspektor, look for “Anisotropic filtering mode” below the FXAA setting and change it to User-defined / Off and below that is “Anisotropic filtering setting” which you change to 16x. This will make the textures look a lot less blurry and they pop up less.
I realize all this Inspektor babbling of me was maybe a bit confusing, therefore I also made a screenshot with the values as example. Just make sure to use whatever hz value you need.
Screenshot:
Crashes:
It seems like the game crashes when your system has more than 8 CPU cores or threads. I am not quite sure actually, some people also say 4/8 CPUs have this as well. I personally have a 8 core only CPU without threads (i7 9700K). This is extremely uncommon though and almost all CPU have threads nowadays. I personally do not have any crash problems whatsoever due to the lack of hyperthreading but if you suffer from this there are some ways that supposedly helped other users. Such as changing the compatibility mode of the game exe to Windows 7.
Another fix is to limit the game to 8 cores by using the taskmanager but this doesnt seem to work with Steam it seems. Maybe the overlay is the reason and has to be disabled or Steam has to be generally launched with the following shortcut: “cmd /C start “steam” /affinity 0xff “C:Program Files (x86)Steamsteam.exe”. Alternatively you can try turning off hyperthreading in the BIOS. Sadly I cannot elaborate more on this since I dont have the problem but seen many complains.
And finally, if you have a AMD GPU, I cannot really help. Supposedly there is Radeon Pro but I don’t know if that still works. I haven’t had a AMD card for a long time.
Feel free to write any more findings or questions about the game into the comments, maybe we will find more fixes and I can add them.
You might also find more fixes here:
[link]