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Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets cover
Developers
KnowWonder
Mac OS (Classic) Westlake Interactive
macOS (OS X) Westlake Interactive
Publishers
Electronic Arts
Mac OS (Classic) Aspyr Media
macOS (OS X) Aspyr Media
Engines
Unreal Engine 1
Release dates
Windows November 5, 2002
Mac OS (Classic) April 10, 2003
macOS (OS X) August 15, 2005
Reception
Metacritic 77
Taxonomy
Perspectives Third-person
Controls Direct control
Genres Platform
Series Harry Potter
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets on HowLongToBeat
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets on IGDB
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets guide on StrategyWiki
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets on MobyGames
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets on Wikipedia
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone 2001
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets 2002
Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup 2003
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban 2004
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire 2005
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix 2007
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince 2009
Lego Harry Potter (series)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 2010
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 2011
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them VR Experience 2018
Hogwarts Legacy 2023
Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions TBA

Warnings

SafeDisc retail DRM does not work on Windows Vista and later (see Availability for affected versions).
The Mac OS X version of this game does not work on Mac OS X Lion (version 10.7) or later due to the removal of support for PowerPC apps.

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
Disc check (requires the CD/DVD in the drive to play)
CD key
SafeDisc v2 DRM[Note 1]
Windows
Mac OS
SafeDisc retail DRM does not work on Windows Vista and later (see above for affected versions).
A demo is also available.

Essential improvements

Graphical Tweaks

Unreal Engine DirectX 11 Renderer

A fork of Kentie's Direct3D 10 renderer that adds more graphical features.
Run games at HD resolution.
Improved lighting.
Adds ambient occlusion, screen space reflections and higher quality HDR post-processing.
Places a watermark in the bottom right, and overrides your ciplboard with a link to the developer's PayPal. Follow these instructions to disable the watermark and remove the PayPal link from being inserted into your clipboard.
Installing DirectX 11 renderer
  1. Download the newest version of D3D11 renderer that supports Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (also referred to as Harry Potter 2).
  2. Open downloaded archive.
  3. Copy files from Common directory to <path-to-game>\System.
  4. Copy files from Harry Potter 2 directory to <path-to-game>\System.
  5. From <path-to-game>\System directory delete files SoftDrv.dll, SoftDrv.int, D3DDrv.dll and D3DDrv.int.
  6. Edit <path-to-game>\System\Default.ini with text editor and find a section [Engine.Engine].
  7. Set GameRenderDevice to D3D11Drv.D3D11RenderDevice (i.e. GameRenderDevice=D3D11Drv.D3D11RenderDevice).
  8. Set WindowedRenderDevice to D3D11Drv.D3D11RenderDevice.
  9. Set RenderDevice to D3D11Drv.D3D11RenderDevice.
  10. To disable the watermark and clipboard override, add the following text to the bottom of the file:
    [D3D11Drv.D3D11RenderDevice]
    SupportMETextEnabled=False
  11. Navigate to %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Harry Potter II and delete Game.ini.

DirectX 9 renderer for Stock HP2

A port of the Unreal Tournament DX9 driver, with fixes and HP2 specific implementations.
Fully compatible with modern systems.
Supports HD resolutions, anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, frame rate cap, v-sync, high res textures, DXT textures, and more.
Better performance than the DX11 renderer.
Installing DirectX 9 renderer
  1. Download the mod and follow the installation instructions.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Harry Potter II\
Mac OS (Classic)
macOS (OS X)

Save game data location

System Location
Windows %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Harry Potter II\Save\
Mac OS (Classic)
macOS (OS X)

Video settings

Launcher video settings.
Launcher video settings.
In-game options menu.
In-game options menu.

Template:Video settings

Widescreen resolution

Forcing a widescreen resolution without modifications cuts off the lower part of in-game menus.
If using the default DirectX7 renderer, the LegacyD3DResolutionHack or DGVoodoo2 is required to make popular resolutions higher than 2048x1536 work.
If using Windows scaling above 100%, part of the game will appear outside of the screen. To fix this reset scaling to 100%.
Use the widescreen mod
This mod shifts the menu to the left side of the screen, allowing all options ot be fully displayed.
  1. Download the Widescreen mod and extract hgame.u to <path-to-game>\System\.
  2. Go to configuration file(s) location.
  3. Edit Game.ini.
  4. Set the FullscreenViewportX and FullscreenViewportY values to your desired resolution.
  5. Optionally, edit User.ini and set the DesiredFOV value to compensate: 100 for the 16:10 aspect ratio, and 105 for 16:9.

Notes

Alternatively, you can use the Harry Potter Settings Utility to set the resolution and FOV without having to manually edit the configuration files.

Input settings

Template:Input settings

Audio settings

Launcher audio settings.
Launcher audio settings.

Template:Audio settings

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
Czech
Only available in Czech & Slovak retail release.
Danish
Only available in Danish retail release.
Dutch
French
Italian
Korean
Only available in Korean retail release.
Polish
Only available in Polish retail release.
Portuguese
Russian
Only available in Russian retail release.
Spanish
Swedish
Only available in Swedish retail release.

Issues fixed

All bugs can be fixed with dgVoodoo2 (UsePrecache should still be set to False in Game.ini when using DGVoodoo2).

Certain transparent effects and textures are not rendered properly

Edit configuration file
  1. Go to the configuration file(s) location.
  2. Open Game.ini.
  3. Change the UsePrecache= value under [D3DDrv.D3DRenderDevice] to False.
(alternative) Install transparency fix

Extract this fix into the game's System folder.

Changing the brightness setting in the pause menu will reset the textures which will also solve the problem (temporarily).


Low frame rate on Windows 8

Download the DDRAW FPS Fix and put it in <path-to-game>/System[3]

Low frame rate on Windows 10

In the pause menu of the game, open the video settings (represented by a yellow eye icon in the bottom right corner). Change the colour depth to 32 bit, this should solve the issue.[4]

Camera spinning/Harry constantly walking backwards with Xbox 360 or Xbox One Controller

# Go to the configuration file(s) location.
  1. Open Game.ini.
  2. Locate [WinDrv.WindowsClient] section and change DeadZoneRUV=False to DeadZoneRUV=True and DeadZoneXYZ=False to DeadZoneXYZ=True.

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
Direct3D 7 DirectX 9 is hackable via dgVoodoo2, DirectX 9 by metallicafan212, Direct3D 11 support is hackable using Unreal DirectX11 Renderer (with features like tessellation, SSR or etc, but with some bugs and slow rendering in a some areas).
Software renderer
ExecutablePPC16-bit 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows
macOS (OS X)
Mac (classic) is only Power PC. Mac (OSX) is Intel 32bits
Mac OS (Classic)

Middleware

Middleware Notes
Audio OpenAL

System requirements

Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 95
Processor (CPU) Intel Pentium II 300 MHz
System memory (RAM) 64 MB (95, 98)
128 MB (2000, XP)
Hard disk drive (HDD) 600 MB
Video card (GPU) 4 MB (Software rendering)
8 MB (Hardware rendering) of VRAM
DirectX 8.0a compatible
Supported chipsets: ATI Rage 128, ATI Radeon series, Nvidia RIVA TNT, Nvidia RIVA TNT2 (Ultra), Nvidia GeForce series, Matrox G400, Matrox G450, Matrox G550, Matrox Parhelia, Power VR Kyro I & II, SiS 315
Mac OS
Minimum
Operating system (OS) 9.1
Processor (CPU) PowerPC G3
System memory (RAM) 128 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD)

Notes

  1. SafeDisc retail DRM does not work on Windows 10[1] or Windows 11 and is disabled by default on Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 when the KB3086255 update is installed.[2]

References