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Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

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Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone cover
Developers
KnowWonder
Mac OS (Classic) Aspyr Media
macOS (OS X) Aspyr Media
Publishers
Electronic Arts
Russia 1C-SoftClub
OS X Aspyr Media
Engines
Unreal Engine 1
Release dates
Windows November 16, 2001
Mac OS (Classic) February 28, 2002
macOS (OS X) August 15, 2005
Reception
Metacritic 65
Taxonomy
Monetization One-time game purchase
Modes Singleplayer
Pacing Real-time
Perspectives Third-person
Controls Direct control
Genres Adventure, Platform, Puzzle
Art styles Realistic
Themes Contemporary, Fantasy
Series Harry Potter
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone on HowLongToBeat
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone on IGDB
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone guide on StrategyWiki
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone on MobyGames
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone 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.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is a singleplayer third-person adventure, platform and puzzle game in the Harry Potter series.

It was released as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in North America. The US version is an updated build of the game which contains minor differences.[1][2]

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).
This game is not available digitally.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

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

Save game data location

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

Video

In-game options menu.
In-game options menu.

Graphics feature State WSGF Notes
Widescreen resolution
Only 4:3 aspect ratio is properly supported. See Widescreen resolution.
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen
4K Ultra HD
See Widescreen resolution.
Field of view (FOV)
90º by default. See Field of view (FOV).
Windowed
Use -windowed command line argument or edit the StartupFullscreen value under [WinDrv.WindowsClient] in %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Harry Potter\HP.ini.
Borderless fullscreen windowed
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
Use the DirectX11 renderer.
Anti-aliasing (AA)
Use the DirectX11 renderer.
High-fidelity upscaling
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Vertical sync (Vsync)
Edit the UseVSync line in %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Harry Potter\User.ini. Note that the values here have been reversed: UseVSync=False actually turns Vsync on.
60 FPS and 120+ FPS
No frame rate cap, but very high framerates may break physics and sound in-game. A supposed fix can be found here. (Only changing 0AD7A33B to 00000000 in <path-to-game>/System/Engine.dll needed). This fix does not work on physics so it's still recommended to cap at 60 FPS. Game stutters when running above 60 FPS.
High dynamic range display (HDR)
The DirectX11 renderer only adds HDR Rendering.

Widescreen resolution

Use the Widescreen Mod by djbff[5]
  1. Download the widescreen patch here and extract it to <path-to-game>\System\.
  2. Edit %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Harry Potter\HP.ini.
  3. Set the FullscreenViewportX and FullscreenViewportY values to the desired resolution.

Notes

Vert-; FOV is cropped on resolutions wider than 4:3. Increase FOV to compensate, see Field of view (FOV).
Alternatively, you can use the Harry Potter Settings Utility to set the resolution and FOV without having to manually edit the configuration files.

Field of view (FOV)

Edit User.ini[6]
  1. Open %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Harry Potter\User.ini.
  2. Change the lines DesiredFOV=90.000000 and DefaultFOV=90.000000 to the desired values.
  3. Here are recommended values for a Hor+ image:
    • 5:4 - 86.3
    • 25:16 - 99.07
    • 16:10 - 100.39
    • 15:9 - 102.68
    • 16.9 - 106.26
    • 1.85:1 - 108.44
    • 21:9 (2560x1080) - 121.28
    • 21:9 (3440x1440) - 121.66
    • 43:18 - 121.66
    • 2.39:1 - 121.68
    • 21:9 (3840x1600) - 121.89
    • 2.76:1 - 128.43
    • 32:10 - 134.76
    • 32:9 - 138.89
    • 15:4 - 140.85
    • 12:3 - 143.13
    • 48:10 - 148.95
    • 45:9 - 150.14
    • 48:9 - 151.93

Unreal Engine DirectX 11 Renderer

A fork of Kentie's Direct3D 10 renderer that adds more graphical features.
Might cause some bugs and slow rendering in a quest with Filch.
It is compatible with both the Widescreen Patch and Mouse and Strafing Fix.[7]

DirectX 9 renderer for HP1

Supports many modern features.

ESRGAN Upscale Pack

Includes Widescreen title screens for International releases. Use with aforementioned Widescreen fix.

Input

Controller support

Lack of Deadzone in Right Thumbstick, makes camera spinning. See Camera spinning with Xbox 360 Controller.

Movement and Camera Improvement

Makes the camera, broom and character control system similar to Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
If applied to the EU edition, then four knight's armor in the main hall becomes broken as in the US edition versions.[8][citation needed]
A version merged with the Widescreen Fix available here.

Audio

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Music and Sound Effects/Speech.
Surround sound
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
EAX support
EAX 1.0.
Royalty free audio

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
Simplified Chinese
Czech
Local retail only.
Danish
Local retail only.
Dutch
Finnish
French
German
Italian
Japanese
Local retail only.
Norwegian
Local retail only.
Persian
Bootleg dubbing by صنوبر (امپرور) (Spruce-Emperor).
Polish
Local retail only.
Portuguese
[9]
Brazilian Portuguese
Local retail only.
Russian
Local retail only.
Slovak
Fan translation, download or US version download.
Spanish
Swedish
Local retail only.

Language reset after installing fanmade patches

Installing fanmade patches will usually reset the game's language to English in the European release. To change the language, enter the "System" folder on the CD. 3 folders named 0, 1 and 2 can be found there, containing the English (0), French (1) and German (2) language files respectively. In order to manually change the game back to the desired language, copy the desired folder somewhere and manually change all the file endings to .eng from .fre or .ger (i.e. HPcredits.ger renamed to → HPcredits.eng), then copy and paste the folder content into the "System" folder of the game's directory and overwrite everything.

Issues fixed

The game fails to start

The game requires a form of DRM, known as SafeDisc implemented in secdrv.sys. Unfortunately, it is a gaping security flaw, and evidently couldn't be fixed without being removed. Microsoft disabled it in Windows 7 and removed it in Windows 10. The following has been tested in Windows 7 to work.
Temporarily start SafeDisc service[citation needed]
  1. Go to <path-to-game>.
  2. Create a new Windows batch file (extension .bat) and insert the following:
@echo off
sc config secdrv start= demand & sc start secdrv
start System\HP.exe
timeout /NOBREAK /T 1
sc stop secdrv & sc config secdrv start= disabled
@echo on

Notes

This effectively reopens the security hole, starts the game, and then patches the vulnerability again after 1 second. You'll likely need to run the script in administrator mode.
You can experiment with different timings if 1 second turns out to be too short on your system.

Certain transparent effects and textures are not rendered properly

Edit configuration file
  1. Open %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Harry Potter\HP.ini.
  2. Change the UsePrecache= value under [D3DDrv.D3DRenderDevice] to False.
(Alternative) Use console code
  1. Open %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Harry Potter\HP.ini.
  2. Set the bDebugMode value to True.
  3. While in-game, press ~ to access the console.
  4. Type flush and press Enter to recache the textures.
(Alternative) Use dgVoodoo 2[citation needed]

Low frame rate on modern systems

Instructions[citation needed]

Notes

If you change resolution from the game settings, dgVoodoo 2 switches to windowed mode, and pressing Alt+ Enter might be required to get back to fullscreen. To avoid this, just force the desired resolution via dgVoodooCpl.exe. Keep in mind that the default game does not support very high resolutions.

Cutscenes are too fast cutting off characters voice lines/Physics bugs/Lumos Glitch/Screen stuttering

Cap the framerate to 60 FPS or set refresh rate to 60 Hz with Vsync enabled.[10][11]

Brightness slider not working

Instructions[citation needed]
  1. Use dgVoodoo 2 or DDrawCompat

Bugged sound in Quidditch Match

Might fix sound issues in other parts of the game aswell.
Instructions[citation needed]
  1. Use DDrawCompat

Camera spinning with Xbox 360 Controller

Instructions[12]
  1. Open %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Harry Potter\HP.ini.
  2. Locate [WinDrv.WindowsClient] section and change DeadZoneRUV=False to DeadZoneRUV=True.

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
Direct3D 7 11 with the DirectX11 renderer mod.
Software renderer
ExecutablePPC16-bit 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows
macOS (OS X)
Mac (classic) and Mac (OSX) are PowerPC.
Mac OS (Classic)

Colored intro mod

An ESRGAN Upscaled version is available here.

System requirements

Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 95
Processor (CPU) Intel Pentium II 266 MHz
AMD K6-2 266 MHz
System memory (RAM) 32 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 500 MB
Video card (GPU) 4 MB of VRAM
DirectX 8.0 compatible
Supported chipsets: Nvidia GeForce3, Nvidia GeForce2, Nvidia GeForce 256, Nvidia Riva TNT2, Nvidia Riva TNT, 3dfx Voodoo5, ATI Radeon, ATI Rage 128 Pro, ATI Rage 128, Matrox MGA-G550, Matrox MGA-G450, Matrox MGA-G400, Matrox MGA-G200, PowerVR3 Kyro II, PowerVR3 Kyro, S3 Savage2000
Mac OS
Minimum
Operating system (OS) 8.6
Processor (CPU) PowerPC G3
System memory (RAM) 96 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD)


Notes

  1. SafeDisc retail DRM does not work on Windows 10[3] 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.[4]

References