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Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
Revision as of 20:52, 7 October 2021 by 2a01:e0a:3f2:bca0:f8f7:1515:9bd8:ce97 (talk) (Undo revision 1129343 by Alexknight (talk))

For the prequel, see Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit. For the 2010 game, see Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit.

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 cover
Developers
EA Seattle
Publishers
Electronic Arts
Engines
EAGL
Release dates
Windows October 21, 2002
Reception
Metacritic 73
Taxonomy
Modes Singleplayer, Multiplayer
Pacing Real-time
Perspectives First-person, Third-person
Controls Direct control
Genres Racing
Vehicles Automobile, Street racing
Art styles Realistic
Themes Contemporary
Series Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 on HowLongToBeat
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 on IGDB
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 guide on StrategyWiki
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 on MobyGames
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 on Wikipedia
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit
Subseries of Need for Speed
Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit 1998
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 2002
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2010
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit Remastered 2020

Warnings

SafeDisc retail DRM does not work on Windows Vista and later (see Availability for affected versions).
GameSpy online services have been shut down (see Network for solutions).

Key points

Based on the GameCube/Xbox version of the game rather than the Black Box PlayStation 2 version.[1]

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
SafeDisc retail DRM does not work on Windows Vista and later (see above for affected versions).

Essential improvements

Patches

Patch 242 is the final patch for the game. Adds multiplayer encryption and improves Force Feedback behavior and compatibility.

Skip intro videos

Instructions[4]
  1. Go to <path-to-game>\movies\
  2. Delete or rename hp2E.mad, logoE.mad, and logoS.mad to anything else.
  3. Create three empty files with the above filenames in the folder.

Notes

This tweak will only work if a No-CD patch is used, as otherwise the game will simply load the movies directly from the game CD.
Alternatively, simply starting the game with the "-nofrustration" argument will skip the title screen and intro videos.

Increase distance in which particles fade out

Increases the distance in which particles are rendered. It will be most noticeable in the water effect not fading from waterfalls as their distance increases.
Instructions[citation needed]
  1. Go to the "EAGL" folder in the game directory.
  2. Open the "LOD" file with notepad.
  3. In the "[max]" section, increase the values for "worldParticle.farFadeIn" and "worldParticle.farFadeOut". It can go to values as high as 999, but keep "worldParticle.farFadeIn" slightly lower than "worldParticle.farFadeOut".

Crash/lock-up on launch or Low/Choppy frame-rate

Game may crash immediately after entering full-screen/after it creates its application window, or frame-rate may be around 20-30 FPS and lack V-sync.
Use DirectInput low frame rate fix[5]

Use the DirectInput FPS Fix.

(Alternative) Unplug or disable incompatible HID devices[6]

If the above doesn't work:

  1. Unplug any USB HID devices that are not needed to play the game (Xbox controllers, media remotes, desktop case fan speed controllers etc). For laptops unplug all external USB HID devices such as external mice and keyboards.
  2. Go to Device Manager and, under the "Human Interface Devices" section, disable any remaining "HID-compliant vendor-defined device" and "HID-compliant consumer control devices" (they can be reenabled later)
  3. Game should now launch and work properly. By reenabling and replugging devices and testing the game after each change the cuplrit HID device could be found. Alienware AlienFX controller seems to be one of them.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows %USERPROFILE%\Documents\EA Games\Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2\

Save game data location

System Location
Windows %USERPROFILE%\Documents\EA Games\Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2\

Video

Video settings.
Video settings.

Graphics feature State WSGF Notes
Widescreen resolution
Use HP2WSFix.[7][8]
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen
Use HP2WSFix.[7][8]
4K Ultra HD
Use HP2WSFix.[7][8]
Field of view (FOV)
Windowed
See Windowed.
Borderless fullscreen windowed
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anti-aliasing (AA)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Vertical sync (Vsync)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
60 FPS
120+ FPS
Uncapped. Physics and animations are capped at 60 FPS.
High dynamic range display (HDR)

Windowed

Enable windowed[9]
  1. Go to the configuration file(s) location.
  2. Edit rendercaps.ini.
  3. Change Fullscreen=1 to Fullscreen=0.

Input

Input settings
Input settings

To enable Force Feedback on XInput controller, see Force feedback driver.

Audio

Audio settings
Audio settings

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Menu Music, Race Music, Player Engine, Sound Effects, Voice
Surround sound
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
EAX support

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
French
Slovak
Fan translation, download.

Network

Multiplayer types

Type Native Players Notes
Local play
LAN play
8
Online play
8 GameSpy services have been shut down;[10] see GameSpy for workarounds.
Asynchronous multiplayer

Connection types

Issues fixed

Add high resolutions to options menu

By default, the resolution options are limited. Any resolution supported by the graphics driver can be added by making the following change to rendercaps.ini.
  1. Go to C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\My files\EA Games\Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2\rendercaps.ini
  2. Set LimitResolution=1 to LimitResolution=0

Game not rendering fog on modern systems

Note: If HP2WSFix is used, this step is not necessary as d3d8to9 is integrated with it.[11]

Even after setting "World Detail" at maximum, the game won't render fog on modern systems.

Go here and download the d3d8.dll and place it in Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2 folder and the d3d8.dll will load d3d8to9 and convert DX8 API calls to Direct3D 9 ones.

Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2 (exception error)

Error is "The thread attempted to read from or write to a virtual address for which it does not have the appropriate access."
Copy the following directories from the CD to <path-to-game>\[citation needed]
  1. actors
  2. AI
  3. Audio
  4. Cars
  5. Movies
  6. Particle
  7. Tracks

Game crashing with more than 1 hi-poly car

This issue can be fixed by installing HP2WSFix as the fix is integrated along with the widescreen fix.[11]

White screen after installing HP2WSFix

Remove the global.ini file from the main game directory.[citation needed]

DualShock 4 support

To use a DualShock 4 with the gas and brake axis, the .ini needs to be tweaked.
Tweak[citation needed]

Replace definitions.ini and defaults.ini with the ones from here.

Poor performance on high resolutions

May be fixed copying the game directory outside "Program Files" folder, so it can be run without administrator rights.[citation needed]

Settings not saved on exit

Profile must be saved manually from the Options menu after configuring settings, else they won't be saved on game exit.[citation needed]

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
Direct3D 8.1
Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows

Middleware

Middleware Notes
Multiplayer GameSpy

Modifications

System requirements

Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 98, ME, 2000, XP
Processor (CPU) Intel Pentium III 450 MHz
AMD Athlon 500 MHz
System memory (RAM) 128 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 1.2 GB
Video card (GPU) Direct3D compatible
16 MB of VRAM


Notes

  1. SafeDisc retail DRM does not work on Windows 10[2] 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.[3]

References