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Chrome

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games

This page is for the 2003 shooter game. For the web browser, see List of games available on Chrome Web Store.

Chrome
Chrome cover
Developers
Techland
Publishers
Poland Techland
France, United Kingdom Gathering of Developers
Russia 1C Company
United States Strategy First
Digital Meridian4
Engines
Chrome Engine 2
Release dates
Windows June 16, 2003
Reception
Metacritic 69
Taxonomy
Monetization One-time game purchase
Modes Singleplayer, Multiplayer
Pacing Real-time
Perspectives First-person
Controls Direct control
Genres FPS, Shooter, Action, Stealth
Art styles Realistic
Themes Sci-fi, Space
Series Chrome
Chrome on IGDB
Chrome on MobyGames
Chrome on Wikipedia
Chrome
Chrome 2003
Chrome SpecForce 2005

Chrome is a singleplayer and multiplayer first-person FPS, shooter, action and stealth game in the Chrome series.

The game was re-released in 2004 as Advanced Battlegrounds: The Future of Combat (known in Europe as Chrome: Gold Edition).[1] It includes a level editor, detailed editor tutorial and Java source code that can be recompiled to change the game logic and settings.

The Unofficial Patch is available which provides easy ways to adjust for widescreen, FOV etc.

General information

Steam Community Discussions

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
Disc check (requires the CD/DVD in the drive to play)
SecuROM 4 DRM in the English release.
StarForce 3 DRM[Note 1] in the Russian release.
Custom DRM in the Polish release.
Windows
Steam (unavailable)
Icon overlay.png
Windows
Amazon.com (unavailable)
DRM details are not known
Windows
Amazon.com (unavailable)
Icon overlay.png
Windows
GamersGate (unavailable)
DRM-free after installation (requires an internet connection during installation)
Windows
StarForce DRM for this game does not work on modern versions of Windows (see above for affected versions).
This game is no longer available digitally.

Demo

A demo can be downloaded from here or here.

Essential improvements

Patches

Install patch 1.1.3.0_v2, followed by patch 1.1.3.0_v2 to 1.2.0.0. Advanced Battlegrounds: The Future of Combat (Chrome: Gold Edition) is already patched to latest version.

Visual fidelity (unofficial patch)

A set of widescreen, FOV, HUD and text rendering fixes for Chrome and Chrome SpecForce. Enables native support for higher resolutions and Hor+ FOV. Also includes files to disable mouse acceleration, LOD switching and increase draw distance. Download from Mod DB.

Limit FPS

The FPS should be limited to 60, otherwise problems can arise, like "slippery/sliding" movement.[6][7][8] Use a tool like Rivatuner Statistics Server or the graphics driver's control panel, and apply a 60 FPS limit on ChromeSingle.exe. Alternatively, force VSync if it leads to the same outcome for the monitor.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\Data\[Note 2]
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/46420/pfx/[Note 3]
AudioSettings.scr contains audio settings.
Controller.scr contains mouse and controller settings.
VideoSettings.scr contains video settings.
UserControls.scr contains key mapping settings.

Save game data location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\Save\[Note 2]
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/46420/pfx/[Note 3]
Each save uses multiple files.
There can only be 4 quicksaves and 10 manual saves at a time.

Save game cloud syncing

System Native Notes
Steam Cloud

Video

Video settings.
Video settings.

Graphics feature State WSGF Notes
Widescreen resolution
Use Unofficial Patch or see Widescreen resolution.
Multi-monitor
Use Unofficial Patch or see Widescreen resolution.
Ultra-widescreen
Use Unofficial Patch or see Widescreen resolution.
4K Ultra HD
Use Unofficial Patch or see Widescreen resolution.
Field of view (FOV)
Use Unofficial Patch or see Field of view (FOV).
Windowed
Borderless fullscreen windowed
Run in window mode and use Borderless Gaming.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
Set in <path-to-game>\Data\VideoSettings.scr or use the unofficial patch to enable it in the options menu. Force in the graphics card control panel for the highest quality.
Anti-aliasing (AA)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
High-fidelity upscaling
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Vertical sync (Vsync)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
60 FPS
120+ FPS
No frame rate cap. Game was designed to be played at 60~ FPS. Excessively high frame rates (over 200) result in delayed player movement responsiveness and sliding on terrain. See limit FPS.[6][7][8]
High dynamic range display (HDR)
The below workarounds for widescreen and FOV are unnecessary when using the Unofficial Patch which already incorporates these options.

Widescreen resolution

Set resolution in VideoSettings.scr[9]
  1. Open <path-to-game>\Data\VideoSettings.scr.
  2. Change the Resolution values to the desired width and height values.
  3. Save the changes and close the file.

Notes

The Unofficial patch makes the game support all available resolutions and displays them in the options menu. It also fixes stretching of some HUD elements.

Field of view (FOV)

Instructions[10]
  1. Open <path-to-game>\code.pak with 7-Zip or similar.
  2. Extract CameraPlayer.class.
  3. Open CameraPlayer.class using dirtyJOE(Java editor) and in the constant pool tab, find and replace the following values:
    • 82 - first person perspective
    • 60 - third person perspective
    • 75 - vehicles, sniper, binoculars, etc
  4. Drop the edited file inside <path-to-game>\code.pak to replace the existing file.

Notes

Edited files can be downloaded from WSGF.
<path-to-game>\codenet.pak contains settings for the multiplayer and the same method can be used.
The Unofficial patch changes the FOV from Vert- to Hor+ and gives more options to edit different FOV settings.

Input

Input settings.
Input settings.

Keyboard and mouse State Notes
Remapping
Mouse acceleration
On by default. The Unofficial patch includes a recompiled Player.class that disables it (put it inside <path-to-game>\code.pak and <path-to-game>\codenet.pak).
Mouse sensitivity
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support
Controller types

Audio

Audio settings.
Audio settings.

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Music and FX.
Surround sound
5.0
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
EAX support
Disabled by default.
Royalty free audio

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
German
Original German release is censored but can be made uncut, see below.
Hungarian
Local retail version only, but can be downloaded from here. Also a fan translation is available here.
Polish
Russian
Available here.
Spanish

Uncensor German 2003 release

The version released in Germany in 2003 is censored (blood, bullet wounds and ragdolls removed). The German version of the Gold Edition, which was released in Germany in 2005, is uncut.[11]
Remove censorship[11]
  1. Install the German Patch 1.1.3.0.
  2. Install the International Patch 1.2.0.0.
  3. Open <path-to-game>\Data\LocalizedStrings.scr and change Locale("German") into Locale("english"). Now the censorship is removed.

Network

Multiplayer types

Type Native Players Notes
LAN play
32
Online play
32

Connection types

VR support

3D modes State Notes
vorpX
G3D
User created game profile, see vorpx forum profile introduction.

Issues

Advanced Battlegrounds installation problem

The installation process fails with "Error 2711" message.
The game refuses to install if the original Chrome is already installed on the computer[12]
  1. Uninstall the original Chrome.
  2. Install Advanced Battlegrounds.

Error 1309 when installing from disk ("Error reading from file...")

CD 2 has to replace CD 1 in the same drive
  1. Start by inserting/mounting only disk 1.
  2. After installation from disk 1 is finished, eject it and put disk 2 into the same drive (same letter) to finish installation.

Notes

Don't put/mount both CDs in different drives or at the same time.

Environmental sound (rain etc.) disappears

Quicksave and reload

Can no longer shoot or jump

Drop weapon
  • Drop the current weapon (assign a key to it in the options menu) and then pick it back up, it should fix the problem.

Problems with several GPUs (MSHybrid / Nvidia Optimus)

On a system that runs both an integrated Intel GPU and a dedicated GPU (with a system like MSHybrid / Nvidia Optimus), the game might steadfastly refuse to recognize the dedicated GPU, even when set in the GPU control center.
Deactivate the Intel GPU

Notes

The integrated GPU has to be deactivated (set to "Discrete" on MSHybrid) for the game to use the dedicated GPU.

CScriptManager::RegisterGSClassHierarchy(..) error and crash on startup

Rename/remove offending files[13]
  1. Navigate to <path-to-game>\Data\Mutator.
  2. Rename (append .bak) or remove all files in this directory.

Notes:

Only versions 1.1.3.0_v2 and 1.2.0.0 are affected.

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
Direct3D 8
Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows
Initial game version has just Chrome.exe, patch 1.2.0.0 splits it up into ChromeSingle.exe (singleplayer) and ChromeNet.exe (multiplayer).

System requirements

Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 98, ME, 2000, XP
Processor (CPU) Intel Pentium III 800 MHz
System memory (RAM) 256 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 2 GB
Video card (GPU) Nvidia GeForce 2 MX
ATI Radeon 7000 chipset
32 MB of VRAM
DirectX 8.1 compatible


Notes

  1. This version of StarForce DRM does not work on Windows Vista or later.[2][3][4][5] For supported versions of Windows the StarForce driver may need to be updated manually using SFUPDATE.
  2. 2.0 2.1 When running this game without elevated privileges (Run as administrator option), write operations against a location below %PROGRAMFILES%, %PROGRAMDATA%, or %WINDIR% might be redirected to %LOCALAPPDATA%\VirtualStore on Windows Vista and later (more details).
  3. 3.0 3.1 File/folder structure within this directory reflects the path(s) listed for Windows and/or Steam game data (use Wine regedit to access Windows registry paths). Games with Steam Cloud support may store data in ~/.steam/steam/userdata/<user-id>/46420/ in addition to or instead of this directory. The app ID (46420) may differ in some cases. Treat backslashes as forward slashes. See the glossary page for details.

References