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Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K. 2

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K. 2
Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K. 2 cover
Developers
Ritual Entertainment
Mac OS (Classic) Contraband Entertainment
Linux Loki Software
macOS (OS X) The Omni Group
Publishers
Gathering of Developers
Engines
id Tech 3
Release dates
Windows August 4, 2000
Mac OS (Classic) August 4, 2000
Linux November 4, 2000
macOS (OS X) October 31, 2001
Reception
Metacritic 78
IGDB 70
Taxonomy
Monetization One-time game purchase
Modes Singleplayer
Pacing Real-time
Perspectives Third-person
Controls Direct control
Genres Action, Shooter, TPS
Art styles Realistic
Themes Cyberpunk, Sci-fi
Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K. 2 on HowLongToBeat
Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K. 2 on IGDB
Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K. 2 on MobyGames
Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K. 2 on Wikipedia

Warnings

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

Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K. 2 is a singleplayer third-person action, shooter and TPS game.

General information

Ritualistic - A fan site for all Ritual Entertainment games.
Heavy Metal Magazine Fan Page - A fan site for the Heavy Metal comics and related products (18+ only, NSFW).

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
Disc check (requires the CD/DVD in the drive to play)
SafeDisc DRM[Note 1].
Windows
Mac OS
Linux
SafeDisc retail DRM does not work on Windows Vista and later (see above for affected versions).
Owners of the Loki Software Linux port of the game should consider using the installer from LIfLG in order to run the game on a newer system. It is currently in beta.

Demo

Demo is available (Mirror 1 / Mirror 2).

Essential improvements

Patches

Install the latest patch(1.02), available here or here.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\fakk\[Note 2]
Mac OS (Classic)
macOS (OS X)
Linux $HOME/.loki/fakk2/fakk/
This game does not follow the XDG Base Directory Specification on Linux.

Save game data location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\fakk\save\[Note 2]
Mac OS (Classic)
macOS (OS X)
Linux $HOME/.loki/fakk2/fakk/save/

Video

In-game general video/audio settings.
In-game general video/audio settings.
In-game advanced video/audio settings.
In-game advanced video/audio settings.

Graphics feature State WSGF Notes
Widescreen resolution
See Widescreen resolution.
Multi-monitor
See Widescreen resolution.
Ultra-widescreen
See Widescreen resolution.
4K Ultra HD
See Widescreen resolution. Menus and HUD are very small.
Field of view (FOV)
See Field of view (FOV).
Windowed
Can be enabled with -windowed command line.
Borderless fullscreen windowed
Run in window mode and use a borderless tool.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anti-aliasing (AA)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Vertical sync (Vsync)
Enable the console in the advanced options, open it with (~) and type r_swapinterval 1 to enable Vsync
60 FPS
120+ FPS
Capped at 90 FPS.
High dynamic range display (HDR)
See the glossary page for potential alternatives.

Widescreen resolution

Custom resolution can be set in the configuration files, but also requires a modified gamex86.dll for Hor+ FOV.
Instructions[3]
  1. See the WSGF entry and download Heavy_Metal_Fakk2_widescreen.7z.
  2. Open the archive, select and extract the folder with resolution you want.
  3. Copy the files in the extracted folder to <path-to-game>\fakk and replace the existing files.

Field of view (FOV)

See the WSGF entry for a permanent FOV method.
Set with console[3]
  1. Run the game.
  2. Open the console and enter FOV ### (replace ### with the FOV you want).

Notes

FOV set through the console needs to be set again when starting the game, changing levels and after some cut-scenes.

Level of detail

The Curve detail slider is reversed. Moving the slider to the left increases quality, and moving it to the right reduces it.[4]
Model detail setting is available in the video options menu, but it can be overridden to force the game to render highest quality models all the time.
Instructions[5]
  1. Run the game at least once, so the configuration file gets created.
  2. Go to <path-to-game>\fakk.
  3. Open config.cfg with a text editor.
  4. Add lines seta r_lodbias "-2" and seta r_lodcurveerror "10000" in the Cvars section.
  5. Save your changes and run the game.

Notes

You may have to run the game in administrator mode for the config file to be created and the new settings to be applied.

Input

In-game control settings.
In-game control settings.

Audio

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Surround sound
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
EAX support
A3D 1.0, EAX 2[6][7] (through Miles Sound System[8])
Royalty free audio

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
French
German
Italian
Russian
Spanish

VR support

Issues fixed

Windows

Top screenshot shows rendering issues when "Use Vertex Lighting" option is checked and HUD missing effects.
Top screenshot shows rendering issues when "Use Vertex Lighting" option is checked and HUD missing effects.

Black screen on launch

Caused because sometimes installing the game doesn't copy the language files.
Instructions
  1. Open the game CD, go to the directory install\fakk and open the folder corresponding to your language.
  2. Copy pak1.pk3.
  3. Go to the game installation folder, open fakk and paste pak1.pk3 there.

Unstable framerate and stuttering

This performance issue can occur with newer graphics cards supporting OpenGL 4.0 and newer, it is most common on Windows Vista and Windows 7. Since the game is based on the Quake 3 engine and is using the same or a similar OpenGL version, the graphics card driver will handle the game correctly if it thinks that it is Quake 3.
Instructions[9]
  1. Go to the game installation folder and rename fakk2.exe to quake3.exe.

Glitched skybox and missing visual effects

If Use Vertex Lighting is checked in the advanced video options menu the maps will be missing some shadows, lights and textures(windows), and in the later levels the skybox will be glitched.
Instructions[10]
  1. Go to the advanced options menu.
  2. Uncheck Use Vertex Lighting.

Missing HUD effects

Health and water bar are rendered without effects.
Instructions[10]
  1. Go to the game installation folder and rename fakk2.exe to quake3.exe.

Menus/HUD are very small

Installation
  1. Download the Larger HUD and Menu mod.
  2. Place z_0_kuzja.pk3 into <path-to-game>\fakk.

ReShade does not load

Rename opengl32.dll to dinput.dll.

Linux

No sound

This happens due to the fact the game uses OSS for sound output only.
General[citation needed]
The software is not updated frequently.

Install the osspd package (Some distros like ArchLinux refers the package as ossp) and enable/start the osspd/osspd.service service.

If using PulseAudio[citation needed]

Run the game with padsp command (It is included with main PulseAudio package, if not, look for pulseaudio-utils)

If using ALSA[citation needed]
  1. Install alsa-oss package.
  2. Load the following kernel modules as root with modprobe command:
    • snd-seq-oss
    • snd-pcm-oss
    • snd-mixer-oss
  3. Run the game with aoss -32 (On a 32-bit system, just use aoss).

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
OpenGL 1.1
ExecutablePPC16-bit 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows
macOS (OS X)
Linux
Mac OS (Classic)

Middleware

Middleware Notes
Audio Miles Sound System, OpenAL OSS, Linux only
Interface SDL

Bonus level

A short bonus level is included with the game, that shows various enemies and animations.
Instructions[10]
  1. Press ~ to bring down the console (if the console is not enabled go to the advanced options menu and enable it).
  2. Type "map zoo"(without the quotation marks) and press Enter to play the map.

Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K. 2: Retextured (HD Textures)

Original game textures upscaled with neural networks. Download on ModDB

Between Heaven And Hell

Unofficial expansion pack by former Ritual Entertainment level designer. Contains three large, high quality complex maps with custom music. Unfortunately the rest of the planned twelve maps are not available.

System requirements

Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 95, NT 4.0 SP3
Processor (CPU) Intel Pentium II 300 MHz
System memory (RAM) 64 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 150 MB
Video card (GPU) DirectX 7.0 compatible
Linux
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 2.2.x Linux kernel
Processor (CPU) Intel Pentium II 300 MHz
System memory (RAM) 64 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 400 MB
Video card (GPU) OpenGL compatible
Other OSS compatible sound and glibc-2.1


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]
  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).

References