Prototype 2

Prototype 2

Developers
	Radical Entertainment
Publishers
	Activision
Engines
	Titanium
Release dates
Windows	July 24, 2012
Taxonomy
Series	Prototype

Prototype
Prototype	2009
Prototype 2	2012

Key points

Widely criticised as being a very poor PC port with a very large number of issues.

General information

Steam Community Discussions

Steam Forum thread with additional fixes - maintained by Suicidal.banana.

Availability

Source	DRM	Notes	Keys	OS
Retail
Humble Store
Steam
Amazon.com (unavailable)
Amazon.co.uk (unavailable)

All versions require Steam DRM.

DLC and expansion packs

Preorder DLCs "Bio-Bomb Butt Kicker" (GameStop exclusive) and "Hardened Steel Vehicle Armor" (BestBuy exclusive) are only available on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Name	Notes
RADNET Access Pack	Over 55 unique pieces of digital content accessible at launch at no extra charge. 20 Events Death-defying chopper races, intense combat scenarios plus more! 20 Challenges Compete with and beat your friends’ best scores! 5 Exclusive ‘Behind The Scenes’ Videos 5 Exclusive Sgt James Heller Mutation Abilities 5 Bonus Unlock Abilities for Sgt James Heller Alex Mercer Skin unlock – the ultimate fan reward
Colossal Mayhem Pack	Thermobaric Boomstick: All the force of a Thermobaric Ordinance in a compact rocket launcher form. Will need to be reloaded from Radnet Menu if dropped. Heller Test Subject Skin: Playable skin of Heller after his infection while being experimented on. Infected Heller Skin: Playable skin that gives Heller a zombified appearance and changes all of his dialogue to growls. Infantry Heller Skin: Playable Skin from before Heller was infected with Blacklight. Warp Vortex: Throw or kick an object and it causes a vortex of energy to pick up all light objects and enemies nearby. Will also work with the Bio-Bomb grenade. Anti Gravity Field: Anything Heller comes into contact with instantly loses its gravitational hold to the earth, including people. Air Time: Infinite gliding, never touch the ground again.
Excessive Force Pack	New Weapon: Viral Infector Grenade Launcher Armored Heller Skin Agile Armor Alex Mercer Skin Zombie Mercer Skin Shockwave Chaos Creator Mode Medusa's Wrath

Colossal Mayhem Pack and Excessive Force Pack never released on Steam, however the files were hidden within the PC release files.

Download community fix
Download the file unlocker here. Extract the files to <path-to-game>. Enjoy.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System	Location
Windows	%USERPROFILE%\Documents\Activision\Prototype 2\
Steam Play (Linux)	<Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/115320/pfx/

Save game data location

System	Location
Windows	%USERPROFILE%\Documents\Activision\Prototype 2\
Steam Play (Linux)	<Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/115320/pfx/

Save game cloud syncing

System	Native	Notes
Steam Cloud

Video

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.
Field of view (FOV)		See the WSGF entry.
Windowed		See Windowed.
Borderless fullscreen windowed		See Windowed.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
Anti-aliasing (AA)		Can be toggle between Off, Low and High.
Vertical sync (Vsync)
60 FPS
120+ FPS		Set refresh rate manually; see Widescreen resolution. Frame rate is capped at 500 FPS; However, all games using the Titanium engine are internally locked at 60 FPS and will duplicate previous frames to achieve higher frame rates. Only the mouse cursor updates above that. Mouse controls won't work properly above 60 FPS.

An in-depth look at the Prototype 2 settings is available on this GameSpy Port Authority article.

Widescreen resolution

Resolution is natively capped at 1920x1080 and 1920x1200.

Change resolution launch option
Right-click the game in the Steam Library. Choose Properties, then Set launch options. Add resolution=2560x1600@60 (resolution followed by refresh rate). Choose OK to save your changes.

Windowed

Force windowed[citation needed]
Download and run DxWnd. Click on Edit, then Add. Set the path to <path-to-game>\prototype2.exe. Set the window size to the in-game resolution. Set Desktop for borderless fullscreen windowed. Click on DirectX tab, set DirectX9. Click OK, then File and Save. Start the game and adjust in-game resolution.

Windowed launch option
Use the windowed command line argument. Notes Mouse cursor is always visible and not captured to window.

Force on Fullscreen

Force fullscreen

Download and run DxWnd. Click on Edit, then Add. Set the path to <path-to-game>\prototype2.exe. Under Generic tab, check Fullscreen only. Click on DirectX tab, set DirectX9. Click OK, then File and Save. This option is valid only if you own multiple displays and you want to run the game in Fullscreen on your middle monitor. Owning multiple displays on Windows 10 makes the game unable to run in Fullscreen (While moving the mouse fast, it will go out of the game boundaries and clicking will tab out the game). The above steps fixes the issue.

Input

Keyboard and mouse	State	Notes
Remapping
Mouse acceleration		See Mouse acceleration.
Mouse sensitivity
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support
Full controller support
Controller remapping		See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Controller sensitivity
Controller Y-axis inversion

Controller types

XInput-compatible controllers
Xbox button prompts
Impulse Trigger vibration

DualShock 4 controllers		See the glossary page for potential workarounds.

Generic/other controllers

Additional information
Button prompts
Controller hotplugging
Haptic feedback
Simultaneous controller+KB/M

Mouse acceleration

Mouse acceleration is tied to frame rate of the game, leading to extremely choppy control in periods of poor performance.

Use controller[citation needed]
A controller will bypass the mouse acceleration problem.

Limit frame rate
See Frame rate capping to limit frame rate (for example, to 60 FPS) to limit mouse acceleration.

Force adaptive vsync outside of game[citation needed]
To fix the choppy mouselook camera, turn OFF vsync in-game and turn ON adaptive vsync in the nvidia control panel.

Audio

Audio feature	State	Notes
Separate volume controls
Surround sound		At least 5.1
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost

Localizations

Language	UI	Audio	Sub	Notes
English
French
German
Italian
Russian
Spanish

Issues unresolved

No shadows with AMD/ATI graphics cards

Prototype 2 has a similar bug as with Prototype, where shadows are not rendered properly on AMD/ATI Radeon cards.

This can lead to a very poor graphical quality.

There is no known fix for Prototype or Prototype 2.

• 

  Prototype on Nvidia graphics card.

• 

  Prototype on AMD/ATI graphics card.

Cannot complete Operation Flytrap

On some PC configurations it's impossible to complete the mission Operation Flytrap.

Set core affinity[citation needed]
Alt+tab out of the game Open task manager, Find prototype2.exe Right click -> Set Affinity... and uncheck all but one of the checkboxes. Go back into the game and restart the mission.

Turn in-game vsync
Set refresh rate up to 60 Hz (higher frequency won't fix the issue) Turn in-game vsync on Restart the mission

Performance degrades over time

Prototype 2 has memory leak issues. The steps below help alleviate this.

Fix Data Execution Prevention setting[citation needed]
Ensure Data Execution Prevention (DEP) is set to the default (Windows programs and services only).

Alt+tab to release memory
Alt+tabbing in and out of the game appears to release 500-600mb of RAM, delaying the onset of a memory leak crash temporarily.

Issues fixed

Unplayable frame rate in the main menu and ingame on a AMD card using Crimson driver

Caused by Catalyst A.I. interfering with the game.

Make note of the original key values that need to overwritten, as they will have to be reverted once the game is no longer actively played

(Windows 7) Disable Catalyst A.I. in the registry[citation needed]
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0000 (or 0001)\UMD\. Change the CatalystAI value to 30. Change the CatalystAI_DEF value to 0. Save the changes made and launch the game. If the fix does not work, try restarting the computer and launching the game again.

(Windows 8+) Disable Catalyst A.I. in the registry[citation needed]
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0000 (or 0001)\UMD\. Change the CatalystAI_DEF value to 0. Save the changes made and launch the game. If the fix does not work, try restarting the computer and launching the game again.

Low frame rate

This is caused by the engine incorrectly overpolling the USB I/O in Windows.

Install a mod[citation needed]
Use DirectInput FPS Fix.

Disable unused HID devices[citation needed]
Open the Start screen/Start menu, type devmgmt.msc and press ↵ Enter. Select "Human Interface Devices". Disable all "HID-compliant consumer control device", you should not need to disable ANYTHING else. It is advised to re-enable the devices after the game has closed.

Crash after starting or loading a game

The game may crash on a CPU with more than 8 threads.

Turn off hyperthreading and all physical processing cores above 8 or turn off all but four logical cores.
Enter your computer's BIOS and turn off the hyperthreading CPU feature and all physical processing cores above 8 or turn off all but four logical cores. The specific procedure depends on your motherboard, thus you have to consult the manual of your motherboard if you're unsure how to do this.

Crash before the "Radical Entertainment" logo

After the notification about automatic savegames, and before the logos and main menu, the game crashes.

Remove the space in the game folder path.
Rename your game folder to Prototype2 instead of Prototype 2 (on Steam: steamapps/common/Prototype2). You can then launch the game through the executable prototype2.exe.

No voice audio during gameplay

Bug caused by Dolby surround setups.

Set sound option to TV[citation needed]
Go to Options -> Audio. Set the sound system option to TV instead of Home Theater.

Glowing outlines on characters

Disable antialiasing

USB devices crash game

Some keyboards (and likely other input devices) may cause Prototype 2 to crash while attempting to load the game (brief black screen, follow by a crash-to-desktop).

Devices with additional USB ports for connecting peripherals may be responsible for the problem.

Unplug USB devices[citation needed]
Unplug the device(s) before starting the game, then plug them back in.

Disable HID-compliant device[citation needed]
This may accidentally disable an input device. Open the Device Manager. Disable one or more instances of HID-compliant consumer control device (not HID-compliant device).

Waypoints don't trigger and can't use airbridge

Seems to be sporadically caused by crashing in the middle of a mission

Force a reload of your character by evolving[citation needed]
Evolve by consuming/finding collectibles to proceed with missions.

Stuck at gray screen after task switching

Press Alt+Tab ↹ two more times[citation needed]

Run in a window (see Windowed)[citation needed]

Other information

API

Technical specs	Supported	Notes
Direct3D	9

Executable	32-bit	64-bit	Notes
Windows

System requirements

Windows
	Minimum	Recommended
Operating system (OS)	XP, Vista, 7	7
Processor (CPU)	Intel Core 2 Duo 2.6 GHz AMD Phenom X3 8750	Intel Core 2 Quad 2.7 GHz or better, AMD Phenom II X4 3 GHz or better
System memory (RAM)	2 GB	4 GB
Hard disk drive (HDD)	10 GB
Video card (GPU)	Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT ATI Radeon HD 4850 512 MB of VRAM	Nvidia GeForce GTX 460 ATI Radeon HD 5850 1 GB of VRAM