Prototype 2

Prototype 2

Developers
	Radical Entertainment
Publishers
	Activision
Engines
	Titanium
Release dates
Windows	July 24, 2012
Taxonomy
Monetization	One-time game purchase
Pacing	Real-time
Perspectives	Third-person
Genres	Shooter
Series	Prototype

Prototype
Prototype	2009
Prototype 2	2012

Key points

The PC port suffers from a number of technical issues and engine-limitations.

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>. Start the game.

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
OneDrive		Requires enabling backup of the Documents folder in OneDrive on all computers.
Steam Cloud

Video

Graphics feature	State	WSGF	Notes
Widescreen resolution			See Widescreen resolution.
Multi-monitor			See Widescreen resolution.
Ultra-widescreen			See Widescreen resolution. Fix for FOV with UW
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, which can lead to difference in mouse acceleration depending on performance, especially above 60 fps.
High dynamic range display (HDR)		See the glossary page for potential alternatives.

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 mode[citation needed]

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

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]
Usage of a controller is unaffected by the mouse acceleration problem.

Limit frame rate to keep mouse acceleration constant

Audio

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

Localizations

Language	UI	Audio	Sub	Notes
English
French
German
Italian
Brazilian Portuguese				Fan translation, download.
Polish				Retail only.
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.

While there is a fix for Prototype, there are no known fixes for Prototype 2.

Unknown if this bug has been solved over the years through graphics driver updates.

• 

  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.

Force game to use only one CPU core[citation needed]
Advised to enable all cores for the game again after finishing this level for improved performance. 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.

Cap framerate to 60 or lower before starting the mission[citation needed]

Performance degrades over time

Prototype 2 has possible memory leak issues that cause performance degradation after extended time of playing the game.^{[citation needed]}

Workaround: Alt+tab to release memory
Appears to release 500-600mb of RAM, delaying the onset of a memory leak crash temporarily.

Issues fixed

Low frame rate

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

Install DirectInput FPS Fix mod[citation needed]

Crash after starting or loading a game

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

Turn off CPU threads above 8 in the BIOS
Strongly advised to turn these CPU threads back on after exiting the game to prevent general lower system performance afterwards.

Crash after starting or loading a game on Linux with Proton

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

Add taskset -c 0-7 %command% as a command line argument[citation needed]

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 anti-aliasing

Game crashes when booting the game

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

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

Disable HID-compliant consumer control devicec
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, till the game boots again.

Unplug USB devices till the game boots[citation needed]
When the device causing this crash is found, unplug the device(s) before starting the game, then plug them back in.

Stuck at gray screen after task switching

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

Run the game in Windowed mode[citation needed]

Other information

API

Technical specs	Supported	Notes
Direct3D	9.0c

Executable	32-bit	64-bit	Notes
Windows

Middleware

	Middleware	Notes
Cutscenes	Bink Video	v1.9.99.0

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