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The Suffering

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
The Suffering
The Suffering cover
Developers
Surreal Software
Midway Home Entertainment
Next Level Games
Publishers
Original Midway Games
Current Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
Russia Noviy Disk[1]
Engines
Riot Engine
Release dates
Windows June 8, 2004
Reception
Metacritic 80
IGDB 82
Taxonomy
Monetization One-time game purchase
Modes Singleplayer
Pacing Real-time
Perspectives First-person, Third-person
Controls Direct control
Genres Action, FPS, Survival horror, TPS
Art styles Realistic
Themes Contemporary, Horror, North America, Supernatural
Series The Suffering
The Suffering on HowLongToBeat
The Suffering on IGDB
The Suffering on MobyGames
The Suffering on Wikipedia
The Suffering
The Suffering 2004
The Suffering: Ties That Bind 2005

The Suffering is a singleplayer first-person and third-person action, FPS, survival horror and TPS game in the The Suffering series.

General information

GOG.com Community Discussions for game series
GOG.com Support Page

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
Disc check (requires the CD/DVD in the drive to play)
SafeDisc v3 DRM[Note 1] or StarForce 3 DRM[Note 2] disc check, depending on region.
Windows
GOG.com
DRM-free
Manual included as extra download.
Not available in Germany.
Windows
SafeDisc retail DRM does not work on Windows Vista and later (see above for affected versions).
StarForce DRM for this game does not work on modern versions of Windows (see above for affected versions).

Free version

This game was released as a free download sponsored by the US Air Force.
It can be downloaded here. Install the AiO Unofficial Patch or The Suffering Widescreen Fix to remove the online DRM.
Not compatible with patch 1.1

Essential improvements

Patches

Patch 1.1 updates the game to the latest version. GOG.com version is already patched. Does not work with the freeware release.

AiO Unofficial Patch

All-in-one patch for The Suffering series which fixes numerous bugs and adds widescreen support.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\GameConfig.ini[Note 3][Note 4]
%USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games\The Suffering\Torque.ini[Note 5][Note 4]

Save game data location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\Saves\[Note 6][Note 4]
%USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games\The Suffering\Saves[Note 7][Note 4]

Save game cloud syncing

System Native Notes
GOG Galaxy
OneDrive
Requires enabling backup of the Documents folder in OneDrive on all computers.

Video

General settings.
General settings.
Graphics settings.
Graphics settings.

Graphics feature State WSGF Notes
Widescreen resolution
Use AiO Unofficial Patch or The Suffering Widescreen Fix.
Multi-monitor
Use AiO Unofficial Patch or The Suffering Widescreen Fix.
Ultra-widescreen
Use AiO Unofficial Patch or The Suffering Widescreen Fix.
4K Ultra HD
Use AiO Unofficial Patch or The Suffering Widescreen Fix.
Field of view (FOV)
Use AiO Unofficial Patch or The Suffering Widescreen Fix. Settings above 1.2 cause minor visual glitches.
Windowed
Set in launcher.
Borderless fullscreen windowed
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
Texture filtering setting only affects close-up texture quality. Cannot be forced.
Anti-aliasing (AA)
Native support is broken. See Anti-aliasing (AA) for Nvidia cards.
Vertical sync (Vsync)
Triple Buffering
60 FPS
120+ FPS
Frame rates above 60 FPS causes glitches and AI problems.[8]
High dynamic range display (HDR)
See the glossary page for potential alternatives.

Anti-aliasing (AA)

Use Nvidia Profile Inspector[9]
  1. Download and run Nvidia Profile Inspector.
  2. Select the game's profile or create one if not existing.
  3. Set Antialiasing compatibility to 0x00000045.
  4. Set Antialiasing - Mode to Override any application setting.
  5. Set Antialiasing - Setting to the desired level of MSAA.[Note 8]
  6. Set Antialiasing - Transparency Supersampling to the desired level of SGSSAA.[Note 9]
  7. Apply changes.

Notes

HUD elements sometimes disappear when Antialiasing is enabled.
To fix this, go to the in-game graphics settings and click Accept. HUD elements should appear again.
If after following these steps you still experience aliasing in-game, select and modify the profile for The Suffering: Ties That Bind in Nvidia Profile Inspector instead of the first game.

Input

Input settings.
Input settings.

Keyboard and mouse State Notes
Remapping
Mouse acceleration
Mouse sensitivity
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support
You can easily bind your controller to keyboard inputs, see the glossary page for more info.
Character movement is limited to 8 axis and a single speed on the console versions of the game as well so binding a controller to keyboard inputs won't lose any accuracy.
Controller types

Audio

Audio settings.
Audio settings.

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Effects, dialog, music
Surround sound
Up to 7.0 output with DirectSound3D restoration software. GOG version comes with IndirectSound wrapper.[10] Creative Alchemy does not support this title, you are able to add it, 3D hardware can be enabled through the RIOT engine setup config, but no EAX effects are available despite what dsoundlog tells you. The Audio sounds identical whether "The Suffering" is enabled through Creative Alchemy or not, this is why Alchemy had an official list of supported titles.
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
EAX support
DirectSound3D.[11]
Royalty free audio
An option for Environmental FX is included, but no actual reverb is used in the entire game.

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
Czech
Retail link #1 or fan translation link #2
German
Retail only. Patch for digital release here.
Hungarian
Retail only.
Italian
Retail only.
Polish
Retail only. Patch for digital release here.
Brazilian Portuguese
Fan translation, download (TriboGamer).
Russian
Retail only. Patch for digital release here.
Spanish
Retail only. Patch for digital release here.

Issues fixed

DirectX 8.1 is not installed error

Install DirectPlay

Saves not working

Caused due to the game having trouble detecting hard drives larger than 2 TB.[citation needed]
Use AiO_Unofficial_Patch

Notes

Autosaves are still broken.

Missing sound effects

Use IndirectSound[12]
  1. Download IndirectSound.
  2. Extract the contents to the installation folder.
  3. In the latest version, it's possible to enable 3D Sound Buffers in the game launcher.

Notes

GOG.com version has this fix applied by default.
Make sure to force the CPU affinity to a single CPU. Otherwise, it may cause random crashes.[13]
Use Creative ALchemy (if you have a Creative Sound Card)[citation needed]
  1. Download and install Creative ALchemy.
  2. Click Add, then set both the executable path and the game title.
  3. Move the entry from Installed Games to ALchemy-enabled Games.
  4. Close the program.
Use the AiO_Unofficial_Patch

Notes

Delete all dsound files included in the game, as this mod makes them unnecessary.[13]

Random freezes

Force CPU affinity
Modifies game executable permanently to force the game to run on a single CPU.
Compatible with the IndirectSound patch.

Instructions

  1. Open the Command Prompt.
  2. Type in the following command: Start /affinity 0xE "path-to-game-exe" and press Enter.
  3. A new Command Prompt window will open pointing to the game directory.

If done correctly, the executable will run only on CPU 0.

Notes

  • It's recommended to create a backup of the original executable before performing the steps listed above.
Use AiO_Unofficial_Patch and delete all dsound files[14]

Notes

Make a backup of all dsound files, if needed.

Freeze When First Starting game Disable Adaptive Sync in Graphics Card settings

Run the game at screen refresh rate

When using The AiO Unofficial Patch, the game will set monitor's refresh rate to 60 Hz when in fullscreen mode.
Set the refresh rate manually[15]
  1. Go to %USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games\The Suffering\.
  2. Open Torque.ini.
  3. Change RefreshRate=60 to the desired value (e.g. RefreshRate=120).

Glitchy enemies and NPCs AI

With a frame rate higher than 60, there are many problems with the AI of both monster and human characters.
The game is possibly un-finishable due to the risk of certain NPCs not triggering key cutscenes.[citation needed]
Limit the frame rate to 60 FPS[citation needed]
Enable Vsync in the game options and set the refresh rate to 60Hz[citation needed]

Access the launcher

After the first time launching the game, the launcher won't show up again and you will be unable to configure the settings.
Run the game with -setup command line argument[16]
Hold Shift and run SUFFERING.exe[16]

Microstutter on modern systems

Limit the frame rate to 64 FPS

Notes

May introduce occasional FPS deterioration, which can be solved by alt-tabbing to the desktop and back to the game.

VR support

3D modes State Notes
vorpX
G3D
User created game profile, (DX9 with official patch) see vorpx forum profile introduction.

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
Direct3D 9
Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows

Middleware

Middleware Notes
Audio DirectSound3D

System requirements

Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 98 SE
Processor (CPU) Intel Pentium III 1.0 GHz
System memory (RAM) 128 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 2 GB
Video card (GPU) 32 MB of VRAM
DirectX 8.0 compatible


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]
  2. This version of StarForce DRM does not work on Windows Vista or later.[4][5][6][7] For supported versions of Windows the StarForce driver may need to be updated manually using SFUPDATE.
  3. Default
  4. 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 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).
  5. When using AiO Unofficial Patch and setting PerUserConfigAndSaves in <path-to-game>\Torque.ini to 1
  6. Default
  7. When using AiO Unofficial Patch and setting PerUserConfigAndSaves in <path-to-game>\Torque.ini to 1
  8. If using 8x SGSSAA, set 8xQ, not the regular "8x"
  9. Note that it should match the level of MSAA, or else performance will be reduced.

References