Tropico 2: Pirate Cove

Tropico
Tropico	2001
Tropico 2: Pirate Cove	2003
Tropico 3	2009
Tropico 4	2011
Tropico 5	2014
Tropico 6	2019

Warnings

The Mac OS X version of this game does not work on Mac OS X Lion (version 10.7) or later due to the removal of support for PowerPC apps.

Tropico 2: Pirate Cove is a singleplayer bird's-eye view and isometric building game in the Tropico series.

When running on modern graphics cards, the game crashes when using the hardware renderer unless changed to software or a wrapper is used.

General information

Official game series site

Tropico Wiki

GOG.com Community Discussions for game series

GOG.com Support Page

Steam Community Discussions

Availability

Source	DRM	Notes	Keys	OS
Retail		SafeDisc v2 DRM^{[Note 1]}
Retail		StarForce 3.04.028.006 DRM^{[Note 2]} (Russia).
Retail
GamersGate		Tropico Reloaded.
		Tropico Reloaded.
GOG.com		Tropico Reloaded
Green Man Gaming		Tropico Reloaded
Steam		Tropico Reloaded

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).

A free demo version is available from Archive.org.

Version differences

Tropico Reloaded is a bundle that contains Tropico, the Paradise Island expansion, and Tropico 2: Pirate Cove.

The Steam version is missing the 1.2 patch. While it is possible to install the retail patch manually on the Steam version, doing so will also introduce the disc check of the retail copy.

Essential improvements

Patches

The latest official patch is v1.2.

Fixing game crashes when map is loaded

The hardware renderer the game uses by default frequently crashes upon loading maps on modern GPUs or Windows versions XP or higher.

Enable software renderer^[7]
Go to `<path-to-game>`. Open `Tropico2.ini`. Find the line containing `SoftwareDevice=` and set it to `1`. Save and close the file.

Use dgVoodoo2^[7]

Download dgVoodoo 2.
Extract dgVoodooCpl.exe, as well as DDraw.dll and D3Dlmm.dll from the MS\x86 subfolder to <path-to-game>.

Notes

Requires a GPU capable of DirectX 10.1 or higher and Windows Vista (patched with the DirectX 11 Platform Update) or higher.

Game data

In-game general settings.

Configuration file(s) location

System	Location
Windows	<path-to-game>\Tropico2.ini^{[Note 3]} <path-to-game>\Tropico2Safe.ini^{[Note 3]}
macOS (OS X)
Steam Play (Linux)	<Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/33530/pfx/^{[Note 4]}

Save game data location

System	Location
Windows	<path-to-game>\Save^{[Note 3]}
macOS (OS X)
Steam Play (Linux)	<Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/33530/pfx/^{[Note 4]}

Save game cloud syncing

System	Native	Notes
GOG Galaxy
Steam Cloud

Video

In-game general video settings.

In-game advanced video settings.

Graphics feature	State	Notes
Widescreen resolution		Game only supports 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, 1600x1200.
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen
4K Ultra HD
Field of view (FOV)
Windowed		Game must be run in 16-bit color mode.
Borderless fullscreen windowed		See Borderless fullscreen windowed.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)		See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anti-aliasing (AA)		See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Vertical sync (Vsync)		See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
60 FPS and 120+ FPS		Struggles to get to 60fps with max graphics on a high-end graphics card, but can go past 120 if the settings are all low.

Borderless fullscreen windowed

While the game has native borderless fullscreen windowed support, the option is only exposed in an external config file.

Modify config file^[7]
Go to `<path-to-game>`. Open `Tropico2.ini` Find the line containing `FullScreen=` and set it to `0`. Find the line containing `Borderless=` and set it to `1`. Save and close the file.

Input

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

Controller types

Audio

In-game audio settings.

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

Localizations

Language	UI	Audio	Sub	Notes
English
French				The Steam store page does not advertise it, but is present.
German				The Steam store page does not advertise it, but is present.
Hungarian				Retail only, but available to download
Italian				Retail and GOG.com only.
Polish				Download.
Russian				Retail only, by 1C Company; download for digital releases.
Spanish				Retail and GOG.com only; download for Steam release.

Other information

API

Technical specs	Supported	Notes
Direct3D	7	Game uses DirectX 7, contrary to system requirements.^[7]
DirectDraw	7
Software renderer

Executable	PPC	32-bit	64-bit	Notes
Windows
macOS (OS X)

Middleware

	Middleware	Notes
Audio	Miles Sound System
Cutscenes	Bink Video

System requirements

Windows
	Minimum	Recommended
Operating system (OS)	98	ME, 2000, XP
Processor (CPU)	Intel Pentium III 500 MHz AMD Athlon 500 MHz	Intel Pentium 4 2.0 GHz
System memory (RAM)	64 MB	256 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD)	1.8 GB
Video card (GPU)	16 MB of VRAM DirectX 8.1 compatible	64 MB of VRAM

macOS (OS X)
	Minimum
Operating system (OS)	10.2.8
Processor (CPU)	PowerPC 74xx PowerPC G4
System memory (RAM)	256 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD)
Video card (GPU)	3D accelerator
Other	4x CD-ROM drive

Notes

↑ 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]
↑ This version of StarForce DRM does not work on Windows Vista or later.^[3]^[4]^[5]^[6] For supported versions of Windows the StarForce driver may need to be updated manually using SFUPDATE.
↑ ^3.0 ^3.1 ^3.2 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).
↑ ^4.0 ^4.1 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>/33530/ in addition to or instead of this directory. The app ID (33530) may differ in some cases. Treat backslashes as forward slashes. See the glossary page for details.

References

↑ Not Loading in Windows 10; this will break thousands of - Microsoft Community - last accessed on 2017-01-16
↑ Microsoft - MS15-097: Description of the security update for the graphics component in Windows: September 8, 2015 - last accessed on 2018-02-16
↑ Windows Vista support - StarForce Support
↑ Windows 7 support - StarForce Support
↑ Windows 8.1 support - StarForce Support
↑ Windows 10 support - StarForce Support
↑ ^7.0 ^7.1 ^7.2 ^7.3 Verified by [[User:{{{user}}}]] on unknown

[3] 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]

[8] This version of StarForce DRM does not work on Windows Vista or later.^[3]^[4]^[5]^[6] For supported versions of Windows the StarForce driver may need to be updated manually using SFUPDATE.

[gamedir-10] 3.0 ^3.1 ^3.2 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).

[Proton_path_note-11] 4.0 ^4.1 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>/33530/ in addition to or instead of this directory. The app ID (33530) may differ in some cases. Treat backslashes as forward slashes. See the glossary page for details.

[1] Not Loading in Windows 10; this will break thousands of - Microsoft Community - last accessed on 2017-01-16

[2] Microsoft - MS15-097: Description of the security update for the graphics component in Windows: September 8, 2015 - last accessed on 2018-02-16

[StarForce_Windows_Vista-4] Windows Vista support - StarForce Support

[StarForce_Windows_7-5] Windows 7 support - StarForce Support

[StarForce_Windows_8.1-6] Windows 8.1 support - StarForce Support

[StarForce_Windows_10-7] Windows 10 support - StarForce Support

[Macgovern-9] 7.0 ^7.1 ^7.2 ^7.3 Verified by [[User:{{{user}}}]] on unknown

[Note 1]

[Note 2]

[7]

[Note 3]

[Note 4]

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

Developers

	Frog City Software
macOS (OS X)	Westlake Interactive
Publishers
Retail	Gathering of Developers
Retail (Russia)	1C Company
Retail re-release	Sold Out Software
Digital	Kalypso Media
macOS (OS X)	MacSoft
Engines
	S3D
Release dates
Windows	April 8, 2003
macOS (OS X)	May 19, 2005
Taxonomy
Monetization	One-time game purchase
Modes	Singleplayer
Pacing	Real-time
Perspectives	Bird's-eye view, Isometric
Controls	Point and select
Genres	Building
Themes	Comedy, Piracy
Series	Tropico