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Rare Ghost has PROTOTYPE 2

Jan 2 @ 8:03am

Just bought it, doesn't start lol

Ok so just bought the game, tried booting it up and it goes from "Play" to "Cancel(X)" and then "Play" again in Steam. Nothing else happens. *Sigh*

Can anyone help with this issue?

< >

Showing 1-4 of 4 comments

Cloudus

Jan 2 @ 1:48pm

Originally posted by SirAndrew:
As with many people on these forums, I had a ton of issues getting prototype 2 to run on my PC. Specifically the dreaded "Updating executable" infinity loop that steam did whenever I tried to run it.
Thankfully, I've managed to get it up and running, currently having a nostalgic blast playing through it, and decided to try and help out others that are also having issues.

First and foremost, my system specs are as follows:
OS: Windows 11 Pro
CPU: Ryzen 7 7800X3D
GPU RTX 4080 Super
Ram: 32GB DDR5

Getting the game to run

Here's how I did it:

Fresh game installation.

Head into the game files (Usually located in C:\Program Files
(x86)\Steam\steamapps\common/Prototype 2 , but it may vary if you have a non-standard install location), and in the "redist" folder, run both the "vcredist_x86.exe", and in the "redist/DirectX" folder, run the "DXSETUP.exe".
Once all that is done installing, restart your system to make sure everything is in order.

Right-click the game .exe, and in the compatibility tab, set it to run on windows 8 compatibility mode, tick the "disable the fullscreen optimizations", and "execute in administrator mode" options

Go to this nexus mod [www.nexusmods.com] and download it, following the instructions (Simply unzip the downloaded folder,
then copy-paste every file in it into the game directory)
This mod manages to fix most of the issues in this shoddy port, with some added
tweaks that you can implement, as described on the mod page, and in the
prototype_fix.ini" file.

However if you have a multi-monitor setup like I do, you will have to head into that "prototype_fix.ini" file, and change the "BorderlessWindow" setting to false, as it defaults to true, and leads to issues with getting the game into the main menu.

After all of this, the game should be able to get into the main menu, and you'll get to run around NYC as our most stable bundle of biomass, James Heller! However do mind that this was what has worked out for me specifically, and in other cases, you might have to look for other workarounds, which is definitely unfortunate.

Flytrap Mission Softlock

Now, once you have gotten all this to work, there's another issue at hand. The infamous Flytrap mission softlock.
The long and short of it is, you will have to pounce on an enemy, and normally, the game slows dooooown into a slow-mo view in order to tutorialise this move, as well as bonus objectives within missions.
Well, that's what it's meant to do anyway, what actually ends up happening is that you kill every enemy that shows up and the game never progresses.

What I did to get past this section was the following:

Play the mission normally, until this tutorial pops up, and the softlock happens.

Since you will have, hopefully, been able to get the game to run, you can head into
the task manager (ctrl+shift+esc), and in the "details" tab, you have to look for prototype2.exe. Once you've found it, or typed it into the search bar at the top, you'll have to right-click on it, and in the affinities tab, deselect every CPU core, and leave just CPU 0 active (Don't worry about future effects, since once you're done with this segment of the mission, you can re-enable all the cores by doing this process in reverse)

Then, with the help of a program such as Rivatuner, in my case, you're gonna want to limit the game's framerate to 30.

Now, having done all this, get back into the game, and restart from the checkpoint . Now the game should do the standard slow-down, and once you pounce on the enemy, the others will get highlighted with the mark above their heads, indicating that you've completed that lil objective, and can now progress.

Finish the mission, and re-enable the CPU cores/disable the 30 FPS limit, as the game should now run smoothly without issues

And that's it, that was the end-result of, what essentially amounts to, a few days of troubleshooting this game, purely because I'm stubborn and wanted to play this old game again.
I hope this lil guide has helped you out, and sorry if the formatting is horrible, or the guide itself rambles a lot, first time writing one of these out but HEY, it's the thought that counts, right?

Cloudus

Jan 2 @ 1:53pm

If you're using Steam Deck

Steam Deck #limit CPU to 8 CU
Set launch Options

taskset -c 0-7

That worked for me. To run the game.

Rare Ghost has PROTOTYPE 2

Jan 3 @ 11:57am

Originally posted by Cloudus:
Originally posted by SirAndrew:
As with many people on these forums, I had a ton of issues getting prototype 2 to run on my PC. Specifically the dreaded "Updating executable" infinity loop that steam did whenever I tried to run it.
Thankfully, I've managed to get it up and running, currently having a nostalgic blast playing through it, and decided to try and help out others that are also having issues.

First and foremost, my system specs are as follows:
OS: Windows 11 Pro
CPU: Ryzen 7 7800X3D
GPU RTX 4080 Super
Ram: 32GB DDR5

Getting the game to run

Here's how I did it:

Fresh game installation.

Head into the game files (Usually located in C:\Program Files
(x86)\Steam\steamapps\common/Prototype 2 , but it may vary if you have a non-standard install location), and in the "redist" folder, run both the "vcredist_x86.exe", and in the "redist/DirectX" folder, run the "DXSETUP.exe".
Once all that is done installing, restart your system to make sure everything is in order.

Right-click the game .exe, and in the compatibility tab, set it to run on windows 8 compatibility mode, tick the "disable the fullscreen optimizations", and "execute in administrator mode" options

Go to this nexus mod [www.nexusmods.com] and download it, following the instructions (Simply unzip the downloaded folder,
then copy-paste every file in it into the game directory)
This mod manages to fix most of the issues in this shoddy port, with some added
tweaks that you can implement, as described on the mod page, and in the
prototype_fix.ini" file.

However if you have a multi-monitor setup like I do, you will have to head into that "prototype_fix.ini" file, and change the "BorderlessWindow" setting to false, as it defaults to true, and leads to issues with getting the game into the main menu.

After all of this, the game should be able to get into the main menu, and you'll get to run around NYC as our most stable bundle of biomass, James Heller! However do mind that this was what has worked out for me specifically, and in other cases, you might have to look for other workarounds, which is definitely unfortunate.

Flytrap Mission Softlock

Now, once you have gotten all this to work, there's another issue at hand. The infamous Flytrap mission softlock.
The long and short of it is, you will have to pounce on an enemy, and normally, the game slows dooooown into a slow-mo view in order to tutorialise this move, as well as bonus objectives within missions.
Well, that's what it's meant to do anyway, what actually ends up happening is that you kill every enemy that shows up and the game never progresses.

What I did to get past this section was the following:

Play the mission normally, until this tutorial pops up, and the softlock happens.

Since you will have, hopefully, been able to get the game to run, you can head into
the task manager (ctrl+shift+esc), and in the "details" tab, you have to look for prototype2.exe. Once you've found it, or typed it into the search bar at the top, you'll have to right-click on it, and in the affinities tab, deselect every CPU core, and leave just CPU 0 active (Don't worry about future effects, since once you're done with this segment of the mission, you can re-enable all the cores by doing this process in reverse)

Then, with the help of a program such as Rivatuner, in my case, you're gonna want to limit the game's framerate to 30.

Now, having done all this, get back into the game, and restart from the checkpoint . Now the game should do the standard slow-down, and once you pounce on the enemy, the others will get highlighted with the mark above their heads, indicating that you've completed that lil objective, and can now progress.

Finish the mission, and re-enable the CPU cores/disable the 30 FPS limit, as the game should now run smoothly without issues

And that's it, that was the end-result of, what essentially amounts to, a few days of troubleshooting this game, purely because I'm stubborn and wanted to play this old game again.
I hope this lil guide has helped you out, and sorry if the formatting is horrible, or the guide itself rambles a lot, first time writing one of these out but HEY, it's the thought that counts, right?