SR2 How-to Make DXVK Work With Steam

Saints Row 2 runs as-is... albeit very poorly. With this quick-start guide, you should be able to get a gameplay experience with little to no stuttering!

Why Do We Need Another Guide?

Well... come to find out DXVK is entirely broken with the SR2 Steam release.

The cause of this is:

• The SR2 executable only uses 2GB of memory.
  
• The SR2 executable has SteamStub DRM.

You don't need the Gentlemen of the Row mod for added stability with this guide's fixes.

DXVK will cause SR2 to crash on new game or load game almost instantaneously after the loading screen. This is caused by the executable very quickly getting over the 2GB threshold.

Important Links

Download the most recent release of all of the provided links:

• Steamless[github.com]
  
• 4GB Patch[ntcore.com]
  
• DXVK[github.com]

Steamless

Once you have downloaded and extracted Steamless, open the Steamless.exe file. Click the three dots in the top right corner of the application, and find your directory to your SR2_pc.exe file. Keep the plugin selection on automatic. Click the Unpack File button.

When it finishes, you can close out of Steamless. Navigate back to your SR2 installation directory. You should see a new file titled: SR2_pc.exe.unpacked.exe

Rename your original SR2_pc.exe to: SR2_pc.OG.exe, and rename the unpacked.exe to SR2_pc.exe

Now move onto the next step!

4GB Patch

Once you have extracted the archive, run the 4gb_patch.exe

It will automatically open a new window. Locate your newly unpacked and renamed SR2_pc.exe file. Click Open

You should receive a confirmation pop-up that lets you know the unpacked executable has been patched!

Almost done!

DXVK

Once you have opened the .gz and .tar archives with 7zip, navigate to the x32 folder. From this folder, copy the d3d9.dll file to your SR2 installation directory.

If you have followed all these steps, DXVK should properly run on this Steam version of Saints Row 2!

Final Notes

DXVK will no longer crash on start-up, new game, or load game! You can now enjoy Saints Row 2 with minimal stuttering and vanilla gameplay!

No need for mods that add and replace certain aspects of the original game!

BUT

You can still download Gentlemen of the Row, if you would rather have what it provides. :)

None of these steps are necessary to install DXVK to the GOG copy of SR2. But you will need the SR2 GOG FPS Unlocker utility to get the game out of its 30fps shame.

[smitty.dmg]

@Vendeur,

Sorry for such a late response. But I figure I should make it in case anyone has a similar question.

This (in essence) just removes DRM, allows the executable to access 4GB of RAM as opposed to 2GB, and utilizes the DXVK framework.

No legitimate modding of the game files or logic to the game itself are being done here, and therefore the co-op feature of this game should be left intact.

I’m unsure if you will need a VLAN application to make this older game work, or if it’s simply P2P.

[maria]

Thank you, it worked.

[Vendeur de Skooma]

Does this allow to play co-op ? I wanna play it with a friend

[mita4e]

thx bro

[Deniss_]

Finally, I played half the campaign without crashing thanks

[Saint Crowbar]

I use a similar method exactly like this (except I use the QINLILI executable rather than unpack) and can say the game runs near flawlessly, so anyone reading this should definitely follow this guide, the only addon I have is Overhauled Stilwater since it has mission fixes - as for cut scene animations, most cutscenes using the mission fixes run fine at 60fps, but there area exceptions of objects in hands being a little out of whack, not often though.

[annatar3]

It's worked! Thank you!