Prototype/Common problems fixes

This page is dedicated to focus on known issues for Prototype PC version. If you experience any problem unlisted here, post it in the talk page.

A possible problem is that your PC does not meet the minimum requirements, a very common problem. The minimum requirements are listed below :

Minimum Requirements

Operating System: Windows® XP (with Service Pack 3) and DirectX® 9.0c or (Windows Vista® with Service Pack 2).
Video Card: 256 MB 3D hardware accelerator card required – 100% DirectX® 9.0c with Shader Model 3 support*.
Processor: Pentium(R) Intel Core® 2 Duo 2.6 GHz or AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ or better.
RAM: 1 GB of RAM for Windows ® XP / 2 GB Windows ® Vista systems.
Hard Drive Space: 8 GB of uncompressed hard disk space (Plus 500MB for swap file).
Sound Card: DirectX 9.0 –compliant sound card.
DVD-ROM: DVD-ROM.

*Supported Chipsets for Windows(R) XP and Vista All NVIDIA® GeForce™ 7800 256 MB and better chipsets All ATI® Radeon™ X1800 256 MB and better chipsets

Operating System

Prototype supports only Microsoft operation system. This includes :
Windows XP, Service Pack 3 is required.
Windows Vista, Service Pack 2 is required.
Windows 7, RC or Beta.

Test Your System

System Requirements Lab can used to check if your PC passes the minimum requirements. But because there is no recommended requirements, it cannot give rating for systems above the minimum ones. This site provides a test which requires an ActiveX installed to your computer, it is harmless and Spyware free.

Known Issues

Black screen on Prototype start up

For Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 users

From the start menu, Click on Run then type “dxdiag”
Click on the “More Help” Tab then click the “Override Refresh Rate” Button.
Set the refresh rate override value to 60.

Sound stuttering, cracking aka Chipmunk audio

Go to your sound card’s control panel.
Locate the option that allows you change the default audio format for the card.
Set the default format to 24-bits, 48000Hz or less (if it doesn't work with 48000Hz, try 24 bits, 44100Hz)

Display Issues

Most display related issues are caused due to outdated software. Make sure to update the display drivers and DirectX to solve most of the dll missing errors along with a few minor in-game issues.

Missing textures

Disable Anti-aliasing (AA) in Prototype’s video options
Disable forced AA from the nVidia control panel or ATI's Catalyst Control Panel.

Screen Resolutions

Instead of making available all resolutions to all users, Prototype devs have decided to enable certain resolutions only for video cards with high memory. Only the following screen resolutions are available if your video card has less than 512MB of video memory.
•640 x 480
•800 x 480
•800 x 600
•1024 x 768
•1152 x 720
•1152 x 864
•1280 x 720
•1280 x 800

The following resolutions (plus all of the above) are available for video cards with 512MB or more video memory.

Performance Issues

Usually, random crashes and slowdowns are pretty hard to troubleshoot. But if you use a NVIDIA video card, try playing the game with v186.08 beta drivers (download). Also note that prototype might display the frame rate incorrectly (the game says your FPS is 10-12 while the actual gameplay is smooth). If this is the case, just ignore it.

Update DirectX – If you are using Windows XP, please update to the latest DirectX monthly runtime. This will get rid of all the ‘missing dll file’ errors and will reduce the possibility of in game crashes. Latest monthly runtime can be found here.
Update sound card and motherboard drivers - Click Here to download 3DP Chip for Windows Vista/XP – This program will automatically detect your hardware (video card, sound card and motherboard) and find available driver updates.
Update Video card drivers – Both NVIDIA and ATI have recent video drivers out – you should always try updating to the latest official driver version available for your hardware for best performance. If anything goes wrong, the option to rollback to previous release is always there.

NVIDIA Drivers: Download latest official NVIDIA drivers from this link: http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us
ATI Drivers: Download the latest ATI Catalyst drivers from this link: http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx
- For Beta ATI/NVIDIA drivers for Windows 7, XP and Vista, check out this page: http://downloads.guru3d.com/