3
Huntn, on September 20th 2007, 02:43 PM, said:
PC Games that don't behave on Dual Processor Computers (submitted by Clocknova 5/12/06)
Okay, here's the deal. You've got yourself a shiny new Intel-powered iMac, Mac Mini, or MacBook Pro, and you're just dying to play some of those "PC games" you've been hearing so much about for so long. And, if you're like me, you're particularly interested in stealthy, RPG shooters like Deus Ex: Invisible War and Thief. Nothing wrong with that, right? Well, not as such, no. But there are some complications involved in playing these games (and probably a few others) that makes the situation a bit complicated. It seems that many PC games, in this case specifically Thief 2 & 3 and Invisible War, do not run properly on dual-processor or dual-core systems. The aforementioned games will usually install and launch just fine, but they tend to hang on the main menus or the intro movies. So, what to do?
For the record, I can only speak to the value of this solution as a MacBook Pro owner. I don't know for certain if this problem exists on iMacs or Mac Minis but, as they both use Intel CoreDuos, I image that they will share in the pain. Please feel free to weigh in if you know for sure.
9/29 update It has been reported that this solution works on iMacs as well (submitted by Pegasus).
Now, here's what to do:
1. Download this file, called imagecfg
2. Unzip it to your Windows\system32\ as well as Windows\system32\dllcache\ (if you have that directory--I don't).
3. Make a backup copy of your games' exe files, as this process will alter them (I didn't bother, but you might want to).
4. Open notepad and enter the following (in a seperate file for each game you intend to patch, of course):
6. Double click the file processor.bat (must be in the same directory as the .exe it modifies). A bunch of text like this will appear:
7. Press a key when it tells you to then run the game. It is now permanently patched to ignore the second processor core. Don't forget how to do this in case you ever need to reinstall these games.
And that's all there is to it. As far as I understand, there are a few other games that are affected by this: Grim Fandango and Unreal 2: The Awakening are two of them. I can tell you that the above process will fix Unreal 2, but I don't know about any others. You can read the original source of these instructions here. Oh, and you can probably ignore the fact that the documentation for both T3 and IW claim that they do not support playing on laptops. This problem is likely related specifically to multi-proc systems and not some mysterious "laptop detector" code which makes the games not run properly. Wouldn't that be an interesting bit of programming?
Note: Titan Quest is dual core enabled.
Okay, here's the deal. You've got yourself a shiny new Intel-powered iMac, Mac Mini, or MacBook Pro, and you're just dying to play some of those "PC games" you've been hearing so much about for so long. And, if you're like me, you're particularly interested in stealthy, RPG shooters like Deus Ex: Invisible War and Thief. Nothing wrong with that, right? Well, not as such, no. But there are some complications involved in playing these games (and probably a few others) that makes the situation a bit complicated. It seems that many PC games, in this case specifically Thief 2 & 3 and Invisible War, do not run properly on dual-processor or dual-core systems. The aforementioned games will usually install and launch just fine, but they tend to hang on the main menus or the intro movies. So, what to do?
For the record, I can only speak to the value of this solution as a MacBook Pro owner. I don't know for certain if this problem exists on iMacs or Mac Minis but, as they both use Intel CoreDuos, I image that they will share in the pain. Please feel free to weigh in if you know for sure.
9/29 update It has been reported that this solution works on iMacs as well (submitted by Pegasus).
Now, here's what to do:
1. Download this file, called imagecfg
2. Unzip it to your Windows\system32\ as well as Windows\system32\dllcache\ (if you have that directory--I don't).
3. Make a backup copy of your games' exe files, as this process will alter them (I didn't bother, but you might want to).
4. Open notepad and enter the following (in a seperate file for each game you intend to patch, of course):
For Thief 2 :
imagecfg -u thief2.exe
imagecfg -u thief2.icd
imagecfg -a 0x1 thief2.exe
imagecfg -a 0x1 thief2.icd
pause
For Thief 3:
imagecfg -u T3Main.exe
imagecfg -a 0x1 T3Main.exe
pause
For Deus Ex: Invisible War:
imagecfg -u dx2.exe
imagecfg -a 0x1 dx2.exe
pause
6. Double click the file processor.bat (must be in the same directory as the .exe it modifies). A bunch of text like this will appear:
D:\Games\Thief2]imagecfg -u thief2.exe
thief2.exe contains contains no configuration information
thief2.exe contains a Subsystem Version of 4.0
thief2.exe updated with the following configuration information:
Image can only run in uni-processor mode on multi-processor systems
Image can only run in uni-processor mode on multi-processor systems
7. Press a key when it tells you to then run the game. It is now permanently patched to ignore the second processor core. Don't forget how to do this in case you ever need to reinstall these games.
And that's all there is to it. As far as I understand, there are a few other games that are affected by this: Grim Fandango and Unreal 2: The Awakening are two of them. I can tell you that the above process will fix Unreal 2, but I don't know about any others. You can read the original source of these instructions here. Oh, and you can probably ignore the fact that the documentation for both T3 and IW claim that they do not support playing on laptops. This problem is likely related specifically to multi-proc systems and not some mysterious "laptop detector" code which makes the games not run properly. Wouldn't that be an interesting bit of programming?
Note: Titan Quest is dual core enabled.
Sweet just tried this with Deus Ex IW and works perfectly on my MBP
