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Installing correctly the English Release 1.0


XenonS
(@xenons)
Warrant Officer Registered
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 399
Topic starter  

UPDATED 19.06.2013; please also read next post(s)

 

Hello Precursors fans,

 

There has been some confusion about how to correctly install the English release of the game which, without taking the steps below,  may show grafical issues for players using an ATI grafic card, sound lacking and considerable drops in framerate. Also the initial release is plenty of gameplay bugs which almost all have been solved by Wesp5 with his latest Unofficial Patch 1.7 (containing all his previous patches).

 

I've made an extensive stress test, starting with the ENGLISH RELEASE 1.0 of the game that is provided by Gamersgate or other providers and after making all the changes below. The following shoud give the best and most enjoyable results.

 

The exact install steps are:

 

- Install English Release (Gamergate, etc) which HAS to be modified as below, or some missions will be broken and there will be sound, grafics and other issues;

 

- Patch to the Official Russian 1.1 patch ONLY IF YOU HAVE THE RUSSIAN DVD VERSION. Do NOT use this patch with the English Release 1.0 !

The install menu is all in Russian, but don't mind, just go through the install of the patch; chose the game install directory and you will find a cyrillic folder in the game dir after install; copy all the files into the main dir and delete the cyrillic folder afterwards.

http://www.patches-scrolls.de/precursors.php#tp16

 

-  Because the 1.1 patch has a special copy protection not included with the releases of Gamergate etc, you will have to fix the game with this download (follow the instructions inside):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/crwtl2y3dv27d71/TRiViUM%20precursors.rar?m

 

-  Now, apply Wesp5 's newest Patch (which contains all previous patches and LOTS of improvements, especially English translations and issue fixing; read the changelog and docs)

http://www.patches-scrolls.de/precursors.php#tp16

 

- You must now add the Russian Sound Files (unless you start with a russian version of course); don't skip this, because otherwise all sound effects (weapon sounds, speeches, environment sounds) will vanish at some point; the download is huge (1,4 GB) but necessary.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/3iksq9y9c8czynq/precursors%20russian%20sound%20files.rar?m (use this for a single rar file or the 2 below which are split in 2 parts)

http://www.moddb.com/games/the-precursors/addons/russian-voices-part-1

http://www.moddb.com/games/the-precursors/addons/russian-voices-part-2

 

- If you have applied the Russian 1.1 patch before, you will have to fix the copy protection as explained in the TRIVIUM package (see step above).

 

- The "Film Grain Fix" is already contained in Wesp5 's Unofficial Patch 1.7 (see step above, and thus must not be installed).

 

Results and in-game settings:

 

After these steps, there should be no more sound or grafical issues whatsoever: The mission dialogs will be in Russian, but with English translations (subtitles). All Cutscenes will instead be in English (installed from Wesp5's patch).

Be sure to shut down your anti-virus before launching the game, and be sure to go offline before!

 

In-game settings (in the game's menu):

After all these steps above, the Sound is set to "Headphones" which you probably should change to "Stereo" or "Surround". Try out the best setting for you.

The grafic setting is set to "High" which should be fine with most today's computer systems (2013). If you have a high-end system, feel free to change it to the last "Very High".

 

Tip:

To better control your vehicles (buggy, etc.), change the A and D key to the secondary keys Left_Arrow, Right_Arow.

 

 

Have fun with this multi-facette game!

XenonS


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XenonS
(@xenons)
Warrant Officer Registered
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 399
Topic starter  

Update 19.06.2013

I was able to locate the memory leak and frame rate drop. The symptoms are that the Precursors.exe will not shut down after quitting game and at some point the game will slowdown until being unplayable. This happens when using the vital.dll and VEloader.dll from the russian 1.1 patch or the same files frim the Trivium's fixed package. You must use the original English ones.

 

Barring some new updates, the ideal install starting with the English release is the following:

 

What you should have is all the above, that is:

 

- English release 1.0

- Russian patch 1.1; do NOT install this in the game directory, but in a separate one (it will be a cyrillic folder); 2 files to use: game.pdb, game_space.pdb; do NOT use any other files from this patch !

- Trivium Package; 2 files to use: game.dll, game_space.dll; do NOT use Precursors.exe or other files because you will not be able to use the Flyer and you run into issues.

- Russian Sound Files; a must have, otherwise cropped sound.

 

The install is:

 

- Install English 1.0 from the download of your provider (Gamersgate etc.)

- Apply Wesp5 patch in the game directory, chose both options Hud Improvements and Flicker Noise Fix

- Install russian sound files in the game directory "packages"

- start the game and make some video option changes, save + quit (very important)

- copy over game.dll and game_space.dll from Trivium's fixed 1.1 patch (not the russian ones!)

- copy over game.pdb and game_space.pdb from the russian 1.1  patch.

 

If you get constant game crashes, that means that your savegames are corrupt. Read my thread "Game crashes (solution)" to clean your savegames. The only rare crashes you will have are related to the sound driver. Save your game often!

 

Other important stuff:

Some computers and laptops will not use maximum power in default mode. Be sure to set to maximum power before playing this game, as it uses a lot of ressources and processor power.

Whatever grafic options you chose, It's very important that you shut down any other running application, especially your virus scanner. Not all scanners will deactivate when going in the so-called "gamer mode", so be sure to shut it off completly and go offline.

 

The best grafics settings:

If you have a high-end computer system, 3GH+ processor, you can chose the highest possible resolution, the "Highest" video quality in the video menu, and in the VIDEOOPTIONS.INI you can also set

 

PRECACHETEXTURES=0 in your DocumentPrecursors folder. On such fast systems this will not cause choppy gameplay but load the textures instantly. If you experience stuttering or choppy gameplay, quit the game and revert immediately!

All this will give the best results for details and texture lightning.

Warning:

Be sure your computer can handle such high settings! During gameplay, should your computer ever shut down automatically because of over-heating, then your computer cannot handle these high settings. You must LOWER the texture settings to "High" or even lower, and reset the VIDEOOPTIONS.INI to PRECACHETEXTURES=1.

 

XenonS


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Demalis
(@demalis)
Crewman Registered
Joined: 9 years ago
Posts: 1
 

Hey there I just wanted to thank you for posting all this, game kinda looks good. However I bungled the install, sine the dropbox location for the trivium 1.1 patch, no longer works I used a nocd crack I found. Unfortunetly, now the game is all screwed up and I'm trying to fix it, I can't uninstall atm. I am just wondering if there is another place to find the trivium 1.1 patch files. It is the only thing I need now.

 

Thanks again.

 

Ok I got it uninstalled, whew. I will check back I can't find the proper game.dll and game_space.dll from Trivium's fixed 1.1 patch and don't want to mess it up again.


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XenonS
(@xenons)
Warrant Officer Registered
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 399
Topic starter  

Hello Demalis,

glad you enjoy The Precursors. I was not recently looking up the posts here, so excuse if I didn't catch your message in time. Please check the file section of this site, I have made a "Little Walkthrough" for this game, and getting short to the point for important things about the right install. The fact is: This game must be patched, because otherwise no joy. This game has a high diversitiy like FPS (Crysis or Farcry type) and space action. It's definitley worth a look.

 

Greets,

XenonS

 

[EDIT]

When I finally got more time, I will venture to edit the various missions, hopefully adding some interesting stuff, but this is rather a long project because I must rough-translate the russian docs before...


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