Port Royale 2

Port Royale 2

28 ratings
How to play Port Royale 2 on Windows 10 (for NVIDIA users)
By Mitsukuni
This guide is not so effectual anymore. Please visit this one instead:
Easy fix for Port Royale 2 on Windows 10
3
   
Award
Favorite
Favorited
Unfavorite
It's Alive
This guide is for NVIDIA users. You can check AMD version here.
1. First step...
...is make the game playable. (Otherwise it won't even start in Windows 10.)

  • Go to your default game directory. Usually;
    C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Port Royale 2

  • Right-click on PR2.exe -> Properties

  • On Compatibility tab, check "Run this program in compatibility mode for:"

  • Select "Windows 98 / Windows ME"
2. Game is working but...
...it's so pixelated and sea texture is messed up. To prevent this, open NVIDIA Settings.

  • Click "Manage 3D Settings" on the left.

  • Switch to "Program Settings" tab.

  • Select Port Roysle 2 from the list. If it doesn't there, click "Add" and find Port Royale 2.

  • Now we're gonna change some of the settings.

    - Anistropic Filtering -> Select "16x"

    - Antialiasing - FXAA -> Select "Off"

    - Antialiasing - Gamma correction -> Select "Off"

    - Antialiasing Mode -> Select "Override any application setting"

    - Antialiasing - Setting -> Select "8x"

    - Antialiasing - Transparency -> Select "8x (Supersample)"

    - Texture filtering - Quality -> Select "High quality"

    Also select "On" for following settings too: Texture filtering - Trilinear optimization, Threaded optimization, Triple buffering, Vertical sync
3. Sea texture is fine now and...
...there is only one problem left. Everything is pixelated. To use anti-aliasing settings enabled, we need one last retouch.

  • Open Port Royale 2 configuration

  • This option is opposite of AMD. Uncheck "Execute in full-screen mode" (This option is a necessity, otherwise the game won't run properly.)
And voilà
Just like the old times.
40 Comments
Mitsukuni  [author] 2 Aug @ 4:31am 
@Deathwing,

You're welcome! It's nice to see that this guide still can be helpful.

It's getting more and more hit or miss any day and I certainly stopped bothering myself with Windows, since Port Royale 2 works great on Linux. You might find this funny but running games like these on Linux is much easier than running them on Windows 11 now. Weird times. :)
Deathwing 2 Aug @ 4:12am 
Thank you for your good work, Sir or Madam! I needed to use both your guides to get the game running properly and looking fine, but had no problem following your instructions and got it into a playable state on my Win 10 PC with a Nvidia RTX 3060 within about 5 minutes. Two thumbs up!
Mitsukuni  [author] 2 Aug @ 1:09am 
@Williams,

You're welcome! Glad it's still working for you.

A lot of people report otherwise sadly. Anyway, have fun! :)
Williams 2 Aug @ 12:27am 
still working, thanks for your help :]
Mitsukuni  [author] 17 Jan, 2024 @ 4:55pm 
@NickCoolAI, yeah you'll need a reboot after that. I think it has better chances with Intel HD rather than Nvidia alone.

It seems you're having a different problem though. Usually the DLLs fixes the black screen at the start, or glitches in water, stuff like that. So your game can start but cannot continue due to freezing? That sounds like a compatibility issue. Different Windows compatibility setting could work.
NickCoolAI 17 Jan, 2024 @ 4:01pm 
Disabled GeForce 840M in the Device Manager, and it didn't help, at least without reboot (something for the next time). If disable Intel Graphics - also.

When a scenario must start, sound changes, image also changes - the fire can be seen on top of the lighthouse, some objects are moved a bit and the game becomes unresponsive.

I will add a comment, if I will find a solution for this issue.
Mitsukuni  [author] 17 Jan, 2024 @ 3:26pm 
@NickCoolAI, huh I actually uploaded 71 instead of 70, my bad. Though I guess if others didn't work, this would not either most likely.

Ahh, 2 GPUs. This game somehow has a problem with them. If you can manage to run it with Intel HD Graphics, the game should run fine. I would say uninstall Nvidia driver just to see if the game runs but not sure if it worths the effort, might actually work though. Could be fun to experiment. :)

If you're gonna try WSL, must warn you it's kinda tricky to run WINE (or Proton) over it. Maybe it's better now, I tried it a while ago.

Good luck either way!
NickCoolAI 17 Jan, 2024 @ 2:36pm 
Proton 4.11\32-bit gave me an error "Bad Image" regarding msvcr71.dll: error status 0xc000012f.
Oh, In archive for this version *71.dll instead of *70.dll, I assume.

But I tried all others and without success.
One thing, which I forget to mention: my laptop has 2 video cards.
One is 840M, and the second one is from CPU, and it's Intel HD Graphics 4600.
In the configuration, I see exactly Intel HD Graphics 4600.
I was trying to run the game with both of them.

It's an interesting idea to run the game on Windows from wsl.
Maybe I will give it a try one day.

Thanks for your time.
Mitsukuni  [author] 16 Jan, 2024 @ 11:56am 
@NickCoolAI, no problem!

I pulled the DLLs from 3 different branch and uploaded them. I hope at least of them would do the trick. Try starting with 3.7 which is the oldest.

https://gitlab.com/gitsukuni/port-royale-2-dlls/-/blob/master/Proton_DLLs.zip

By the way, it works fine on Linux but obviously I cannot recommend it to everybody. If you are tech-savvy enough, you might try that way.

I was actually working on to make this game playable on Windows through WSL but eventually doing stopped that since I don't use Windows anymore (and it works on Linux). This is the main reason why I don't update this guide anymore (unless someone from the community suggests a new thing).

Interestingly there are people saying this game works fine on Windows 11 without any fix, but it's been generally hit-or-miss different systems-wide.

So, good luck with DLLs. Otherwise sadly I won't be able help further because I cannot try things myself anymore.
NickCoolAI 16 Jan, 2024 @ 10:32am 
@Mitsukuni, thanks.

But it didn't help. I tried both: 32 and 64 version from your link.
Yeah, maybe for older systems can do a trick.