Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones

What works

This is an update to my previous results: what have changes are the OS (Fedora 8) and Wine version (0.56).

The installation works fine as it already did.

The game initially gave me the same issues with poor performance, but I managed to have it run fine with some twist:

• I applied the registry values suggested by happyhamster in his comment on this same page (make sure you set the real amount of your video card in VideoMemorySize, of course);
• I forced a 640x480 resolution by appropriately editing the hardware.ini file (find the line with resolutions and change it to "Resolutions=640,480,32");
• I forcely lowered down all the settings I could in hardware.ini, by setting almost all the values that were 1 to 0 (I only left to 1 Version, PureDevice and Available); I'm not sure of what each of the values applies to, so if you have more details about it let us know.

You can still edit some of the video-related settings in-game. I also disabled any kind of 3D-related stuff for audio: don't know if it was needed for performance, but it wouldn't harm anyway.

This way I managed to get the game playing pretty fluidly, and I'm playing it right now. This tweaks may be needed because of my not-so-powerful machine (1.9 cpu, 1024 ram, GeForce 5200 FX with 128 mb); in case they seem (not) to be needed on more powerful machines as well let us know through the comments so that we point it out.

What does not

The in-game cutscenes (that is, not the videos) still have the problem of audio not being in sync with video. This is immediately perceptible from the introductory scene: the audio ends many seconds before the video does. The game itself does not seem to have the same problem.

The performance might be slowed down by the series of

fixme:d3d_surface:IWineD3DSurfaceImpl_BltOverride Implement blit from a swapchain to the active render target

messages, but I'm not sure about this. Check my comment in the comments below for more details.

Changing the resolution in game results in a crash, as pointed out by happyhamster: that's why I was forced to limit the range of available resolutions directly in the hardware.ini file.

The keys associated with keyboard actions are not showed in configuration, and in the tutorial either: this means that almost all keys appear as []. In the tutorial, for unexperienced players (that is, players who missed the previous chapters, since the keys are still the same), this can be unfortunate, since a messages like "Jump to the wall pressing [] and then press [] to stab" are not very helpful. This does not happen for the gamepad, where all keys are appropriately addressed (B1-B8, analog sticks).

About the gamepad, I tried with the one I have, a PSX joypad with an USB adaptor (the one from Play.com). It seems to work fine, except for the right stick, which is limited to only one of the two axes, being a problem in look-around modes and panoramic views: this probably affetcs other keys as well, but I'm not sure about this. Anyway, this may be a more generic problem, considering I had the same issue with FIFA as well...

Workarounds

What was not tested

Playing the whole game through (but I'm into this...)

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU:
• Driver:

Additional Comments