Turn back time or freeze it entirely in Ubisoft’s next entry in the Prince of Persia series, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten sands. Unfortunately, manipulating time can’t undo the numerous glitches, errors, and crashes, some players have encountered. So if one too many freezes are keeping you from enjoying Prince of Persia, then check out the fix guide right after the jump.
Be sure that your PC exceeds the Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands minimum system requirements
Supported OS: Windows XP (SP3) / Windows Vista (SP2) / Windows 7
Processor: 2.6 GHz Dual core Intel Pentium D or AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ or higher recommended)
RAM: 1 GB Windows XP / 2 GB Windows Vista, Windows 7 (2 GB / 4 GB recommended)
Video Card: 256 MB DirectX 9.0c-compliant card with Shader Model 3.0 or higher (512 MB recommended) (see supported list*)
Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c-compliant sound card (5.1 sound card recommended)DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c or 10.0 libraries (included on disk)
DVD-ROM: Dual-layer DVD-ROM drive
Hard Drive Space: 8 GB
Peripherals Supported: Windows-compliant keyboard, mouse, optional controller (Xbox 360 Controller for Windows recommended)
Internet Connection: Broadband Internet connection with 128 kbps or faster
*Supported Video Cards at Time of Release:
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 100 / 200 / GTX series
ATI RADEON X1600 / HD 2000 / HD 3000 / HD 4000 / HD 5000 series
Laptop versions of these cards may work but are NOT supported. These chipsets are the only ones that will run this game
Issue 01
Encounters black screen or can’t change the resolution of Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands PC
Solution
Open regedit, search for “AlternateVerticalSyncThreshold”. Unless you have multiple Ubi games installed, it should immediately give you PoP’s registry key. It should look something like Software->Ubisoft->Prince of Persia – The Forgotten Sands->1.000000000->Engine
Right-click the folder called 1.000000000 and rename it to 1.0.
Problem solved. Yeah, it’s hilarious, I know. Way to go, Ubisoft
Encounter Auto-Save glitch / error when playing Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands on the Playstation 3 or Xbox 36
Solution
One thing I can suggest at this point would be to run the game from your backup Auto Save file. I included the steps for this below.
Xbox 360
1. From the dash board go to “My Xbox”
2. Scroll to System Settings (Far Right)
3. Choose “memory”
4. Open your storage device
5. Choose Games
6. Select “Prince of Prince:TFS”
PS3
1. From the XMB scroll to the games menu
2. Open the save data utility folder
3. Locate prince of Persia: TFS
You most likely have an “Auto Save” file and a “Backup Autosave” file. You can try deleting the “Auto Save” and then starting the game and choosing “Continue” allowing it to load from the backup autosave file. This will hopefully take you to an earlier point in the game that you can continue from
Can’t play Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands PC properly withaXbox 360 controller
Solution
Ok, as a follow up, I managed to solve the problem. What I have read around is that the official Microsoft drivers for the xbox360 controller doesn’t let you control settings like the sensitivity of the analog sticks, and this can cause problems with older games (newer games that use the xinput API doesn’t seem to have trouble with this, I’ve played Batman Arkham Asylum and even enabled the gamepad in L4D just to test it).
There’s an open source driver for the original XBox controller and the xbox360 controller for windows with which you can control settings and better fine tune the controller for some games, it’s called XBCD. I’ve downloaded and installed it and used some settings I’ve found around and it’s working wonderfully. The driver is a bit of a hassle to install and use in Vista SP1 or Windows 7, though
More details (and the link to download the newest version of the XBCD drivers) here:
http://redcl0ud.1.forumer.com/index.php?showtopic=2155
Issue 04
5How to run Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands PC with Vsync on
Solution
I’ve discovered that if you enable Triple Buffering under your graphics card control panel, it makes the slow movement sporadic, and slightly more bearable
Issue 05
Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands PC can’t start / launch
Solution
My Solution:
It seems like something was messed up in my Registry.
In HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Ubisoft
There was a “Launcher” and a “Ubisoft Game Launcher”
The Launcher folder had some default registry keys.
I copied those into the Ubisoft Game Launcher folder and everything worked fine.
Issue 06
Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands PC stutters / runs slow / low framerate or performance
Solution
For multi-core processors, alt+tab Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands and change processor affinity to one or zero
Issue 07
How to enable fog without lowering the framerate / performance of Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands PC
Solution
For Sands of Time I changed the hardware.ini file to enable fog, without it overpowering the screen. The 2 settings I changed were:
ForceVSFog=1
InvertFogRange=0
Initially my file had ForceVSFog=0 and InvertFogRange=1
I took screenshots to be sure, because the fog effect is fairly subtle, but it worked for me.
I’m running Win7 x64 with an EVGA GTX260.
Hope this helps someone else.
Update: If you follow the same procedure for the hardware.ini file in the Warrior Within directory it fixes the fog for that game as well.
