Tweaking Guide for Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition

[Kunal_R.One]

After playing the PC version of Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition for few days, it is confirmed that it is filled with large number of bugs that can affect the game considerably. There have been many bugs and I have seen many people commenting or posting on internet about the problems they are facing while playing Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition. I agree with them that developers have done bad job of porting this game to PC from console. To comfort the people who are facing problems with Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition, I am writing the tweak guide for Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition which might help many people with the problems they are facing.

• First, I’d like to give you the solution for the bugs that are commonly seen in mostly of the PCs of the gamers. The problems in clued the blackening of the part of the screen where the health bar and other bars appear. You can just disable the anti-aliasing of the game which is causing this problem.
• Another problem commonly seen is the disappearance of the text, menu buttons and icons in the games. Sometimes the text disappears while sometimes the key press prompts fail to appear. You can fix this problem by applying the patch I have attached with this post. You will find a .zip file by name ‘Dark Souls 2 fix v0.2’ Extract it and follow the instructions in the readme file.
• You can also the increase the value of the internal framebuffer for the Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition in your PC. All you have to do is to download the ‘Dark Souls 2 fix v0.5’ that I have attached. Extract it and follow the instructions in the readme file. But when doing this, you should have the anti-aliasing and the MSI afterburner disabled in your graphic card too.
• Many gamers have been complaining about low framerate in Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition. This is because the game keeps certain graphical options turned on by default. To get much better framerate, you can disable the anti-aliasing, VSync and Motion Blur in this game. Also it is preferable to disable the VSync feature from the control Panel of the graphic cards. To enhance the framerate more, you can also set the priority of this game to high from the task manager. But let me warn you that after setting the process of Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition to high, you will have to stop using other softwares on your computer, especially RAM consuming ones. Also if the game crashes in between when set on high, it will lead to computer crash. Only hard reset will be the solution to resolve the problem.
• Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition will underperform when played on graphic cards manufactured by AMD. This problem won’t be noticed in the graphic cards manufactured by Nvidia. The people using AMD graphic cards can avoid this game for now. Wait till AMD releases new graphic drivers that will support this game properly. Actually, AMD graphic cards downclock themselves to adjust itself with Dark Souls.
• Many people are complaining that Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition has bad key binding when played with Keyboard and mouse. You can find one such post here. Also some say that Xbox 360 gamepad for PC is not as efficient as Playstation 3 gamepad for PC. But let me tell you that you can configure your keyboard to work live Xbox 360 gamepad with Xpadder application. You can download the Xpadder to assign desired Xbox 260 gamepad keys on keyboard and enjoy Dark Souls on PC.
• Many people who have tried running Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition on Windows 8 have complained that this game fails to start. To make this game run on Windows 8, you will need to uninstall Microsoft Games for Windows – LIVE Redistributable and Microsoft Games for Windows Marketplace. Then again download the Games for Windows – Live which is compatible on Windows 8. Also see if the game is not set on the compatibility mode.
• Many people who played Dark Souls were totally irritated by the shaky camera which would jump now and then giving an irritating feeling. This is happening because of the mouse acceleration in the game. You can go in the mouse settings available in the Control panel and reduce the mouse speed. Then go in the options of the game and set the speed of the camera to your comfort level. You can also reduce the mouse acceleration from mouse settings in the control panel, but this won’t stop it completely.
• You can use the Cursor Lock application to hide cursor or lock the cursor to the screen. Just download the Cursor Lock I have attached and install it in your computer. You will find a shortcut tab in the Cursor lock where you have to select the program mode. Select the execution file of Dark Souls in your computer from Open program field. Once selected, the lock program field should show you the execution file of Dark Souls. Click on the ‘Create Shortcut’ button’. Now save the shortcut in desired location and then run the game. Dark Souls will now run with cursor lock.
• Other problems with the sounds, like missing sounds or breaking of certain sounds will get fixed with updated sound drivers.

[DamarisK]

Thanks dude, your post really helped me. I mean, such a bad porting done for Dark Souls, at one point I thought that I wasted my money on some useless non working game. But your tweaking guide came in blessing. I really got irritated by this game having missing texts and icons. Also the Xpadder is good way to configure keyboard according to Xbox 360. I am sure it will help many people who want to play Dark Souls but cannot play because of these problems.