Hewwo Guise!I thought I'd make myself use of this section, I'm rather certain that at least 50% of those who play FH will find use of this tutorial. So it wouldn't hurt reading this! Just as a note, You need to take your time reading this and understanding it.We all can have problems with FeralHeart at some point, it could be for various things, but one thing that's very common is that the game might crash when tabbing out, crashing from just playing in a crowded area etc.
Now, what I'm about to tell you might make your game run more stable and maybe even faster if you're lucky, and I'll explain why, and how to do it just now.
How it worksOne thing that FeralHeart uses a lot on a computer is the processor. When running this game it wouldn't be surprising if you got around 90% load by running just the game. Thing is that many if not most computers today got a Processeor(CPU) with more than just
1 core. There's
Dual core processors and
Quad Core, etc. These processors doesn't just have 1 core that the computer can use. It's still just one processor, but there's more cores inside of it doing the work.
Here's the kicker.. FeralHeart can just use "
1" Of these cores at a time. If you got more cores the game wont be able to utilize it anyway.
Now imagine yourself playing the game, but also multitasking doing other things such as talking on IM programs, having another game running, browsing the web. The first core will always be working really hard with Feralheart. But not all applications know how to take use of the other cores and this might make your computer slower than it should be.
Most applications started in windows are assigned to the first core in the processor, and FH is a good example of this. Now imagine if your could set so the processor ONLY works with Feralheart on 1 core, and that core isn't even the first one. This will make the first one free from the game, and it are more free to process/work with things such as browsing the web and talking to others.Not only will this make your computer able to handle other things smoother, but it will also make the game run more stable, and
maybe even faster!
The only thing you really need for this to work, is that you got a processor with more than 1 core.
Finding out if this works with your computerNow what we want to do before we even start editing things around, is that we look if you got a processor with more than 1 core inside of this.
How to do this is rather simple.Go to your desktop and click the start button(The Windows flag). If you have Windows vista, or Windows7. You will have a search bar right on top of it after you pressed the start icon. And will be able to use that one. If you got Windows XP. You're able to find the program called "Run". It should be inside the start menu as well.
Now, what you want to do, is to write in "dxdiag" and press enter.
This will bring you to the DirectX Diagnostics window. And it's what we will use to find out how many cores you have!
Now find the row for the
Processor: field. Like on the picture below.
In most cases you can figure out that your processor got more than 1 core by just reading the name, examples of this are "Dual core, Core 2 duo, Quad core, Core 2 Quad, Athlon II, Phenom II, Opteron", etc. But sometimes it doesn't show up that obvious, but in that case, it should show up like on the picture above saying "
(6 CPUs)". Anything
above 1 CPU will be enough for this thing to work. If it doesn't say anything about amount of cores. You probably just got 1. But for the rest that found more than 1. Lets keep on going!
How to do it!You can now close down the dxdiag window and get work on how to change which core the game should use.
What I want you to do now, is that right click on the "FeralHeart" paw icon on your desktop. Look at the bottom of the list and click
"Properties"This will give you a new window with lots of interesting stuff in it, and it's what we will use to set the "Affinity" to the processor=Which cores it's allowed to use.
Click the Shortcut tab inside of the new window and it should look like this
What we want to do now is to change the text inside the "
Target:" field.
Now to make this really simple There's text for you to copy here and paste inside the target field.
Copy and Paste this text if you have 2 cores.C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /C START "FeralHeart" /d "C:\Feralheart" /high /affinity 2 "C:\FeralHeart\FeralHeart.exe"
Copy and Paste this text if you have more than 2 cores.C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /C START "FeralHeart" /d "C:\Feralheart" /high /affinity 4 "C:\FeralHeart\FeralHeart.exe"
Make the field blank, and then paste in one of these above.
Click the apply button, and then ok.If we use the first text as an exmaple.
What this text does is that it starts the command prompt before it starts the game, and tells the computer to run the game with high priority and to use the 2nd core only. The other example works the same, but instead it sets it to the 3rd core in the processor(This is hexa language, hence the numbers).
This will as mentioned before in this post, leave your first core free to do other things, while FH use one core only as it should be, and more free to use it as well. This should solve crashes for some, but also make the game run a lil bit smoother in general(Also has a lot with how good your processor is).
I've used this for 3 days now and not a single crash. Someone else also tried it and to them the game seemed to run better as well. *happyface*
Other good sturfWhen you do this the icon on the desktop will change from a yellow pawprint to a black box instead. But this doesn't affect the game at all, and you can actually set it back to the feralheart icon if you feel like it. Just go back into the shortcut properties by right clicking the icon. Enter the shortcut tab. Then click the "
Change Icon" text. And browse for the Feralheart.exe in the feralheart folder. And it's all back to normal.
Also take note that it will only run on the given core if you use the desktop icon. If you run the game via an icon you didn't edit. Or from the game directory. The game will still be launched on the first core.If the game doesn't work from the desktop or the game is messing around, just set the text back to normal in the target field.
C:\FeralHeart\FeralHeart.exePlease post your feedback if you've tried this as well! And I hope you find just as much use of this as I did!
