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Privateer 2: The Darkening

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
Privateer 2: The Darkening
Privateer 2: The Darkening cover
Developers
Origin Systems
Publishers
Electronic Arts
Release dates
DOS December 9, 1996
Windows November 4, 1997
Windows (DOSBox) September 19, 2013[1]
Taxonomy
Monetization One-time game purchase
Modes Singleplayer
Pacing Real-time
Perspectives First-person, Third-person
Controls Direct control, Menu-based
Genres Action, Business, Simulation, Vehicle combat
Vehicles Space flight
Art styles Realistic
Themes Sci-fi, Space, Piracy
Series Wing Commander
Privateer 2: The Darkening on HowLongToBeat
Privateer 2: The Darkening on IGDB
Privateer 2: The Darkening on MobyGames
Privateer 2: The Darkening on Wikipedia
Wing Commander 1990
Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi 1991
Wing Commander: Academy 1993
Wing Commander: Privateer 1993
Super Wing Commander 1994
Wing Commander: Armada 1994
Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger 1994
Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom 1996
Privateer 2: The Darkening 1996
Wing Commander: Prophecy 1997
Wing Commander: Secret Ops 1998

Privateer 2: The Darkening is a singleplayer first-person and third-person action, business, simulation and vehicle combat game in the Wing Commander series.

Use the Enhancement Patch to remove FMV interlacing and improve stability.

General information

GOG.com Community Discussions for game series
GOG.com Support Page

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
DRM details are not known
DOS (original) or Windows (Deluxe).
DOS
Windows
GOG.com
DRM-free
DOS version pre-packaged with DOSBox.[2]
Windows
A free demo version is available from Archive.org.

Essential improvements

Patches

The latest official patch 17.0e (Buffalo Wings, English DOS version only) is available at soggi.org.
The GOG.com and Windows versions are already patched.

Unofficial patch

The unofficial Enhancement Patch 3 is also available at soggi.org.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
DOS <path-to-game>\DARK.CFG
Windows <path-to-game>\DARK.CFG[Note 1]
Settings for the Enhancement Patch are stored in <path-to-game>\DARK.FIX.

Save game data location

System Location
DOS <path-to-game>\GAME0*.IFF
Windows <path-to-game>\GAME0*.IFF[Note 1]

Save game cloud syncing

System Native Notes
GOG Galaxy

Video

General settings.
General settings.

Graphics feature State WSGF Notes
Widescreen resolution
640x480 only. Use the Privateer 2 Enhancement Patch for pillarboxed.
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen
4K Ultra HD
Field of view (FOV)
Windowed
True for DOS version (when using DOSBox), false for Windows version.
Borderless fullscreen windowed
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
Anti-aliasing (AA)
Vertical sync (Vsync)
For DOSBox use an unofficial build (see the glossary page for other workarounds).
60 FPS and 120+ FPS
Game is capped to around 30 FPS.

Input

Keyboard and mouse State Notes
Remapping
For DOSBox use the DOSBox Mapper (see the glossary page for other workarounds).
Mouse acceleration
Mouse sensitivity
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Toggle Flight Model Orientation in in-flight options (Alt+O).
Controller
Controller support
Full controller support
Space flight only.
Controller remapping
For DOSBox use the DOSBox Mapper (see the glossary page for other workarounds).
Controller sensitivity
Controller Y-axis inversion
Toggle Flight Model Orientation in in-flight options (Alt+O).
Controller types
XInput-compatible controllers
PlayStation controllers
Generic/other controllers
Additional information
Controller hotplugging
Haptic feedback
Digital movement supported
Simultaneous controller+KB/M

Audio

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
On/off only.
Surround sound
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
For DOSBox change the priority background value in the DOSBox configuration file.
Royalty free audio

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
German
Spanish

Issues fixed

No music during space flight (Windows)

The Windows version only plays music when running in compatibility mode.
Install Enhancement Patch[3]

Install the Privateer 2 Enhancement Patch.

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
DOS video modes
Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows

System requirements

DOS
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 5
Processor (CPU) Intel Pentium 60 MHz
System memory (RAM) 8 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD)
Video card (GPU) 1 MB of VRAM
Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) XP, Vista, 7, 8
Processor (CPU) 1 GHz
System memory (RAM) 256 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD)
Video card (GPU) DirectX 7 compatible


Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 When running this game without elevated privileges (Run as administrator option), write operations against a location below %PROGRAMFILES%, %PROGRAMDATA%, or %WINDIR% might be redirected to %LOCALAPPDATA%\VirtualStore on Windows Vista and later (more details).

References