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The Suffering: Ties That Bind

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
The Suffering: Ties That Bind
The Suffering: Ties That Bind cover
Developers
Surreal Software
Publishers
Original Midway Games
Current Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
Russia Noviy Disk[1]
Engines
Riot Engine
Release dates
Windows September 30, 2005
Reception
Metacritic 73
IGDB 72
Taxonomy
Monetization One-time game purchase
Modes Singleplayer
Pacing Real-time
Perspectives First-person, Third-person
Controls Direct control
Genres Action, FPS, Survival horror, TPS
Art styles Realistic
Themes Contemporary, Horror, North America, Supernatural
Series The Suffering
The Suffering: Ties That Bind on HowLongToBeat
The Suffering: Ties That Bind on IGDB
The Suffering: Ties That Bind on MobyGames
The Suffering: Ties That Bind on Wikipedia
The Suffering
The Suffering 2004
The Suffering: Ties That Bind 2005

The Suffering: Ties That Bind is a singleplayer first-person and third-person action, FPS, survival horror and TPS game in the The Suffering series.

General information

A numeric keypad is required to progress. Users who do not have one should download this script.
GOG.com Community Discussions for game series
GOG.com Support Page
Manual (PS2)

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
Disc check (requires the CD/DVD in the drive to play)
StarForce 3.5.10.01 DRM[Note 1]
Windows
GOG.com
DRM-free
Removed one line of dialog in one cutscene.[4] Not available in Germany.
Windows
StarForce DRM for this game does not work on modern versions of Windows (see above for affected versions).

Essential improvements

AiO Unofficial Patch

All-in-one patch for The Suffering series which fixes numerous bugs and adds widescreen support.
Restores one cutscene dialog line that was removed in the GOG version of the game, however this fix was only tested with the English version of the game.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows

Save game data location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\Saves\[Note 2]

Save game cloud syncing

System Native Notes
GOG Galaxy

Video

Graphics settings.
Graphics settings.

Graphics feature State WSGF Notes
Widescreen resolution
Use AiO Unofficial Patch or The Suffering Widescreen Fix.
Multi-monitor
Use AiO Unofficial Patch or The Suffering Widescreen Fix.
Ultra-widescreen
Use AiO Unofficial Patch or The Suffering Widescreen Fix.
4K Ultra HD
Use AiO Unofficial Patch or The Suffering Widescreen Fix. 4k is not recommended.[5]
Field of view (FOV)
Use AiO Unofficial Patch or The Suffering Widescreen Fix. Settings above 1.2 cause minor visual glitches.
Windowed
Borderless fullscreen windowed
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
Up to 16 samples.
Anti-aliasing (AA)
Native support is broken. See Anti-aliasing (AA) for Nvidia cards.
High-fidelity upscaling
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Vertical sync (Vsync)
Triple Buffering
60 FPS
120+ FPS
Frame rates above 60 FPS causes glitches and AI problems. Enable Vsync in the game's options and set the monitor to 60hz.
High dynamic range display (HDR)
See the glossary page for potential alternatives.

Anti-aliasing (AA)

Force in Nvidia Profile Inspector[6]
  1. Download and open Nvidia Profile Inspector.
  2. Select the game's profile or create one if it doesn't exist.
  3. Set Antialiasing compatibility to 0x00000045.
  4. Set Antialiasing - Mode to Override any application setting.
  5. Set Antialiasing - Setting to desired level of MSAA.[Note 3]
  6. Set Antialiasing - Transparency Supersampling to desired level of SGSSAA (Sparse Grid Supersampling).[Note 4]
  7. Apply changes.

Input

Input settings.
Input settings.
General settings.
General settings.

Keyboard and mouse State Notes
Remapping
Some keys are reserved by the engine (-, +, F11, F12).
Mouse acceleration
Mouse sensitivity
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support
Controller types

Audio

Audio settings.
Audio settings.

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Effects, dialog, music
Surround sound
7.0 (check Use 3D Sound Buffers setting in the launcher).
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
EAX support
DirectSound3D.
Royalty free audio

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
Czech
Retail only. link #1
German
Retail only. Patch for digital relese here.
Hungarian
Retail only.
Italian
Retail only.
Polish
Retail only. Patch for digital release here.
Brazilian Portuguese
Fan translation, Download (TriboGamer).
Russian
Retail only. Patch for digital release here.
Spanish
Retail only. Patch for digital release here.

Issues unresolved

Rendering problems at 16:9

When using a 16:9 resolution, objects at the left and right edge of the screen don't get rendered, very noticeable when turning with the mouse. This is because the game is only rendering for 4:3 resolutions. The effect is fairly small when using 1920x1080 or 2560x1440, but it becomes insufferable in 4k.[7]
Lower FOV or resolution
  • This can be somewhat mitigated by not going above 2560x1440, and if necessary lowering the FOV (e.g. via The Suffering Widescreen Fix). Find the right combination of FOV and resolution where it is no longer noticeable.

Notes

This makes the game look worse and the FOV is already quite low.

Stretched encyclopedia with widescreen fixes

Using any of the above widescreen fixes will make the right side of the screen stretched when accessing the in-game encyclopedia. This doesn't happen when using 16:9 without the mods.

Visual artifacts with certain weapons in 4:3

In 4:3 resolutions, there sometimes is a visual issue with certain guns (especially the Tommy Gun). When being in first person, changing to 3rd person and then back to 1st, a lot of the character's body will be rendered at the bottom of the screen and clipping into the gun. For most weapons (especially dual-wielded guns) this luckily doesn't occur.
Lower FOV or play in 16:9
  • To mitigate the problem, play in 16:9 or higher. Another way is lowering the FOV.

Notes

Lowering the FOV while in 4:3 makes the visible window extremely small.
Playing in widescreen causes the rendering problem mentioned above.
A good compromise is to play in 2560x1440 and with standard FOV (1.0). This removes the visual glitch and at the same time keeps the rendering problems low.

Issues fixed

Freeze in starting courtyard

Shortly after the player gains control in the opening prison courtyard, the game freezes.
Set Windows XP SP3 compatibility mode[citation needed]
  1. Open SufferingTTB.exe compatibility settings.
  2. Enable Windows XP (Service Pack 3) compatibility mode.

Run the game at screen refresh rate

When using The Suffering Series AiO Patch, the game will set monitor's refresh rate to 60 Hz when in fullscreen mode.
Set refresh rate manually[8]
  1. Go to %USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games\The Suffering [TTB]\.
  2. Open Torque.ini.
  3. Change RefreshRate=60 to the desired value (e.g. RefreshRate=120).

Very low FPS when activating Vsync in the game

Run the game in windowed mode[9]
Use IndirectSound[10]
May cause the game to constantly crash[11][12]
  1. Download IndirectSound.
  2. Extract the contents to <path-to-game>.

Can't save or load games due to the game not recognising free hard drive space.

The game is unable to recognise free space when there is over 2TB of free space on the installation drive.
Use AiO Unofficial Patch[citation needed]

Game crashes upon launching after installing the AiO Unofficial Patch

Launch the game via the SufferingTTB.exe file instead
You can also create a shortcut to SufferingTTB.exe.

VR support

3D modes State Notes
vorpX
G3D
User created game profile, requires "AIO patch", see vorpx forum profile introduction.

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
Direct3D 9
Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows

Middleware

Middleware Notes
Audio DirectSound3D

System requirements

Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 98SE, ME, 2000, XP
Processor (CPU) Intel Pentium III 1.0 GHz
System memory (RAM) 128 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 2 GB
Video card (GPU) ATI Radeon 7000 series
Nvidia GeForce2 series
Intel Graphics motherboards
32 MB of VRAM
DirectX 9.0c compatible
A 64-bit operating system is required.


Notes

  1. This version of StarForce DRM does not work on Windows 8.1, Windows 10, or Windows 11.[2][3] For supported versions of Windows the StarForce driver may need to be updated manually using SFUPDATE.
  2. 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).
  3. If using 8x SGSSAA, set 8xQ, not the regular "8x"
  4. Note that it should match the level of MSAA, or else performance will be reduced.

References

  1. The Suffering. Ties That Bind - last accessed on 2023-06-28
  2. Windows 8.1 support - StarForce Support
  3. Windows 10 support - StarForce Support
  4. No german version + no censoring?, page 1 - Forum - GOG.com - last accessed on 2022-01-19
  5. The Suffering: Ties That Bind on WGSF - last accessed on 2021-01-23
  6. NVidia Anti-Aliasing Guide (updated) | guru3D Forums
  7. Object in peripherals do not render - last accessed on May 2023
  8. The Suffering Series AiO Patch file - Mod DB - last accessed on May 2023
  9. Indirect Sound Crash - last accessed on 2023-01-20
  10. Verified by User:Diegoelcapo1231 on 2020-11-1
    Installing IndirectSound fixed very low frame rate on Windows 7,8,10.
  11. Indirect Sound Crash - last accessed on 2023-01-20
  12. Verified by User:Demon272481 on 2023-01-20
    Crashes every 20 mins with indirect sound.