Running computer games on hardware below the minimum requirements is always a gamble. But, as long as you’re smart and know your limits, it can often pay off.
Yes, you might have to use a program like “Sizer” to set a custom low resolution, or find and alter the game’s config file, or – if you’re lucky – make do with 10-20 frames per second on the game’s built-in lowest settings. But, if you choose a game that doesn’t look too visually-taxing, has minimum graphics card requirements that are older or from the same year as your PC’s integrated graphics etc… then you have a good, but not certain, chance of a vaguely playable experience.
And, as a proud owner of a “potato” PC, with Intel HD 2500 integrated graphics from circa 2012-13, I thought that I stood a good chance with “Sprawl” (2023) when a DRM-free edition of it finally went on special offer on GOG in early April. Before I should go any further, I should point out that the game itself contains a PHOTOSENSITIVITY WARNING.
Anyway, this game looked like it was made for me – a retro-style cyberpunk FPS game where you also get to dual-wield an off-brand copy of Deckard’s blaster from “Blade Runner” (1982). YES! And the GOG page listed the minimum requirements as “NVIDIA GeForce 470 GTX or AMD Radeon 6870 HD series card or higher.” For context, the 470 GTX was originally released in 2010. Two or three years before Intel HD 2500 integrated graphics were introduced.
So, I took a chance.
And, at first, it seemed like all hope was lost. The game would start loading, then black-screen and crash to desktop. Once, I heard the awesome “Ghost In The Shell” (1995)-inspired main menu music before it did this, so I just HAD to find a way to get this game running.
On some crashes, it would throw up a “D3D” (or “Direct 3D”)-themed error message. So, I did an online search for some of the error message text and finally found this guide on the Steam forums. I may not have used Steam since 2015, after finding out that honest DRM-free games existed, but their forums are pretty awesome.
If you use Windows 10, the guide walks you through how to add a “TdrDelay” to your computer’s registry. If you are going to do this, be careful and follow the guide very closely because messing up the registry can seriously screw up your PC. What a “TdrDelay” does is to give Unreal Engine 4 a bit more time to interface with your computer’s ancient integrated graphics, rather than just timing out after two seconds and throwing up an error message. And, once I’d edited the registry, I restarted my PC and hoped for the best….
(Click for larger image) Ha! A new life DOES await me on the off-world colonies! A chance to begin again in a golden land of…
It’s… barely… playable 🙂 The frame-rate was a bit erratic, but on the slow side of things. Not only that, I had to disable motion blur and, more importantly, reduce the amount of strafe-tilting to the absolute minimum. The latter was because the game’s camera would just randomly start vibrating/tilting sideways very quickly, like there was some serious seismic activity in the game. So, I’ve solved those issues!
Yes, it crashed to a black screen – requiring “Ctrl alt del” and Task Manager to close the program – whenever I tried to return to the main menu whilst playing. Still, the actual game is running, so it’s plain sailing from here on… Oh, it’s YOU!
(Click for larger image) My nemesis! You almost bested me in “Postal: Brain Damaged” (2022) and a rematch has been long overdue!
Yes, it’s a glitchy lift! It’s probably glitching because I’m running it on Intel HD 2500 integrated graphics. In this particular game, it’ll go up a certain amount, the screen will fade to black and you’ll either teleport a few metres away from it, or you’ll just fall through the lift platform and – if you don’t move quickly enough – get crushed by the descending lift. But I refused to be beaten by this hydraulic plate!
Since “Sprawl” (2023) is inspired by old late 1990s/early 2000s FPS games and it’s a single-player indie game without greedy micro-transactions, there was a good chance that it would actually have proper cheat codes. And, whilst God mode is there in the options menu, I wasn’t looking for that. No, I was looking for a “fly” cheat. And, yes, there’s a console command that lets you do this. But, a word of warning!
The page tells you how to enable cheats and how to use the “Fly” cheat… but I ran into another problem. Yes, the “fly” cheat works perfectly. I could gleefully soar above the glitchy lift, laughing loudly at it like Icarus taking flight and loosing the surly bonds of gravity. I could even just cheerfully bypass all of the annoying wall-running platforming segments that the game designers wanted me to play too. Huzzah! This is AMAZING, this is… What? You want me to slide under something? Ok, how do I de-activate flying mode… I can’t de-activate flying mode! Oh crap! I’m totally stuck!
Ok, I’ve found another cheat called “ghost” which adds no-clipping to the flying mode. I might try this out but I’m not optimistic… Well, there’s good and bad news. The good news is that you can get some really spectacular aerial views of the late parts of the first level. The bad news is that ghosts’ incorporeal forms cannot pick up things like weapons or ammunition… so you’re literally just a floating camera.
I guess that the lesson here is that, whilst you CAN technically get “Sprawl” (2023) to both load and run at a playable speed on Intel HD 2500 integrated graphics, it really isn’t worth doing so. Still, I got it to run and I got a blog article out of it. So, that six quid I spent on it isn’t totally wasted….
————–
Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂
