Month: October 2024

As Forza Horizon 4 is going to be delisted on December, 15th, 2025 and runs a promo now with -80% off, until October, 28th, time to look how to get this classic run on latest installment of Windows.

I have noticed, there are some do and don’ts for this game.

Don’ts:
– don’t move the installation files using the move function of Steam. Instead uninstall it from the old location and reinstall it at the new location.

Do’s:
– You have a higher probability of getting the game to run, if you disable displaying the Steam overlay in the Steam properties of the game.

– If the game’s process in task manager is staring, stopping, restarting without using resources and stopping again, delete the file “TargetHardwareProfiler.dll” in the Steam installation folder of the game.

– if you still have issues, deleting the App data of the game (%AppData%\Local\ForzaHorizon4)

Well, it seems the workaround that works better on some systems (in contrast to never starting at all) is, to shut dowwn Steam (or else it goes in Big Picture Mode), then press the XBOX button on the Wireless XBOX One Controller, and start the game from there.
If it isn’t listed because it is not one of the recently started games, use the One Game Launcher Service plugin for the X App.

Also was helped me a lot was verifying the game files in Steam twice (first round is only for the game files themselved, the 2nd is for the Steamworks Common Redistributables, if you use Steam’s Beta client 175933550 or newer, this process is done for both in just one round).

For some it also helps to enable bluetooth in Windows if you have that disabled (if you don’t have bluetooth built into your PC, buy a bluetooth USB dongle) and to enable VSync for the title in your graphics card settings!

Mind you, Nvidia has better support of old DirectX than AMD GPUs, so your experience might differ.

on reddit and steam you can read a lot how the game doesn’t work right on anything Windows 8.x and newer.

However, when getting the settings right, this was not the case for me!

Note: I do have an optical DVD drive in my computer, so the DRM check for inserting in my Steam release, do not appear for me.

So you have to change 3 Settings in the Advanced Graphic options inside the game:

• Default is “Primary Graphic Device” –> Select your actual GPU
• disable “Incremental Rendering”
• disable “Animation Interpolation”
  
  

Bonus: You can apply a hi-res pack, currently, you just have to dig through the thread to find the right page, here the permalink to all the still valid downloads: http://forums.sierrahelp.com/viewtopic.php?p=97737#p97737

Just to clarify: There are in fact 4 “Hot Pursuit” Need For Speed games:

-The first: “Need For Speed III: Hot Pursuit”
-The successor: Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit II”
-2010 release: Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit”
-2020 release: Need For Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered”

While the 2010 release works fine on my system with Windows 11 24H2, AMD FX-8370 and a Nvidia GeForce 1070 Katana with latest Game Ready Driver (565.90, released October 1st, 2024), the 2020 release: Need For Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered” stutters and audio hangs and loops all the time.

I found at the EA Forums a lot of possible solutions, but not of them worked, except the easiest one by user “edalfb” which I will quote here:

I solved the problem. It is done with a very simple method.
1. Set the display mode to be borderless when you enter the game.
2. Turn on vsync and make max framerate fps 60.
3. Set your other graphics settings as well.
4. Exit the game completely.
5. Re-enter the game and just make the screen mode to full screen.

Now the game becomes very comfortable to play in full screen and it’s getting 60 fps.

Note: When exiting the game, set the display mode to be borderless and exit and make it full screen again the next time you log in.
You have to repeat this every time.

Íf you have a 2nd screen and you have no sound in the borderless setting, you might have to click into the 2nd monitor first and then click into the primary monitor again until the sound finally returned.

Conclusion:
As the Autolog servers are down, mulitplayer is not possible, but if you are fine by playing just the single player missions, stick with the 2010 release. The graphics are really not that different and resolutions up to 4K still work! (playing it on a 2K monitor myself).

Update:
It appears, changes in the system at EA made so the product key given by Steam when starting the Game for the first time is not automatically connected to your EA account, so Autolog cannot find your license for the game.

The Solution can be found in the Steam forums by user [BR] Hamm Mann:

Your CD key for the game isn’t automatically applied to the game, and the box to enter it into in-game is non functional, so treat it as a red herring.
Instead, go to the EA App website, log into your account (if you don’t have one, i suggest making a burner account with a throwaway email) and then redeem the key in the settings for the site.
Then after logging in for the first time, reboot the game a few times and you’re in.
(This also removes the advertisement for NFS World, so use that as an indicator for if you’re on the autolog or not.)

Side-effect: In the EA App, You might get a notification message saying “Your EA Play Membership Expired, but you can renew it”.

This can be ignored, as the game solely runs within Steam, no additional installation in the EA App (former Origin) is necessary! 🙂