The PC Guide (version 2.2)
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The PC Guide (version 2.2)
Updated 4 years ago by TwoSpacesSG

In late 2018, several discoveries were made and research was done, which led to me putting up the original version of "Some notes about the PC version". This is an attempt to redo that guide with more and better organized info. This mostly covers running the game on Windows, but as far as I know, this game also runs on Linux using Wine. As usual, I appreciate suggestions and constructive criticism.

Versions

Before we install the game and set it up, let’s look at the various versions of the game. The most well-known and well-researched versions are the US English version and the Russian version. Other versions exist, such as the UK English version (which was also included in a Disney-Pixar 3-in-1 compilation release that has Ratatouille and two other games on 1 disc), which is known to have a different installer compared to the US version and a text change on the "Mission complete" screen. There might be other differences between the US and UK versions, which are unknown right now. This guide will cover the US English version and the Russian version.

First thing to note is that the Russian version appears to be based on an earlier build of the game that was made before last-minute changes were applied to the US English version.

Changes: Main

  • The US English version comes on two discs (disc 2 is required to play the game). There are two Russian versions: one that comes on one disc, and another one that comes on three (I don't have the three-disc version, but it's probably the same, just on THREE discs).
  • The US English version loads FMV cutscenes, music and dialogue from the game disc in mid-game, while the Russian version installs those alongside the rest of the game. That means that the Russian version only requires the disc in the drive for copy protection, as everything is loaded from the folder that you installed the game into. (For those who don’t know, FMV (full motion video) cutscenes are cutscenes that are stored in the game as video files, in contrast to the in-game cutscenes that the game puts together in real-time using textures, models, etc.)
  • The US English version installs three executables (.exe files): GameSetup.exe (the settings program), overlay.exe (the game) and overlay_win2k.exe (a different version of the game, see the Controllers Configuration section of this guide for more info). The Russian version does not include overlay_win2k.exe, HOWEVER it includes the file called overlay.dll, which is actually the game that starts running after you launch overlay.exe. It's something you have to keep in mind when setting up the Russian version to work in conjunction with a program such as DxWnd.
  • The US English version has the "Cam. Sensibility" (sensitivity) bar set to the far right by default, while the Russian version has it set in the center by default. The former is good for a controller, the latter is good for a mouse. The "Cam. Sensibility sound bug" only appears in the Russian version.
  • The read-only trick (see below) does not work in the Russian version.

Changes: The City of Lights

  • There is a point in the level where you are forced to talk to Celine to start a mission. The area that the mission takes place in, contains the entrance to This Is a Steakout (one of the dream worlds). Since it's impossible to enter a dream world during a mission, you are intended to revisit that area after finishing the mission. However, a skip was found that lets you enter the area without talking to Celine, do the dream world, finish the area, THEN talk to Celine, then die and respawn at the end of the area, finishing the mission. The first part of the skip (entering the area without talking to Celine) can be done in multiple ways, all of which involve the pipe that you slide on shortly before you're intended to talk to Celine. There is Epic's way (jumping from the pipe onto the umbrella platform), Slicer's way (using the triple jump exploit by placing Remy between the wall and the pipe to gain extra height from a jump) and Tockles' way (jumping from the edge of the pipe that's further from the wall, then hugging the wall to get clipped up a little). Tockles' way is probably the easiest to perform, but while it works on GameCube and the Russian PC version, it appears that the collision of the wall was changed in the US PC version, meaning that Tockles' way does not work in the US PC version. (This only affects No Major Skips and 100%, since in Any% this level is skipped)
  • The location of the rat trap that is next to Git is slightly different.
  • The Russian version has a crash that can randomly happen at the beginning of the cutscene that plays when you finish the aforementioned mission. It's a very rare crash, as it was only seen by our community twice: it happened to me once, and then it happened to someone else on a casual stream. No such thing was spotted there in the US English version.

Side note

Several piracy websites distribute a “rip” version of the US English release that lacks FMV cutscenes (see the “Changes: Main” section above to know what FMV cutscenes are). For instance, in the proper version, selecting “Play” in the main menu brings up the “Somewhere in France” title card, then plays the FMV cutscene that starts with the view of a house, then plays the in-game cutscene that starts with Remy and Emile walking. The unofficial “rip” version shows the “Somewhere in France” title card, and immediately cuts to the in-game cutscene with Remy and Emile walking. All the cutscenes in the game are skippable in all versions, but the “rip” version still saves time due to not having to play the FMV cutscenes at all. Because of that, the “rip” version is not allowed for speedrunning. The solution is to look for a physical copy or disc images of the game (e.g. ISO or CUE/BIN).

Setup

Installation (US English version)

So let’s say that you obtained the US English version’s two discs. First of all, insert disc 1. Depending on your Windows settings, Windows may suggest you to open the disc’s Autorun, which is what you need to do. If nothing happens, open up Windows Explorer, right-click on the disc (RAT1) and select “Open AutoPlay”. In the window that opens, press “Install”. The rest should be self-explanatory for anyone who has installed programs on their computer (inserting disc 2 will be required in the middle of installation, then you’ll have to have it inserted to play the game).

But there are some problems that one could stumble upon when installing this version.

  • The first problem is that canceling the installation can make the autorun program freeze, and if you shut it down with the task manager and try to run it again, nothing will happen. The workaround is to run setup.exe (which is located on disc 1), which, depending on your Windows settings, can either be displayed as a program that is called “setup.exe” or just “setup” with a blue icon, or not visible on the disc at all. If it’s not visible, then you have to make Windows show hidden files (you can google how to do it). When you run setup.exe from the first disc, the installer program will start, and you’ll be able to install the game again.
  • Another problem that can happen is that the installer can be in Japanese. I have no idea what causes that to happen. The installer will still probably be self-explanatory, except for the part where it tells you about something involving “data3.cab”, in which case it’s telling you to insert disc 2 and select the drive that disc 2 is in.

It seems that the US English version’s installer doesn’t create any desktop or start menu shortcuts. By default, the game and the settings program are located in “C:\Program Files (x86)\THQ\Disney-Pixar\Ratatouille\Rat”

Installation (Russian version)

This version’s installer is better thought-out, just open the Autorun and install the game. However, the game will only run if the disc is inserted into the drive that it was in during installation (though there is a way to change it), so keep that in mind. Oh, and if for some reason you need to install the game on a non-Russian computer, you can use this to make Russian letters show up properly in the installer: https://pooi.moe/Locale-Emulator/

GameSetup.exe

Once you’ve installed the game, open up GameSetup.exe (which is located inside the aforementioned folder, though if you’re using the Russian version, then you can also find it in the Start menu). You’ll be presented with several options, including “Play”, “Video options” and “Controllers configuration”.

##- Video options If you have a decent enough computer, you can set everything to the maximum. One thing that I have to point out is that if you have one graphics card and several monitors, then the “Video Adapter” option will have several options that are all named identically after your graphics card, which actually correspond to your monitors.

##- Controllers configuration In 1995, Microsoft introduced DirectInput as part of DirectX, and continued developing it until 2001-2002. Essentially, DirectInput was a piece of software that handled keyboard, mouse and controller inputs in Windows games. However, in 2005, Microsoft deprecated DirectInput in favor of XInput, which is intended primarily for use with the Xbox 360 controller (though several third-party controllers, such as the newer Logitech ones, support XInput as well).

Why am I telling you all this? If you have the US English version of the game, you might have noticed that there are two game executables - overlay.exe and overlay_win2k.exe. The main (and probably the only) difference between them is that the former includes what I call the “XInput mode”, while the latter handles XInput controllers the same way as DirectInput controllers.

What do I mean by that? DirectInput controllers have to be manually configured in the “Controllers configuration” menu of GameSetup.exe, that means you have to map every action (jump, run, etc.) to the controller buttons (note that the “Secondary” button slots in “Controllers configuration” are made primarily for DirectInput controller buttons). You can use the keyboard, mouse and a DirectInput controller simultaneously. (I've also been told that you can't skip FMV cutscenes with a DirectInput controller.) Meanwhile, plugging in an XInput controller (either before launching overlay.exe or while it’s running) activates the “XInput mode”, in which the game ignores any inputs from the keyboard and mouse, only accepting inputs from the XInput controller. There is no way to change the control scheme of an XInput controller.

PCGamingWiki has this article, which might be able to help you with controller setup: https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Glossary:Controller It includes instructions on how to make a DirectInput controller act as an XInput controller.

Oh, and if you’re using keyboard and mouse instead of a controller, then make sure to remap the keys, as the default control scheme involves switching the right hand constantly between the mouse and the right side of the keyboard. A common type of control scheme involves movement on WASD, and the Action, Jump, Drop and Dash buttons distributed in some way over the left side of the keyboard and the mouse buttons (so that you’re able to move with WASD, move the camera with the mouse, and press those four buttons without reaching far). In case you’re wondering what are the Action Left and Action Right buttons on the Minigame tab, those are for the minigame with the blue and red (or blue and orange) switches.

Framerate

Let me introduce the concept of framerate to those who don’t know what it is. As most of you probably realize, an animated picture is a collection of still images played in succession. These still images are frames. Framerate is measured by how many new frames can the game output in a second.

The console versions of this game stay in the normal range, with most of them running at 60 fps (frames per second), except for the GameCube version, which runs at 30 fps. (Note that the European console versions run at 50 fps (25 fps on GameCube), it’s that way due to historical reasons.) However, Asobo Studio made an odd move while porting the game (and several of their other games) to Windows - they set the maximum framerate to 500 fps. Back then it wasn’t a big issue, since computers couldn’t run the game at anywhere near that framerate, but now, with computers becoming more powerful, they come closer to running the game at that value. Sadly, several things change for the worse or even break at high framerates. Because of that, limiting the framerate (to a lower value than the one at which the game normally runs on your computer) using a frame-limiting program is allowed for speedrunning.

Some of the framerate-related things:

  • First of all (and this is not entirely for the worse), the higher the framerate, the shorter are the loading times. The problem is that the US English version loads some stuff from the game disc, so playing the game on a powerful computer without limiting the framerate may be bad for your disc drive.
  • The physics change depending on the framerate. It’s hard to tell what exactly is different, but several movement-related tricks (such as the major skip and the plate trick) become harder or impossible on higher framerates.
  • On high framerates, the shrimp in the Desserted Kitchen get stuck inside the buckets that they are supposed to jump out of. This is known as the “shrimp bug”. This part of the game can still be beaten without framerate limiting, by opening and closing the pause menu as a shrimp is attempting to jump out of a bucket.

##- Reference values Plate trick (squeezing yourself between the plates and the ceiling under the table of the first lobster in the Desserted Kitchen):

  • On 120 fps and below, the trick is possible.
  • On 130 fps, the trick is barely possible with an additional jump.
  • On 140 fps and above, the trick appears to be impossible.

Shrimp bug (shrimp aren’t able to jump out of the buckets):

  • On 160 fps and below, the shrimp bug is not present.
  • On 170 fps and above, the shrimp bug is present.

##- Frame Limiting Tutorial You are allowed to use any framerate limiter that works with this game, but here I’ll teach you the basics of framerate limiting using RivaTuner Statistics Server (RTSS for short).

  1. Download RTSS from https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/rtss-rivatuner-statistics-server-download.html and install it.
  2. Launch RTSS and click on its icon in the tray (the part of the task bar in the bottom right) to open it up.
  3. The left side of the window lists the profiles. You can either use the global profile (limit the framerate for every game application) or click "Add" at the bottom, navigate to the game folder and select overlay.exe. Note that the Russian version’s framerate can only be limited using the global profile.
  4. On the right, there are options. The one you need is "Framerate limit". Click on the number to the right of "Framerate limit", type the number of frames per second that you want and press Enter. You can also turn on "Show own statistics" which is the FPS counter. Minimizing RTSS makes it run in the background with your settings. If you close RTSS, it will stop running.

The Read-Only Trick

For a long time, people have known that on the console versions of this game you can remove the memory card to save time, as the game cannot save your progress in that case. But while the PC ports of Asobo Studio's later games include an autosave option that you can turn off, the PC version of this game forces autosave. However, it was found that if you create the save file, set the options as you need, and then make the save file read-only, then the game will try to save once, and after it fails, it won't try to autosave ever again until you close the game, meaning that the trick saves time (assuming you can navigate the "continue without saving" menu quickly enough). Your progress will still be saved into the RAM, and by that I mean that if you quit to the main menu and press "Play", the game will put you at your last save point, but if you load the read-only (or any other) save file using the profile menu, it will start from where you were in the save file. It should be noted that this "trick" does not work in the Russian version, which crashes when it tries to save into a read-only file, but it works in the US English version.

I'll go over the steps for this trick.

  1. Open the game and create a save file.
  2. Go to the game's settings and set them (sound volume, camera sensitivity, difficulty, etc.) as you need. Save the changes in the settings, wait for it to finish saving and close the red saving popup.
  3. Open Windows Explorer and go to "C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Asobo Studio\Ratatouille", where "Username" is your username (duh). There you'll see your save files in numbered order.
  4. Right-click the save file that you created a few steps ago, select "Properties" (normally the last option in the drop-down menu), and in the properties menu, tick "Read-only". Press "Apply" and close the window.
  5. Now in the game, make it to a save spot (the first save spot is the first conversation with Emile inside the house). If everything is done correctly, the game will display a "Save failed" message (followed by an empty message). Afterwards, you'll be able to continue without saving. If you want to reset, just load the read-only save file (assuming it was made read-only before any save point, like it should have).

Conclusion

I attempted to make this guide accessible, but if you still have questions, then hopefully we will able to help you in the Ratatouille speedrunning Discord server.

Special thanks

ioriioo, for discovering some of the differences in the City of Lights, and helping me document the controls-related stuff. Illumina and ShakoSoldier, for significantly contributing to the framerate discovery. ComradeNapCal (RealPoltergoose) for the read-only trick and a lot of other discoveries. Other people that have indirectly contributed to this guide.

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