You want to play the single player campaign of F.E.A.R. with a buddy or up to 15 other players? This guide should cover how to do just that.

I spent hours trying to figure out how to get this to work and finally, after getting a lead from someone in the FEAR Combat discord server, I have gotten it to work on my end and it seems stable enough.

The game, SEC2 and the co-op mod aren't perfect. There are bound to be incompatibilities and issues encountered and with the help of people from the FEAR Combat Discord server, this is what we've discovered so far:

• You may experience severe frame drops after several minutes of playing. Download the DirectInput FPS Fix[community.pcgamingwiki.com] here and place the dinput8.dll file where your game executable (.EXE file) is.
  
• The movement is a bit choppy, so are the physics for props and ragdolls, but this is expected as you are running it on a server and an old game engine too.
  
• Level transitions will cause your weapons to reset and not maintain your status and items from the previous level.
  
• I got banned once at Interval 03 where you are teleported to the room that's flooded with blood for the reason: INVISIBLE_PLAYER_HACK (Anim). Disabling the anticheat fixes this issue as shown below.
  
• The Reflex Booster is only available to one player and does not carry over to the next level, so it must be found again in the next level. It also doesn't seem to be dropped by the player if they die.
  
• There are an infinite number of lives so if some of you are looking for a challenge, this may be an issue.

To get started, you will first need these downloaded and readied:

• A copy of F.E.A.R. patched to the latest version. The Steam version and GOG[www.gog.com] version are the easiest way to do this. If you have the retail version, you have to use the 1.08 patch. (do not download this patch if you use the Steam or GOG version!)

• The latest version of SEC2[cpp.mx], as of writing the latest version is SEC2 2.2.0 Final Release (Yes, you can use the update alone to install SEC2)

• The F.E.A.R. Cooperative v1.0 mod

First and foremost, we'll have to install the SEC2 mod to make it easier for us and others to play multiplayer together. It will also make F.E.A.R's multiplayer run as it refuses to run on modern systems for whatever reason.

• Download this archive and extract it to where your game is installed.[drive.google.com] Virustotal scan link.[www.virustotal.com] What this does is that it basically allows F.E.A.R's multiplayer mode to run on modern systems and the included EngineServer.dll file should fix the issues regarding CD Key authentication errors. Both of these files are from FEAR Combat.
  
• Create a folder inside your game installation folder called SEC2 and extract the contents of the SEC2 installer/update archive inside it. (the archive should contain 2 DLL files)

Now that we have SEC2 installed and our game files patched, we can move on to the next step.

• Open up the co-op mod archive and extract it to your game folder.
  
• Once everything is extracted into the game folder, open up the COOP.archcfg file with a text editor.

• At the very bottom of this file, it should say COOP.Arch00. Add SEC2 above/below that line and save changes to the file.

The next step, starting F.E.A.R with the co-op mod loaded, can be done in different ways:

• The quickest way is to use the COOP.bat file found in your game folder.

• If you want to start the game using Steam, you have to add specific launch options in order to have it load the co-op mod when you start it via Steam. To do this, right-click F.E.A.R. in your Steam library -> Select Properties -> Under the General tab, add the launch options below like how in the screenshot above is shown.

The launch parameter -userdirectory UserOptions means it will create a folder inside your game installation called UserOptions where it will store your settings, CD key and server options. You can choose to remove this launch parameter if you wish to keep your settings, CD key and server options in the default folder, which means they will all load even if you don't choose to play with the co-op mod.

In order to get a valid CD-key for your copy of FEAR that's patched with SEC2, you must register an account in the FEAR Community website now.

To get started, click here to visit the FEAR Community website to register an account.[fear-community.cpp.mx]

Once you receive your CD-key from the website, simply head into the Client Settings button in the main menu.


You absolutely can do this, and all it takes is a single setting to change in the host's server settings but make sure you can still connect to the host through means like through a virtual LSAN software.

Scroll down below to the Setting Up Your Server section to find out how.

Once the CD Key you made up has been deemed by the game to be valid, return to the main menu and click the Host button to get started on setting up your server.



Head into the Load/Save Options option to create a Server Config for your server to use.

Click the Create button and name the server option file to something that'll help you identify it's for co-op easily.

Once back at the server setup screen, change the Game type to SlowMo DM so you'll have access to the reflex booster.

Next, click the Maps button to select and add maps to the server.



The map list should already be populated, however scroll down to the bottom and remove all the maps that don't start with Interval. You could ignore this since you'd be entering these maps after you've beaten the Interval 12 map.

Once finished, click the OK button and then navigate to where your game is installed.

Open up the COOPServer.bat file to launch your server.

A FEAR - Dedicated Server window will appear, and you may also get prompted by Windows Firewall to unblock if you haven't done this before. In the Windows Firewall prompt, tick the appropriate boxes and click the Allow access button



The dedicated server window should look like this. You can safely ignore this, but do not close it or your server will stop running.

Easy. It's time to locate your ServerOptions file (which you'll also need for the next step either way) and in order to do this, you use the method on starting the game to easily locate said file.

If you went with the COOP.bat file and you made absolutely zero changes to it or used it as a basis for your Steam launch parameters, your ServerOptions file will be located at:

If you've made any changes to the COOP.bat file or the Steam launch parameters, specifically changed the -userdirectory variable to something else then the folder will be called to whatever you've changed that to instead.

If you've excluded the -userdirectory variable completely, then it will use the default location which is found at:

Note that if you have set up multiple ServerOptions in the past, you will find multiple versions of it and you have to figure out which one it is.

Make sure the server isn't running yet!

Open up that file with your favorite text editor and underneath the [ServerSettings] section, locate the line that says LANOnly= which normally has a 0 after it so you replace that with a 1 instead. Save the file and then start your server, and it should no longer ask for CD-keys.

Next step is we need to disable anticheat checks in the server because the single player maps will do things to players that the server may consider to be cheating such as teleporting.

To prevent this, target_changelevel from the FEAR Combat Discord server has shared these CVARs to change:

You have to edit your ServerOptions file and add all those CVARs at the bottom of your file, which was explained above on how to locate.

• If there are multiple text files, check each and one of them and try to identify which is which.

• Once finished, your ServerConfig should look like the one above.

To join your own server, simply start up FEAR and then navigate to the Multiplayer. Click Source: at the top left and make sure it says LAN and click the Find servers button.

The best way to get your friends and other people to join is to forward port 27888 in both TCP and UDP. However, there seems to be issues with the SEC2 master server and directly connecting to your IP address seems to be the best solution, or you can contact =MXT=Fred.cpp in the Discord server in order to get your server listed in the master server.

If you are unable to port forward [due to restrictions from your ISP] a virtual LAN software should be able to mitigate this issue. Examples are ZeroTier, Hamachi, Radmin VPN and such. This guide will not cover how to set those up.


To directly connect to the server's IP address, in the Multiplayer screen:

• Click the Favorites tab found at the bottom right of the screen.
  
• Click the Add IP button.
  
• Enter the IP address and port of the server.
  
• At the top left part of the screen, click Source: until it changes to Favorites.
  
• The server should appear in the list if everything is done right.