BioShock Infinite

BioShock Infinite

Developers   Irrational Games OS X Aspyr Media

Publishers   2K Games

Engines   Unreal Engine 3

Release dates Windows March 26, 2013 OS X August 29, 2013 Linux 2015

BioShock

BioShock	2007
BioShock 2	2010
BioShock Infinite	2013

Key points

Quality PC port, including graphics and control options.

Aim assist is on by default even when not using a controller, but can be fixed.

Without modification the game is limited to only a single save, but there is a workaround for creating multiple save games.

General information

Port Report: BioShock Infinite.

Official developer site

Official game site

BioShock Wiki - A huge wiki for all the BioShock games

2K Games Forums

Steam Community Discussions

Steam Users' Forums

Availability

Source	DRM	Notes	Keys
Retail
Developer website
Steam
Green Man Gaming		Physical and Downloadable versions available
Amazon.com
GamersGate
GameStop		Physical and Downloadable versions available

All versions require Steam.

Downloadable content (DLC) and expansions

Name	Notes
Columbia's Finest
Clash in the Clouds
Burial At Sea: Episode One
Burial At Sea: Episode Two

Essential improvements

Skip intro videos

Edit XEngine.ini Edit %USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games\BioShock Infinite\XGame\Config\XEngine.ini Look for a section called [FullScreenMovie]: Change the following lines: StartupMovies=2KLogoSweep720p2997 StartupMovies=IrrationalLogoTest StartupMovies=UE3AnimatedLogo_ProRes StartupMovies=AMDLogo720p to ;StartupMovies=2KLogoSweep720p2997 ;StartupMovies=IrrationalLogoTest ;StartupMovies=UE3AnimatedLogo_ProRes ;StartupMovies=AMDLogo720p This will remove all Animated Videos at Start-up when Launching the game. Note: In some cases after doing this, you might get an Irrational loading screen when starting the game, and then followed by nothing at all. If so, just delete or rename XEngine.ini and the game will automatically create a default one and the game will work again. Force-quitting the game and reopening it may serve as a temporary fix as well.

Unlocking 1999 mode before game completion

Bioshock Infinite features "1999 mode" which makes game much harder. Normally this mode is unlocked by finishing game at least once, however there is a code, the famous Konami code, which unlocks this mode right away:

Unlock 1999 mode On the main menu (menu with Play Now) enter: Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B (or Esc), A (or Enter)

Game data

Exiting to desktop or main menu reveals the local date of the last checkpoint.

Configuration file(s) location

	Location
Windows	%USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games\BioShock Infinite\
OS X
Linux

Key mappings are encrypted which prevents sharing key bind files or creating custom commands.

Save game data location

	Location
Windows
OS X
Linux
Steam	<Steam-folder>/userdata/<user-id>/8870/

Save game cloud syncing

System	Native	Notes
Steam Cloud
GameSave Manager

Video settings

In-game graphics settings.

Graphics option	Option	WSGF	Notes
Widescreen resolution
Multi-monitor			Full 3xLandscape, some people have spanned HUD.
Ultra-widescreen
4K Ultra HD
Field of view (FOV)		Limited FOV adjustment of 15º. For fix see Field of view (FOV).
Windowed
Borderless fullscreen windowed		Set fullscreen mode to "Fullscreen (Windowed)".
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
Anti-aliasing (AA)		FXAA. Only options are on or off.
Vertical sync (Vsync)		Option is called "Lock Framerate".
High frame rate

Field of view (FOV)

There is a FOV slider in the game options, however it only increases/decreases FOV by 15% from the default value of 75º (67.5º - 82.5º).

FOV slider expansion Go to %USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games\BioShock Infinite\XGame\Config\ Locate and open file XUserOptions in text editor (notepad for example). Locate line MaxUserFOVOffsetPercent=15.000000 and change its value to 100 for maximum variability. This value is in percent and not degrees. See table below for precise field of view values. Start the game and set your field of view via slider in menu. Default FOV. Default FOV slider to the max. Slider offset set to 100 and slider set to the max.

Maximum FoV by slider	MaxUserFOVOffsetPercent value
85	21.43
90	28.57
95	35.71
100	42.86
105	50.00
110	57.14

Disable Post-Processing Effects

Some of the post-processing effects can be disabled in the game's XEngine.ini file.

These effects include depth of field, light bloom, and color correction.

Disabling Post-Processing Go to %USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games\BioShock Infinite\XGame\Config\ Locate and open file XEngine in text editor (notepad for example). Locate line DepthOfField=True and change its value to False. DepthOfField=True. DepthOfField=False.

Input settings

Keyboard and mouse	Native	Notes
Remapping		Some keys cannot be rebound in Burial at Sea DLC. "F" is always "take all" when looting.
Mouse acceleration
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support
Full controller support
Controller remapping
Controller Y-axis inversion

Mouse speed slider tweak

Slider for mouse speed is set to very wide range, which can be unsuitable for high precision mice.

Mouse slider tweak This fix will modify in-game slider and give better control. Go to %USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games\BioShock Infinite\XGame\Config\ Locate and open file XUserOptions in text editor (notepad for example). Locate lines MinMouseLookSensitivity=0.100000 and MaxMouseLookSensitivity=4.000000 and change values to your taste. Values 0.05 for MinMouse and 0.5 for MaxMouse works OK Start the game and set your desired sensitivity via slider.

Audio settings

Audio settings

Audio options	Native	Notes
Separate volume controls		Master, music, SFX, voice
Surround sound		Auto configures up to 5.0 output
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost

Localizations

Language	UI	Audio	CC	Notes
English
French
German
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Polish
Brazilian Portuguese
Russian
Spanish

Issues unresolved

Freezing and crashing

There seems to be a problem on some systems that game crashes every few minutes and/or freezes whole system.

2K is aware of this issue and there should be patch soon. It seems to be related to i7 processors.

Fixes that works for some users

• If you have issues with the game immediately crashing on start-up, make sure you disable any on-screen display applications (showing FPS/GPU usage) like MSI Afterburner.
• Disable overclocking or underclock your graphics card.
• Disable Killer e2200 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller or any other virtual/VPN network adapters like Hamachi.

Issues fixed

Crash on start for some Windows 7 and 8 users

Some users are experiencing crashes on start in Windows 7 and 8.

Force Start it in Windowed Mode Run the game with the -windowed command line argument. Once it has loaded, open the graphics options and set the game to run full screen. Close the game, remove the launch option, then restart the game to verify it works now.

Run Steam, but not game, as an administrator Ensure that the game exe is NOT set to run as administrator in conjunction with setting the steam exe itself to run as administrator.

Change the "Documents" folder back to default If you've changed the default path of %USERPROFILE%\Documents, move it back to the standard position to run the game for the first time. Then "Documents" custom location can be restored

Cannot restore game after Alt-Tab

The game may fail to restore after minimizing it by using Alt-Tab.

Exit TeamViewer Check whether you have TeamViewer running in the background and terminate it. You will be able to restore the game immediately, no restart required.

Texture streaming quality problems

When the game can't detect or detects wrong video memory size, it automatically enables only Very Low and Low options for texture quality.

There is also an issue on some systems that selection Very High or Ultra for texture quality will cause to textures never load properly and game tries to load them over and over as demonstrated here.

Low texture quality and streaming fix Go to %USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games\BioShock Infinite\XGame\Config\ Locate and open file XEngine.ini in text editor (notepad for example). Locate section [TextureStreaming] and change appropriate lines as shown: [TextureStreaming] UseTextureFileCache=False TexturePoolSizeReductionMB=1500 PoolSize=3000 LowPCTexturePoolSizeMB=3000

Edit by anon; To ensure the above values are applied over the default one's, Add -ReadTexturePoolFromIni to your Bioshock Infinite Shortcut like so; "InstallDir\BioShockInfinite.exe" -ReadTexturePoolFromIni"

Stuttering during gameplay

Enable fullscreen mode Stuttering can be fixed by enabling fullscreen mode in-game.

Run game in compatibility mode Stuttering can also be fixed by running the game in compatibility mode: Windows Vista Service Pack 2. Go to the installation folder. Go into Binaries\Win32 Right-click on BioShockInfinite.exe, go to the compatibility tab, tick the box and select Windows Vista Service Pack 2.

Texture Pool Size Fix Set the PoolSize variable in DefaultEngine.ini to about 400 less than the total number of Megabytes RAM your video card has (e.g if you have 2048 MB of video RAM set this to 1600). Then add this launch option in Steam (right click -> Properties -> Set launch options) : -ReadTexturePoolFromIni

FPS dropping

Nvidia cards experience FPS drops in certain areas when Dynamic Shadows is set to Very High or Ultra.

Vsync bug fix Go to <path-to-game>\Engine\Config\. Locate and open file BaseEngine.ini in text editor (notepad for example). Locate section [SystemSettings] and change: VsyncTo60WhenUnder30=False to VsyncTo60WhenUnder30=True

Microstuttering

Adaptive and dynamic V-Sync These forms of V-Sync significantly reduce micro-stuttering. For Nvidia cards, Adaptive V-Sync can be enabled through the driver control panel. Set Vertical sync to Adaptive. For AMD cards, Dynamic V-Sync can be enabled using the third-party program RadeonPro. Click the Add new profile icon and find the BioShock Infinite executable (BioShockInfinite.exe in <path-to-game>\Binaries\Win32\BioShockInfinite.exe). Click the newly created profile and click the Tweaks tab. Set VSync Control to Always on. Enable Dynamic Framerate Control and set Keep up to to 60.

Audio crackling

Audio crackling fix Update the drivers for your graphics card: NVIDIA: Geforce 314.22 or newer AMD: Catalyst 13.3 or newer Set compatibility mode to Windows Vista SP2. Go to <path-to-game>\Binaries\Win32 Right-click on the BioShockInfinite.exe and select Properties. Go to Compatibility tab and select Windows Vista SP2.

Disable aim assist

Aim assist is on by default even when using keyboard and mouse.

There are some auto aim variables in the .ini files but these variables are reverted to True every time you start the game. There is no permanent fix yet.

Permanent Partial Solution This fix affects user options configurations, if you need to make a config in game do it before try this. Open %USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games\BioShock Infinite\XGame\Config\XUserOptions.ini Change bAimAssist and DefaultbAimAssist to false Save your changes and make XUserOptions.ini read only.

Temporary auto aim fix This fix needs to be applied every time the game is started. Start the game with a controller plugged in. Go to controller options and turn off Aim Assist. Unplug controller and play the game.

Xbox controls even with no controller attached

Bioshock Infinite auto-detects any controllers/joysticks attached to the system including virtual ones. This could make game uncontrollable and cause camera to spin, menu contains labels for Xbox buttons.

Remove all controllers Remove all physical controllers and joysticks. Disable all virtual controllers These can be included in software for gaming mice and keyboards Disable Unified Remote. Disable virtual adapter for 3DConnexion devices. To disable controller support, edit %USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games\BioShock Infinite\XGame\Config\XEngine.ini and change AllowJoystickInput=1 to AllowJoystickInput=0. Save your changes.

1920x1080 on 1920x1200 monitor

Scaling fix Adjust these settings on NVIDIA drivers.

Multiple save games

Only one save game is able to played at any one time.

Manually move files in your savedata folder Disable Steam cloud synchronization. Make a backup of your BioShock Infinite savedata folder. It should be located at <Steam-folder>\userdata\<user-id>\8870\remote\savedata\ Create as many subfolders as you want within this folder. Assume that each of them contains a save game. Simply move the contents of the savedata folder into the corresponding subfolder whenever you or anyone else wants to start a new game. When you start a new game, a new save file for that game will be automatically created within the main savedata folder. When you want to switch playthroughs, first move the current file in the savedata folder into a sub-folder for safe keeping (remember to name the sub-folders so you remember which is which). Secondly, move the playthrough you’d like to load from its sub-folder into the main savedata folder, which will enable you to continue from that file.

Hold to aim down sights

To change from toggle aim down sights to hold aim down sights, simply make an AutoHotKey script:

AutoHotKey script for hold to aim 1. Download and install AutoHotkey. 2. Let application create sample script. This script file should open after installation. 3. Delete everything and insert these lines: #IfWinActive BioShock Infinite $mbutton:: Send {mbutton} KeyWait, mbutton Return mbutton Up::Send {mbutton} 4. Open AutoHotkey window (green H icon in tray area), navigate to File and hit Reload Script. Notes: This is script for default bindings where aiming is bind to middle mouse button. For aiming by right mouse button replace MButton for RButton. For bindings to other keys see Hotkeys and KeyList sections of AutoHotkey documentation for button syntaxes. If your zoom gets stuck, you can reset with the run button, Shift.

GUI scaling on high resolution displays

GUI elements are not scaling with resolution which makes these elements rather small on high resolution displays.

GUI scaling tweak Edit %USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games\BioShock Infinite\XGame\Config\XUI.ini Locate lines MaxResolutionUpScale=0.0 and change value to something between 0.0 and 1.0. See screenshots for examples. Default value of 0.0 MaxResolutionUpScale=0.5 MaxResolutionUpScale=1.0 Default value of 0.0 MaxResolutionUpScale=0.5 MaxResolutionUpScale=1.0

System requirements

Windows
	Minimum	Recommended
Operating system (OS)	Vista SP2	7 SP1 64-bit
Processor (CPU)	Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz / AMD Athlon X2 2.7 GHZ	Quad core
System memory (RAM)	2 GB	4 GB
Hard disk drive (HDD)	20 GB	30 GB
Video card (GPU)	ATI Radeon 3870 NVIDIA 8800 GT Intel HD 3000 512 MB of VRAM DirectX 10 compatible	ATI Radeon 6950 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 1024 MB of VRAM DirectX 11 compatible

Windows XP and DirectX 9 video cards are not supported.