Dead Island

Dead Island

Developers   Techland OS X Virtual Programming

Publishers   Deep Silver

Engines   Chrome Engine 5

Release dates Windows September 6, 2011 OS X April 2, 2014 Linux October 24, 2014

Dead Island

Dead Island	2011
Dead Island Ripper Mod
Dead Island Ryder White DLC
Dead Island Bloodbath Arena DLC
Dead Island: Riptide	2013
Dead Island Epidemic	TBA
Escape Dead Island	2014
Dead Island 2	2015

Key points

The Dead Island Helper utility can be used to fix many bugs and tweak many advanced Dead Island settings, such as field of view and advanced graphics settings. Only use manual tweaks if it does not work for you.

DLC can no longer be purchased individually on Steam.

General information

Steam Community Discussions

Steam Users' Forums

Availability

Source	DRM	Notes	Keys
Retail		Game of the Year Edition only.
Steam		Windows, OS X, and Linux.
Amazon.com		Region locked, cannot be used in Europe.
Mac App Store		OS X only. Cannot play with Steam players.

All Windows and Linux versions require Steam.

Version differences

The Game of the Year Edition is a complete edition with all DLC.

Steam and Mac App Store players cannot play together.

Essential improvements

• Dead Island Helper - The easiest way to apply fixes and tweaks to Dead Island.

Game data

Configuration files location

	Location
Windows	%USERPROFILE%\Documents\DeadIsland\out\Settings\
OS X
Linux	<path-to-game>/DI/out/Settings/

Save game data location

	Location
Steam	<Steam-folder>/userdata/<user-id>/91310/remote/

Save game cloud syncing

System	Native	Notes
Steam Cloud		Syncs save games and settings.
GameSave Manager

Video settings

Graphics option	Option	WSGF	Notes
Widescreen resolution
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen
Field of view (FOV)		See Field of view (FOV)
Windowed
Borderless fullscreen windowed
Anisotropic filtering (AF)		Force in the graphics card control panel.
Anti-aliasing (AA)		Can be forced through the NVIDIA Control Panel/AMD Control Center.
Vertical sync (Vsync)
High frame rate		No frame rate or refresh rate cap.

Field of view (FOV)

Widescreen Fixer supports this game.

Edit default_levels.xml Go to %USERPROFILE%\Documents\DeadIsland\out\Settings Open default_levels.xml Find CVAR CameraDefaultFOV and change it accordingly. 90-100 works well for 16:9, 85-95 works well for 16:10, 65-75 works well for 4:3 or 5:4 resolutions (lower values may have a lot of people experiencing simulation sickness).

Input settings

Keyboard and mouse	Native	Notes
Remapping
Mouse acceleration
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support		XInput controllers only. OS X controller support requires the Tattiebogle OS X driver.
Full controller support
Controller remapping
Controller Y-axis inversion

Audio settings

Audio options	Native	Notes
Separate volume controls		Music, SFX, Speech
Surround sound		Possibly up to 7.1. See below if problems
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost

Network

If you have installed mods or edited the .xml for characters, all clients need the same mods in order to play.
It should also be noted that challenges are global, so if you are close to killing for instance 1 million zombies with one characters, and you play co-op with another and hit one million total kills, this character will gain all the XP from completing the challenge

Steam and Mac App Store players cannot play together.

Multiplayer types

Type	Native	Notes
LAN play
Online play
LAN co-op
Online co-op

Connection types

Type	Native	Notes
Matchmaking
Peer-to-peer
Dedicated
Direct IP

Issues fixed

You can find various fixes in the FAQ on the Steam Community Discussions page for Dead Island.

If you don't want to manually apply some of these tweaks check out tools section at end of the page.

Long Load Times

Some users are experiencing ridiculously long load times when doing things like loading the menu, game, etc. It can literally take over 5–10 minutes for some people. Oddly enough, this may relate to error logging that is done by the game.

Mark crash.log as a Read Only Go to %USERPROFILE%\Documents\deadisland\out\logs\ Right click crash.log Click on Properties Mark the file as Read Only

Co-op Error Message: "The game you have tried to join is no longer available"

Hamachi Download and install Hamachi which allows you to simulate a LAN over the internet. Power Hamachi on, start a new network, and invite your friends to it. Start a Dead Island game after setting the game to co-operative and LAN in the options menu. Your server will now show up for anyone on your Hamachi network.

Loud Distorted Audio

Dead Island has a compatibility problem with 7.1 output devices, this includes Logitech USB headsets (G35, G930) and 7.1 sound devices that use 3.5 mm analog connections. This issue is typically immediately recognizable when reaching the title screen and hearing a loud, frightening, distorted noise; this issue also carries over into the gameplay. This issue was present in Dead Island: Riptide, but was corrected by Techland. Techland has yet to correct the issue with the first Dead Island game. The definitive solution is to set your device to anything below 7.1 but other options exist that may help.

Change Windows Speaker Configuration Open the Start Screen/Start Menu, type mmsys.cpl and press ↵ Enter. In the Playback tab, right-click on the Default Device (marked with a tick ) and choose "Configure Speakers" from the menu. Select 5.1 surround or lower. Click through the remaining steps and click the Finish button in the last screen. This option may not be available for some USB headsets. Remember to reconfigure your 7.1 device to 7.1 output after you are done playing Dead Island.

Edit Audio.scr Go to %USERPROFILE%\Documents\DeadIsland\out\Settings Look for the Audio.scr file and open it with a text editor. Look for the line: API("XAudio2") and change it to API("aOpenAL")

This will fix the game's sound partly, because static might still occur however most of the problem is over.

If this fix does not work, there is an alternative solution to static and crackling problems.

Empty Audio.scr Go to %USERPROFILE%\Documents\DeadIsland\out\Settings Look for the Audio.scr file and open it with a text editor. Select all of the file's contents and delete them, making the file empty, and then save the file. Right-click the file, select Properties, check the Read-only box, click Apply, and then click OK.

It is recommended that you backup the Audio.scr file before doing this, though if you don't you can always just delete the file and the game will create a new one.

Game Crashes With Message: Problem Event: BEX

Users whose player names have non-English characters experience game crashes with this error message:

Problem event name: BEX App Name: DeadIslandGame.exe App version: 1.0.0.0 App timestamp: 4f100716 Fault module name: MSVCR90.dll Fault module version: 9.0.30729.6161 Fault module timestamp: 4dace5b9 Exception offset: 00036d36 Exception code: c0000417 Exception data 00000000 OS version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.768.3 Locale ID: 1033 Additional info 1: 364e Additional info 2:364ecf2f9e26d8075e002643326a0340 Additional info 3: 1f40 Additional info 4: 1f4001d1190a4d768106236129b38e30c.

Change your player name, such as your Steam name, to exclude non-English characters.

System requirements

Windows
	Minimum	Recommended
Operating system (OS)	XP, 7
Processor (CPU)	Core2Duo 2.66 GHz
System memory (RAM)	1 GB	4 GB
Hard disk drive (HDD)	7 GB
Video card (GPU)	ATI 2600XT GeForce 8600GT 512 MB of VRAM	GeForce 9600 1 GB of VRAM