Custom Game Resolutions

A guide to playing Dead Island: Epidemic in custom, non-standard resolutions and aspect ratios such as 2560×1080 (21:9) using freeware third-party utilities.

Introduction

As of Open Beta 0.7, the in-game Dead Island: Epidemic video settings only permit resolutions from a predefined list of resolutions.

This typically does not cause a problem for players with monitors using these standard resolutions as its native resolution, but can pose an issue for players who prefer multiple-monitor setups or wish to play in native resolution on newer monitors with non-standard resolutions (such as "UltraWide" 21:9 monitors).

At the time of this writing, no known modifications or manual configuration has been shown to enable native support for these custom resolutions. The game's PCGW page[pcgamingwiki.com] reports its configuration location in the Windows Registry, but no public documentation on tweaking those values to enable custom resolutions is known to be available.

The workaround explained in this guide relies on the following simple premise:

1. Run Dead Island: Epidemic in Windowed or Windowed (Fullscreen) mode
   
2. Forcibly resize the game window to an arbitrary resolution

Changing In-Game Settings

The first step is to change your display mode to Windowed (Fullscreen) — also known as "Borderless Fullscreen" in other games — for both Game and the Crib. It is also possible to use Windowed mode if you prefer; the main difference is the rendering of a window border and other elements with the latter option, which may be helpful if you plan to play in smaller windows that can be moved by dragging its title bar. Windowed mode may also provide a more stable game experience at the expense of graphical immersion (see the "Known Bugs" section).



I also recommend that you consider changing your quality settings during this process because of the quality and performance changes inherent to playing graphics-heavy games in Windowed mode:

• When games are played in true fullscreen mode, background rendering such as drawing the Windows desktop is bypassed and your GPU directly renders the game. (This is why it takes a few moments to alt-tab out of games as Windows takes back control.)
  
• Conversely, playing in Windowed mode forces the game to be rendered by the Windows desktop along with all of the other windows, icons, taskbar/toolbars, etc. that you have open.
  
• Since the game is being rendered in a desktop window, it has to play by Windows' rules and is subject to rendering issues, such as your operating system's (or another program's) color management, brightness, and contrast settings.
  
• Notably, there may be significant, repeated stutter if the framerate of a Windowed game is lower than your monitor's refresh rate. This can be avoided by ensuring that your game runs consistently over 60 FPS (or whatever your refresh rate is). From my experience, it is not necessary to enable vertical synchronization (VSync) either in-game or through your graphics card's settings and is often beneficial to leave disabled.

Resizing the Game

The idea is to forcibly resize the game once it is started in Windowed mode, but the game does not currently allow for manual resizing from its corners or any of its context menus. Many methods, scripts, and utilities exist to overcome this but I personally use a freeware called Sizer. Specifically, I use the development version of it found on this page[www.brianapps.net] to make use of its hotkey functionality and 64-bit support.

Once downloaded and run, the program lives in Windows' notification area. When you open Sizer's configuration screen, you'll see a dialog similar to the one to the right. The official user guide[www.brianapps.net] is comprehensive, but in short:

1. Click Add to create a new listing.
   
2. Change the Width and Height to correspond to your monitor's native resolution and enter a description of your choosing.
   
3. Select a shortcut key by clicking in the corresponding box, pressing the "root" key, then selecting your desired modifiers.
   
4. Click OK to save changes.
   
5. Keep Sizer running in the background and after the game has finished loading, hit the shortcut key (or use the tray icon) to change to your new custom resolution!

Results

Here's a comparison between 1920×1080 (16:9) and 2560×1080 (21:9) using the quality settings I listed in the previous section. Note the wider FOV, such as the trees on the left/right that are visible in the second image but not in the first:

Optional Steps

If desired, you can change the compatibility tags on the Crib and Game executable files to automatically disable Desktop Composition and theming (i.e. Windows Aero) while in-game to help reduce the impact of the caveats I mentioned in previous sections and to improve performance:

1. Navigate to %PROGRAMFILES(x86)%\Steam\SteamApps\common\Dead Island Epidemic\
   
2. Right click Dead Island Epidemic.exe, select the Compatibility tab, and enable "Disable visual themes" and "Disable desktop composition."
   
3. Repeat for Dead Island Epidemic - Crib.exe.

Also, if you use a gaming keyboard/mouse or other customizable peripheral, you can consider creating multiple Sizer configurations with different hotkeys and map them to different keys on your device. That way, you can easily switch between different resolutions in-game as necessary.

Known Bugs

• Mouse cursor limited in stretched Windowed (Fullscreen) game: Starting with Closed Beta patch v0.51, I started to experience a bug where playing in Windowed (Fullscreen) mode stretched to 2560×1080 would cause in-game mouse function to be limited. Specifically, the crosshair/pointer would hit an invisible "screen edge" and be confined to about ¾ of the left side of the screen, seemingly corresponding to the standard game aspect ratio and resolution. As a result, things like pinging the minimap became impossible. This bug does not seem to affect playing the game in Windowed mode, so a fairly redundant workaround that I've found to function well involves running the game in Windowed mode, then using a tool such as Borderless Gaming. This ultimately produces similar results as playing in stretched Windowed (Fullscreen) but without the mouse cursor limitation.

Conclusion

Thanks for reading! Although I hope that the game will receive official custom resolution support soon, let me know if you come across better ways to accomplish this in the meantime!

[Finn ™]

yeap!

[twitch.tv/HSLERTV]

I WOULD BAN PLAYERS USING 3RD PARTY TOOLS TO GET AN ADVANTAGE OVER OTHERS! THIS IS JUST LAME NOT SKILLED AT ALL. PROPS FOR POSTING THIS BUG THO

[Neuronenfrost]

THX

[The Drink]

thx alot

[WindyaNdWarm]

!