Use Dead Island Helper
If you do not feel comfortable editing files by hand, you can use Dead Island Helper, a program which will do this for you. According to the creator, it does install a keyboard hook to detect if Dead Island is running, but only to prevent multiple keystrokes from being processed. It shouldn't trigger VAC, but you have to decide for yourself if you want to run the risk.
If you'd rather edit files yourself, you can follow the steps outlined below:
Turning on VSync
- Navigate to
My Documents\Dead Island\out\Settings
Here, you'll find a files named Video.scr
Windows 7 will recognize this file as a screensaver file, so you need to open it with a file editor such as Notepad. You can do this by dragging and dropping the Video.scr file to Notepad or using Notepad and navigating to the directory. Remember to change the dropdown to look for "All files" if you do this.
Upon opening the file, you will find something that looks like this:
!Resolution(i,i)
!WindowOffset(i,i)
!Monitor(i) // -1 primary monitor
!BPP(i)
!FSAA(i) // Full Screen AntiAliasing, 0 - none, higher is better
!TexBPP(i)
!TextureQuality(s) // VeryLow, Low, High
!Filtering(s) // Bilinear, Trilinear, Anisotropic, AnisotropicTrilinear
!GammaFloat(f)
!MaxRefresh(i)
!Shadows(s) // Low, High
!ShadowMapSize(i)
!SpotShadowMapSize(i)
!Lightmaps()
!Fullscreen()
!VSync() // enable vertical sync
!MaterialQuality(i) // lower is better
!WaterQuality(i) // lower is better
!GrassQuality(i) // lower is better
!FXQuality(i) // higher is better
!FXFadeLevel(i) // 0-4 (lower is better)
!EnvQuality(s) // FullDynamic, RareDynamic, Static
!ShaderPath(i) // 0 - 1.1, 1 - 1.4, 2 - 2.0, 3 - 3.0, 4 - x360, 5 - 4.0, 6 - ps3
!PostProcess(s) // Simple, Normal
!DisplayDeviceType(i,f,f,f,f) //device type (LCD TV etc.): 0 - default
!Curves(s) // curves texure
Resolution(1920,1080)
Monitor(0)
BPP(24)
FSAA(0)
TexBPP(32)
TextureQuality("High")
Filtering("Trilinear")
Fullscreen()
Shadows("High")
ShadowMapSize(1024)
SpotShadowMapSize(1024)
Lightmaps()
GammaFloat(1.00)
MaxRefresh(60)
MaterialQuality(2)
FXQuality(3)
FXFadeLevel(2)
WaterQuality(2)
GrassQuality(0)
EnvQuality("FullDynamic")
ShaderPath(3)
DisplayDeviceType(0,0.000000,1.000000,1.000000,1.0 00000)
These are the default values that the game is using. If you want to enable Vertical Sync, insert VSync()
between the values of Fullscreen()
and Shadows("High")
like so:
Fullscreen()
VSync()
Shadows("High")
Remember that if you want this to work properly, you need to have refresh rate set to the same value as your monitor's refresh rate. That variable is:
MaxRefresh(60)
After making this adjustment, click Save and exit. It is currently under dispute whether or not you need to set this file as Read-only or not, as some people say that you need to, otherwise the game will overwrite your settings and others say that it will only overwrite invalid settings. I did not need to until I changed my Post Processing settings, which didn't seem to take until I set it as Read-only. If you want to play it safe, you can set it by doing the following:
- Rightclick the
Video.scr
file
- Select
Properties
- On the
General
tab you'll see Attributes
near the bottom
- Check
Read-only
box and click Apply
then OK
Increasing the graphical quality
Even after setting the ingame options to "High," there's still more you can do to increase the graphical quality. You can adjust other attributes in this file if you are comfortable doing so and know what your video card and system can handle.
If you choose to adjust these individual settings, I would advise only changing one variable at a time so you know what to change back in case of crashing (if you have it set as "Read-only" at least, theoretically it should change any invalid values automatically if it doesn't).
Increase color quality
BPP(24)
Change this setting to 32
. And in conjunction with this make sure you:
Enable Post Processing
PostProcess("Normal")
Add this line, it doesn't seem to matter where you put it.
Enable FSAA (Fullscreen Anti-Aliasing)
FSAA(0)
Change the 0
to either 2
,4
, 8
, or 16
.
Increase environmental detail settings
MaterialQuality(2)
FXFadeLevel(2)
WaterQuality(2)
GrassQuality(0)
Make sure all of these are set to 0
.
Increase the texture quality
Filtering("Trilinear")
Change Trilinear
to Anisotropic
or AnisotropicTrilinear
.
Increase shadow quality
ShadowMapSize(1024)
SpotShadowMapSize(1024)
Change 1024
to either 2048
or 4096
. Note that changing these settings may cause crashing. I was succesfully able to change SpotShadowMapSize to 4096, however I could only increase ShadowMapSize to 2048 without crashing. As stated, make sure you change variables individually to be able to pinpoint crash causes.
Example setup
I'm running an ATi Radeon HD 4890 1GB card on a system with 12GB RAM and my settings are as follows:
Resolution(1920,1080)
Monitor(0)
BPP(32)
FSAA(16)
TexBPP(32)
TextureQuality("High")
Filtering("AnisotropicTrilinear")
Fullscreen()
Shadows("High")
ShadowMapSize(2048)
SpotShadowMapSize(4096)
Lightmaps()
GammaFloat(1.35)
MaxRefresh(60)
MaterialQuality(0)
FXQuality(3)
FXFadeLevel(0)
WaterQuality(0)
GrassQuality(0)
EnvQuality("FullDynamic")
ShaderPath(5)
VSync()
PostProcess("Normal")
DisplayDeviceType(0,0.000000,1.000000,1.000000,1.000000)
~Sources: This thread and this thread on the Steam forums
Yes. Most achievements and challenges are cumulative across all playthroughs and modes.
The achievements relating to collectibles (Gotta find 'em all and Nearly there) seem to require using a single character, but you can repeat the campaign with a character in single-player mode, which keeps your skills and inventory intact, including all collectibles you've found, so you can use that game-plus to get the rest of the items you missed the first time through.
Also, the challenge relating to collectibles (My collectibles, let me show you them!) does count total collectibles across all characters, and they do not have to be unique collectibles. (Example: If you get Banoi Herald excerpt #1 with all four characters, that will count 4 toward the total of 140; you do not have to find 140 unique collectibles across all four characters.)
Note that this gives you an easy way to level up a new character: get to 90% or more on a Level 4 challenge with a high-level character, get to a checkpoint to save your progress, then load a low-level character and complete the challenge. Because the experience reward does not scale, a reward that might not change a level-50 character much can boost a level-5 character several levels.
Best Answer
It works quite poorly. Money distribution is reasonable, but there are a great many ways that XP disparity can exist and the game's mechanics seem to only exist to further this disparity. There are some mods that have been developed to try and force equalized XP distribution, but even then they do not cover all cases and XP disparity can still crop up.
Money
As of the latest patch, "loot from dead enemies is now always identical for all co-op players". Further research and testing reveals that all money received is identical for all co-op players in the sense that when someone picks up money from an enemy or loot container, all co-op players get that same amount of money with the exception of those with money boosting abilities who would have the amount that they receive modified by those abilities.
XP skills
Skills that increase XP, even if they claim to affect everyone in co-op have been reported to only do so for those in very close proximity. It would appear that these skills would only affect players with those skills active when co-op players are not bunched up. Obviously individually affecting skills will only affect the individual. This is a great way to further XP disparity.
Quests
Quest rewards are a bit more problematic. Each player in a co-op game may need to turn in a quest to get the rewards. Quest XP is far more challenging to explain. If the co-op players are not at the same points in the campaign, only players at or beyond the host's campaign progress will get quest XP. As of the latest patch, "in subsequent playthroughs XP is awarded for all quests completed in co-op" so for those players who have completed the game, they should receive XP, even when they aren't up to that point in single-player campaign again. It has been noted that sometimes, quest XP rewards have not been received in co-op when both players are at the same point in the campaign and the workaround was to have the co-op partners turn in the quests rather than the host. Quest XP is also scaled to your level so XP disparity will be further widened.
Challenge XP
Challenge progress is preserved across characters and playthroughs and XP only goes to the character that completes the challenge. All of a sudden, someone might complete a challenge they've been progressing towards with a different character and create a vast XP gap.
Action XP
You get individual XP for small actions such as healing, buffs, breaking doors and the like which can also increase XP disparity.
Combat XP
XP Bonuses abound. You get extra XP from breaking bones, landing criticals, etc. You get a share of the XP if you deal some of the damage, with the person dealing the final blow getting the most XP. Players who don't participate in combat get very little of the XP. Due to different combat mechanics and tactics, it is very easy for an XP disparity to form.
As of the current version, "enemy's levels can now be adjusted independently for each co-op player," and this means that by default, each co-op player will individually see the same enemies at or around their own level and XP will be distributed in accordance with their level, furthering XP disparity. It's possible to turn this option off, at the bottom of the options menu.
Dead Island Co-op is Defective
All of a sudden people will sometimes jump in level for no apparent reason. Dead Island co-op is notoriously buggy and there are many modders working to try and address these concerns so you might try a mod or two to try and balance out the issues you've experienced, but there are no guaranteed fixes for this broken system.