Dead Space

Dead Space

Developers
	EA Redwood Shores
Publishers
	Electronic Arts
Engines
	Visceral Engine
Release dates
Windows	October 20, 2008
Reception
Metacritic	86
IGDB	88
Taxonomy
Monetization	One-time game purchase
Microtransactions	None
Modes	Singleplayer
Pacing	Real-time
Perspectives	Third-person
Controls	Direct control
Genres	Shooter, Survival horror
Art styles	Realistic
Themes	Horror, Sci-fi, Space
Series	Dead Space

Dead Space
Dead Space	2008
Dead Space 2	2011
Dead Space 3	2013
Dead Space (2023)	2023

Key points

A glitch in the game causes the difficulty to change itself when multiple save files are present. See Issues fixed.

Very poor mouse input due to aggressive negative mouse acceleration when running at frame rates above 60 FPS. Use Dead Space Mouse Fix.

General information

Dead Space Wiki

GOG.com Community Discussions

GOG.com Support Page

Steam Community Discussions

Dead Space on TheGameEngine.org

Availability

Source	DRM	Notes	Keys	OS
Retail		SecuROM v7.38.0007 DRM & SecuROM PA DRM. 4 machines limit. A De-Authorization Tool is available.
Amazon.com
GOG.com
Origin		Included with EA Play.
Steam		Included with EA Play (Steam). Key is located in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Electronic Arts\EA Games\Dead Space\ergc.
(unavailable)

DLC and expansion packs

All DLCs were never released for PC.

Essential improvements

Use DXVK to Improve Performance

Improves framerate significantly

Install the DXVK file
Download the Latest DXVK file on github. Use WinRAR or 7-Zip or WinZIP to unpack the file and copy d3d9.dll from x32 folder to your Dead Space installation folder. Launch the game. This can also fix some graphical glitches for AMD users.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System	Location
Windows	%LOCALAPPDATA%\Electronic Arts\Dead Space\settings.txt
Steam Play (Linux)	<Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/17470/pfx/

The file for key-bindings controls.rmp is in a binary format and requires hex editing.

Save game data location

System	Location
Windows	%USERPROFILE%\Documents\Electronic Arts\Dead Space\
Steam Play (Linux)	<Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/17470/pfx/

20 save slots available.

Save game cloud syncing

System	Native	Notes
GOG Galaxy
Origin
OneDrive		Requires enabling backup of the Documents folder in OneDrive on all computers.
Steam Cloud

Video

Graphics settings.

Advanced graphics settings.

Brightness settings. With exclusive fullscreen, game is so much brighter that even lowest value looks relatively bright.

WSGF multi-monitor screenshot.

Graphics feature	State	WSGF	Notes
Widescreen resolution			Game's brightness is much higher in exclusive fullscreen mode.
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen			Only if your display supports a refresh rate of 60 Hz or more.
4K Ultra HD			Subtitles do not scale. Untested Cheat Engine table for subtitle scaling.
Field of view (FOV)		See Field of view (FOV).
Windowed
Borderless fullscreen windowed		See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)		See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anti-aliasing (AA)		Ingame antialiasing is a simple blur shader. On/off toggle. Nvidia users can force SGSSAA, see Anti-aliasing (AA).
Vertical sync (Vsync)		Double buffered in fullscreen mode, works as a 30 FPS cap otherwise. See the glossary page for proper Vsync.
60 FPS and 120+ FPS		Very high frame rate potentially causes problems with QTEs, physics (specifically ragdoll), and animations. There are a few minor problems. Mouse input has issues when running over 60 FPS. Use Dead Space Mouse Fix. Can introduce desyncing issues with extremely high framerates (300+ FPS). Some of the UI speed is tied to FPS. If frame rate is too high, the game will slow down.
High dynamic range display (HDR)		See the glossary page for potential alternatives.

• 

  In-game AA, no AF.

• 

  In-game AA, 16xAF (driver).

• 

  4xAA (driver), 16xAF (driver).

Field of view (FOV)

Use Widescreen Fixer

Download and install Widescreen Fixer. Run the program Select the 'Main' tab, and select 'Dead Space' from the dropdown menu Click the settings cog next to the drop down bar In the window this opens, enter your FOV of choice (I'd recommend 0.3) Click the 'Settings' tab, go to 'Hotkey' at the bottom, and input your hotkey of choice (e.g. Alt+F1) Click 'save settings' and then 'close window'. Leave the program running Launch 'Dead Space' When in game, press the hotkey you input in step 6. Your FoV of choice should now be visible in game When you look at the Widescreen Fixer program, below the 'Select game' dropdown menu is 'Status'. 'Game Running', and Fix Enabled should both be Yes if it worked correctly. Please note that the program must be kept running alongside the game for the selected FOV to work.

Anti-aliasing (AA)

Force SGSSAA (Nvidia only)

Download and run Nvidia Profile Inspector. Select the Dead Space profile. Change Antialiasing compatibility value to 0x004010C0. Change Antialiasing - Behavior Flags to None. Change Antialiasing - Mode to Override any application setting. Change Antialiasing - Setting to 4x [4x Multisampling] or 8xQ [8x Multisampling]. Change Antialiasing - Transparency Supersampling to 4x Sparse Grid Supersampling or 8x Sparse Grid Supersampling. Press "Apply Changes" in the top-right corner. Notes Might blur the image to some extent, Antialiasing fix is needed and 4x SGSSAA may not look good at resolutions lower than 1080p. Due to the aforementioned reasons, driver downsampling (DSR/Custom Resolutions (Nvidia) or VSR (AMD)) combined with FXAA or SMAA may be preferable.

Ambient occlusion

Force HBAO+ (Nvidia only)

Download and run Nvidia Profile Inspector. Select the Dead Space profile. Change Ambient Occlusion compatibility value to 0x0000000F. Change Ambient Occlusion setting to Performance. Change Ambient Occlusion usage to Enabled. Press "Apply Changes" in the top-right corner. Notes The "Performance" ambient occlusion setting yields a stronger effect compared to "Quality" and "High Quality" and provides much better performance.

Input

Input settings.

Game uses controller HUD if controller is present. Simply unplug/disable controller when playing with keyboard and mouse.

Keyboard and mouse	State	Notes
Remapping		Two keys per action. In-game remapping is really limited; see Remapping.
Mouse acceleration		Use Dead Space Mouse Fix for raw mouse input.
Mouse sensitivity
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support
Full controller support
Controller remapping		Renders most DirectInput controllers unuseable.
Controller sensitivity		The command has to be manually added through the settings.exe file for the game.
Controller Y-axis inversion

Controller types

XInput-compatible controllers
Xbox button prompts
Impulse Trigger vibration

PlayStation controllers		See the glossary page for potential workarounds.

Generic/other controllers		Game tries its best to autoassign buttons in correct places, but often fails, leading controller to be unuseable. XInput wrapping highly recommended.
Button prompts		Keyboard buttons shown if DirectInput controller used.

Additional information
Button prompts		Controller given priority for displaying on-screen buttons.
Controller hotplugging
Haptic feedback		XInput only.
Digital movement supported
Simultaneous controller+KB/M

Steam Input
Steam Input API support
Hook input (legacy mode)
Official controller preset(s)
Steam Controller button prompts

• 

  Rebinding, basic.

• 

  Rebinding, aiming.

• 

  Rebinding, RIG.

Remapping

Keybind Editor
Dead Space configuration tool by felayga allows to modify keyboard and mouse binds. The tool with interface shown on screenshot can be downloaded here or compiled from sources. Manual edits still required to: bind wheel or unlock action for mouse binds; bind hidden actions, such as map zoom.

Hex editing example

Edit keybinds manually

Before proceeding change at least one of the default game key bindings in order to generate the required file Go to the configuration files location. Open controls.rmp with a hex editor such as HxD. To simplify things, adjust the program so that you have 20 bytes per row (14 in hex) Each primary or alternate keyboard key is stored in the 0C and 0D column By comparing the codes in the default file with those here you can understand what every lines control You'll be able to arrange the controls with a little patience and the codes below Mouse binds editing scheme: 1st Column - allow mouse binds. 2nd - mouse button ID = 00-04 = Left, Right, Middle, WheelUp, WheelDown. To bind use to mouse wheel, offset is 0x78. Notes Codes for every keyboard key can be found in one of these website: 1 - "Make" scan code 2 - In the "Keyboard Scan Code" section, the "Make" code of the set 1 column

Audio

Audio settings.

Audio feature	State	Notes
Separate volume controls
Surround sound		Up to 5.0 output.
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost		Only when minimized

Localizations

Language	UI	Audio	Sub	Notes
English				Both English US and English GB are available
Simplified Chinese				Fan translation, donwload
Czech				GOG and Origin version.
French
German
Hungarian				GOG, Origin and Retail version, the language files are available here.
Italian
Polish				GOG, Origin and Retail version.
Brazilian Portuguese				Fan translation: download (GGames)
Russian				GOG, Origin and Retail version, download.
Spanish
Turkish				Fan translation available here

VR support

3D modes	State	GG3D	Notes
Nvidia 3D Vision			See Helix Mod: Dead Space 3D Vision fix update.
TriDef 3D
iZ3D
vorpX		G3D Officially supported game, see official vorpx game list.

Devices
3RD Space Gaming Vest
Novint Falcon

Issues fixed

Screen tearing

Sometimes the game has screen tearing problems.

Play the game in windowed mode
You can then put the game in full screen using these.

Mouse acceleration, lag, and random sensitivity

Mouse view becomes messier the more the framerate exceeds 60 FPS.

Use raw mouse input fix
Install Dead Space Mouse Fix. Notes Sensitivity will wildly increase when walking on organic matter (normalizes when aiming).

Invisible door

With a high frame rate, the first door after getting the Plasma Cutter may be impassable.

Limit frame rate to 120 FPS or lower[citation needed]
See Frame rate capping.

Invisible wall blocks red marker at final chapter

For unknown reason, the chamber door after second store may block the track. Try to keep a save at second savepoint of the chapter.

Unbreakable containers and unopenable crates

With a high frame rate, containers and crates may not be interactable.

Limit frame rate to 120 FPS or lower[citation needed]
See Frame rate capping.

Stretched geometry

With a high frame rate, hair physics may "explode" and stretch unnaturally. This can be observed in the very first scene.

Limit frame rate to 120 FPS or lower
See Frame rate capping. Enabling in-game VSync option will also solve this problem.

Doctor Challus Mercer doesn't appear in Chapter 5: Lethal Devotion

Momentarily enable Vsync
Enter Cryo Chamber with the in-game Vsync enabled.

Deadly lock-up during landing in zero gravity

At high framerates there's a risk of player getting soft-locked in landing state during zero gravity sections, game resolves this lock-up by forcibly killing the player after 5–10 seconds. This can be "fixed" by capping framerates to 60 or 30 FPS. Severity of the issue can potentially scale up with the framerate, being very common at 300+ FPS.

Large deadzone

The game inserts large deadzones onto the analog sticks, making precise control very difficult, especially on gamepads like the Logitech Gamepad F310, which have their own deadzones.

Make deadzones smaller
Download Durazno XInput Wrapper. Extract the contents and run Durazno.exe. Set the AntiDeadzone option to 40%, close the program. Copy Durazno.ini and xinput1_3.dll to the installation folder. Open the game and disable vsync. Force it through your driver control panel if you want vsync.

For Steam users.

Make deadzones smaller
Start the game. Open Steam Overlay. Go to Controller Configuration. Choose Browse Configs. Go to Community tab. Choose any from ones at the top that say they fix deadzone problem.

Game crashes at launch

Fix settings.txt
Go to the configuration file(s) location. Open settings.txt (if it isn't present create it manually). Eventually change both Window.Fullscreen and Window.VSync to false.

Try unplugging or disabling controllers
Open Device Manager. Disable all HID compliant game controller under Human Interface Devices [HID].

Run the game on a single core

Open Command Prompt. Type cd "<path-to-game>" and press enter. Type start "" /Affinity 1 "Dead Space.exe" and press enter, which will tell Windows to run the game on only one core. If the game is not installed on your C: drive, after step 2 you will need to type the drive letter followed by : and then press enter. For example, if the game is installed on the E drive, you would type E: and then press enter before step 3. You will likely need to do this every time you want to play the game if this fix works.

Audio stutter

This must be done every time you launch the game.

Make Dead Space a high priority task in Task Manager
Launch Dead Space. Press Alt+Tab ↹ to return to the Desktop. Click the Processes tab. Right click Dead Space and click "Go to details." This selects Dead Space in the Details tab. Right click it, and change priority to "High".

Windows mouse cursor visible

If this cursor is visible, it may cause problems on multi-monitor systems.^{[citation needed]}

See Disable Origin in game or Toggle the Steam overlay per game

Spinning camera

These will also fix the camera/reticule being pulled to the top left during turret sequences, like the tentacle grab or asteroid defense sequences.

Create an empty joypad profile
Go to %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Electronic Arts\Dead Space\. Create an empty text file called joypad.txt.

Unplug any extra input device except mouse and keyboard[citation needed]

Disable Logitech G13 Joystick[citation needed]
Open Device Manager. Under Human Interface Devices [HID] disable the Logitech G13 Joystick. Notes This will only disable the Joystick meaning the G13 can still be used to play the game.

Difficulty changes itself when multiple save files are present

Difficulty only changes itself when save at end of a chapter (save in the train).

Always select "load game" instead of "continue game" on main menu
Alternatively, delete all save files except the one you are using.

Use CheatEngine to change the game difficulty

Run Dead Space and load your save. Click Open Process and attach to your running Dead Space executable. Click Add Address Manually and enter "Dead Space.exe"+A8ADC0 (for Steam version) or "Dead Space.exe"+A88E30 (for GOG/Origin version), select Byte Type. Change the value to 0, 1, 2, or 3, depending on the difficulty you want: 0 = Easy 1 = Medium 2 = Hard 3 = Impossible The next time you save the game, it will save an uncorrupted file with difficulty you selected.

Game randomly cuts to a black screen and pauses, as if it was Alt-Tabbed

Use the Borderless Gaming program

Download, install, and run the program Launch Dead Space Ensure that the game is not set to fullscreen in the video settings, and your native resolution/refresh rate is applied Left click 'Dead Space' in the 'Applications' box on the Borderless Gaming program Right click, and select 'Make borderless' This will result in the loss of some minor visual fidelity, but the bug will no longer occur. Please note that this must be reapplyed when the game is launched.

Other information

API

Technical specs	Supported	Notes
Direct3D	9
Shader Model support	3

Executable	32-bit	64-bit	Notes
Windows

Middleware

	Middleware	Notes
Physics	Havok
Audio	RwAudioCore

Unlock impossible difficulty without playthrough

Modify settings.txt[citation needed]
Go to the configuration file(s) location. Open settings.txt. Change Game.Played = 0 to 1. Save game editor A tool by malkhal that allows players to modify their Dead Space game save data. Backing up the original save files is recommended before using this tool. Can be downloaded here.

System requirements

Windows
	Minimum	Recommended
Operating system (OS)	XP SP2	Vista
Processor (CPU)	Intel Pentium 4 2.8 GHz AMD Athlon 64 3000+	Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+
System memory (RAM)	1 GB	2 GB
Hard disk drive (HDD)	7.5 GB
Video card (GPU)	Nvidia GeForce 6800 GT ATI Radeon X1600 Pro 256 MB of VRAM DirectX 9.0c compatible Shader model 3.0 support	Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT
Sound (audio device)	DirectX 9.0c compatible

Nvidia GeForce 7300, 7600 GS, 8500 and ATI Radeon X1300, X1300 Pro, HD2400 are below minimum system requirements.