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Penumbra: Black Plague

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
Penumbra: Black Plague
Penumbra: Black Plague cover
Developers
Frictional Games
macOS (OS X) Edward Rudd
Linux Edward Rudd
Publishers
Eastern Europe CD Projekt
Europe Paradox Interactive
Engines
HPL Engine 1
Release dates
Windows February 11, 2008
macOS (OS X) May 12, 2008
Linux May 12, 2008
Penumbra: Black Plague guide on StrategyWiki
Penumbra: Black Plague on MobyGames
Penumbra: Black Plague on Wikipedia
Penumbra
Penumbra: Overture 2007
Penumbra: Black Plague 2008

General information

Official website
GOG.com Community Discussions for game series
GOG.com Support Page
Steam Community Discussions

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
Disc check (requires the CD/DVD in the drive to play)
SecuROM v7 DRM disc check
Windows
GOG.com
DRM-free
Penumbra Collection
Windows
macOS (OS X)
Humble Store
Icon overlay.png
Penumbra Collection
Windows
macOS (OS X)
Linux
Mac App Store
Icon overlay.png
Penumbra Collection
macOS (OS X)
Steam
Icon overlay.png
Gold Edition. Includes the Requiem expansion.
Windows
macOS (OS X)
Linux
The Penumbra Collection includes Penumbra: Overture, Black Plague, and the Requiem expansion.

DLC and expansion packs

Name Notes
Requiem
Windows
macOS (OS X)
Linux

Essential improvements

Skip intro videos

Edit settings.cfg[citation needed]
  1. Go to the configuration file location.
  2. Open settings.cfg with a text editor.
  3. On line 1 change ShowPreMenu="true" to ShowPreMenu="false"
  4. Save the changes.

Enable quick save

Edit settings.cfg[citation needed]
  1. Go to the configuration file location.
  2. Open settings.cfg with a text editor.
  3. On line 1 change AllowQuickSave="false" to AllowQuickSave="true"
  4. Save the changes.

Notes

Press F4 to save and F5 to load.
Penumbra: Black Plague has no on-screen indication that the quick save was successful.
Penumbra: Requiem has quick save enabled by default, plus allows remapping those keys in-game and has an indication of a successful save.

AI Upscaled Texture Pack

Replace Files
  1. Download the Mod DB: Penumbra Black Plague Texture Upscale Mod.
  2. Open <path-to-game>\redist and back up the contents of \models and \textures directories.
  3. Extract the contents of the downloaded archive to your <path-to-game>\redist folder, and overwrite the original textures when prompted

Notes

At least 3GB of VRAM is required.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Penumbra\Black Plague\
%USERPROFILE%\Documents\Penumbra\Requiem\
macOS (OS X) ~/Library/Preferences/Frictional Games/Penumbra/Black Plague/
~/Library/Preferences/Frictional Games/Penumbra/Requiem/
Linux ~/.frictionalgames/Penumbra/Black Plague/
~/.frictionalgames/Penumbra/Requiem/
This game does not follow the XDG Base Directory Specification on Linux.

Save game data location

System Location
Windows %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Penumbra\Black Plague\
%USERPROFILE%\Documents\Penumbra\Requiem\
macOS (OS X) ~/Library/Preferences/Frictional Games/Penumbra/Black Plague/
~/Library/Preferences/Frictional Games/Penumbra/Requiem/
Linux ~/.frictionalgames/Penumbra/Black Plague/
~/.frictionalgames/Penumbra/Requiem/

Save game cloud syncing

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

Video

Video settings.
Video settings.
Advanced video settings.
Advanced video settings.

Widescreen resolution

Edit settings.cfg[2]
  1. Go to the configuration file location.
  2. Open settings.cfg with a text editor.
  3. On line 7 change Screen Width="XXXX" Height="XXXX" to the desired screen width and height respectively.
  4. Save the changes.

Notes

Menus and HUD are stretched.

Field of view (FOV)

This game uses vertical FOV. See FOV Calculator for help.
Use hex editor to change FOV

To change FOV open Penumbra.exe with a hex editor such as HxD.
Goto address 9E571 and change 8C 42 (which is 70°) to A8 42 for 84° or BE 42 for 95°.
Do the same at the address A7AA4.

To get a different values use this Floating Point Converter.

Windowed

Mouse is captured by hovering pointer over the window.
Edit settings.cfg[citation needed]
  1. Go to the configuration file location.
  2. Open settings.cfg with a text editor.
  3. On line 7 change FullScreen="true" to FullScreen="false"
  4. Save the changes.

High frame rate

All gameplay elements are locked to 60 FPS. This includes physics, puzzles, player movement, input and most animations. This limit can be removed, but will only affect particles and some animations.[3]
Remove FPS cap
  1. Go to the configuration file(s) location.
  2. Open settings.cfg with a text editor.
  3. Change LimitFPS="true" to "false".

Input

Keyboard and mouse State Notes
Remapping
No support for thumb mouse remapping.
Mouse acceleration
Mouse sensitivity
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support
Controller types

Audio

Audio settings.
Audio settings.

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Single volume control.
Surround sound
Up to 7.0 output.[4]
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
Czech
Retail version only.
Italian
European retail version only.
Hungarian
Retail version only, available to download.
Polish
Retail version only.
Russian
Only on Russian retail copies of 1C-SoftClub (of this game and full trilogy).
Spanish
Fan translation, Black Plague and Requiem DLC
Turkish
Fan translation, Black Plague and Requiem DLC

VR support

Devices State Notes
Novint Falcon

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
OpenGL 1.4
Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows
macOS (OS X)
Linux

Middleware

Middleware Notes
Physics Newton Game Dynamics
Audio OpenAL

System requirements

Windows
Minimum
Operating system (OS) 2000, XP, Vista
Processor (CPU) 1.5 GHz
System memory (RAM) 512 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 2 GB
Video card (GPU) AMD Radeon 8500
Nvidia GeForce 3
macOS (OS X)
Minimum
Operating system (OS) 10.4
Processor (CPU) 2 GHz
System memory (RAM) 1024 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 2 GB
Video card (GPU) AMD Radeon 8500
Nvidia GeForce 3
Linux
Minimum
Operating system (OS) Kernel 2.6
Processor (CPU) 1.5 GHz
System memory (RAM) 512 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 2 GB
Video card (GPU) AMD Radeon 8500
Nvidia GeForce 3


References

  1. https://imgur.com/a/vEbYx
  2. Penumbra | WSGF
  3. Verified by User:Litbeep on 2020-11-3
    Email from Peter Wester (engine programmer): "All the gameplay is run at 60 fps. This means physics, puzzles, player movement, mouse/kb/gamepad input and some animations. The only things that can be unlocked are particles, some animations and texture animations. This is the same for all other HPL-based games!"
  4. PC Gaming Surround Sound Round-up