Cold Fear

Cold Fear

Developers
	Darkworks
Publishers
	Ubisoft
Engines
	RenderWare
Release dates
Windows	March 30, 2005
Reception
Metacritic	66
Taxonomy
Modes	Singleplayer
Pacing	Real-time
Perspectives	Cinematic camera, Third-person
Controls	Direct control
Genres	Survival horror, Shooter
Art styles	Realistic
Themes	Horror

General information

Steam Community Discussions

Availability

Source	DRM	Notes	Keys	OS
Retail		StarForce 3 DRM. Use Alternate Executable to remove the disc check.
GamersGate
Green Man Gaming
Humble Store
Steam		Not available in Germany and Austria
Ubisoft Store		Included with Ubisoft+. Does not need Uplay to run.

StarForce DRM for this game does not work on modern versions of Windows (see above for affected versions).

Essential improvements

Skip intro videos

Delete video files
Go to <path-to-game>\data\movie. Delete or rename Logo_Dar.bik, Logo_Ubi.bik, Renderware.bik and RW.bik.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System	Location
Windows
Steam Play (Linux)	<Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/15270/pfx/

Save game data location

System	Location
Windows	<path-to-game>\SAVES
Steam Play (Linux)	<Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/15270/pfx/

6 save slots available.

Save game cloud syncing

System	Native	Notes
Steam Cloud
Ubisoft Connect

Video

Graphics feature	State	WSGF	Notes
Widescreen resolution			Use Cold Fear Widescreen Fix
Multi-monitor			Use Cold Fear Widescreen Fix
Ultra-widescreen			Use Cold Fear Widescreen Fix
4K Ultra HD			Use Cold Fear Widescreen Fix. Very high resolutions have significantly reduced mouse sensitivity. Support for higher 4:3 resolutions is limited due to many causing the game to crash at start-up.
Field of view (FOV)		See Field of view (FOV) and Changing the FOV distorts the shadows.
Windowed		Run ColdFear_Retail.exe with -windowed command line argument
Borderless fullscreen windowed		See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)		See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anti-aliasing (AA)		See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Vertical sync (Vsync)		See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
60 FPS
120+ FPS		Frame rate above 60 FPS can cause glitches. See Animations speed up and errors during gameplay.
High dynamic range display (HDR)		See the glossary page for potential alternatives.

Anti-aliasing (AA)

Force SGSSAA (Nvidia only)

Download and run Nvidia Profile Inspector. Select the Cold Fear profile. Change Antialiasing compatibility value to 0x000000C1. Change Antialiasing - Behavior Flags to None. Change Antialiasing - Mode to Override any application setting. Change Antialiasing - Setting to 8xQ [8x Multisampling]. Change Antialiasing - Transparency Supersampling to 8x Sparse Grid Supersampling. Press "Apply Changes" in the top-right corner.

Field of view (FOV)

Distorts Realtime Shadows.

Set FOV
Go to <path-to-game>\Conf\. Edit Heroes.cfg. Find the following lines and change the values to your desired FOV. CAMERA_AIM_FOV CAMERA_CONSTRAINT_FOV CAMERA_FOLLOW_MAXDIST

Input

Keyboard and mouse	State	Notes
Remapping		Done in the same menu as controller remapping, with 2 input slots per action.
Mouse acceleration
Mouse sensitivity
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion		Both mouse y-axis inversion and controller y-axis inversion are controlled under "inversed aiming" option.
Controller
Controller support		Does not process analog controller inputs as analog. Instead processes them as "MAX" value input and "MIN" value input. As a result analog trigger inputs on controllers with shared axes triggers cancel each other out (eg. if you set left trigger to aim and right trigger to shoot, pressing both would just make you stop aiming). Can fix this by mapping triggers to separate axes with XInput Plus.
Full controller support		Controller is completely unmapped upon first launch and has to be manually bound; the movement inputs, the run button, and the cling button are used to navigate menus (to change selected option, select an option, and go back, respectively).
Controller remapping		Done in the same menu as keyboard remapping, with 2 input slots per action.
Controller sensitivity
Controller Y-axis inversion		Both mouse y-axis inversion and controller y-axis inversion are controlled under "inversed aiming" option.

Controller types

XInput-compatible controllers		See the glossary page for potential workarounds.

DualShock 4 controllers
DualShock button prompts
Light bar support
Connection modes	unknown

Generic/other controllers		Generic DirectInput controllers are supported.
Button prompts

Additional information
Controller hotplugging
Haptic feedback
Simultaneous controller+KB/M		Game does not differentiate between controller and keyboard and mouse inputs

Audio

Audio feature	State	Notes
Separate volume controls		Separate options for music, sound effects, and voices.
Surround sound
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
Royalty free audio

Localizations

Language	UI	Audio	Sub	Notes
English
French
German
Italian
Brazilian Portuguese				Fan translation: download (GGames).
Spanish
Russian				Retail only. Patch for digital release here.

VR support

3D modes	Native	Notes
vorpX		G3D User created profile, requires DGVoodoo2 WIP58 (DX9) and very important tweaks profile introdution. Note: Profile may not work with the latest wrapper, in case of issues please report to the vorpx forum.

Issues unresolved

Anischenko Texture Stretching

During certain animations, the boss' textures are glitchy and stretch across the environment.

Mouse cursor does not remain inside the window

There is no fix so far.

Issues fixed

Game doesn't launch after changing resolution

Create a blank file in the installation folder
Delete res.bin in the installation folder. Create a new text document. Save the blank document as res.bin in the installation folder. Right-click on the newly saved blank file and select Properties. Check Read-only and click OK.

Changing FOV Distorts Realtime Shadows

Install the Widescreen Patch with killer-m's fix to make realtime shadows ignore FOV

Install ThirteenAG's Widescreen Patch by unzipping the contents of ColdFear.WidescreenFix.zip into the installation directory, <path-to-game>}. Install killer-m's fix by unzipping the contents of scripts.zip into the installation directory, so that the scripts folder now contains ColdFear.ShadowsFix.patch and ColdFear.ShadowsFix.asi. Notes: The nightly Widescreen Patch is intended to fix this issue on its own, but it doesn't seem to work without killer-m's fix.

Animations speed up and errors during gameplay

Limit the frame rate to 60 FPS

Set the refresh rate to 60Hz

DXVK issues: crash before main menu, corrupted graphics (Proton/Linux)

The game does not work with DXVK, which is enabled by default in Proton 5.0 and newer. If DXVK is left enabled, this results in a crash before the main menu (Proton 5.0-10, 5.13-6, and 6.3-8) or severe graphical bugs (latest Proton).

Enable "Use Wine D3D" flag
Run Proton with the environment variable PROTON_USE_WINED3D set to 1. (In the General tab of the game's Properties window in Steam, put PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 %command% in the launch options field.)

Use Proton 4.11-13 or older
In the Compatibility tab of the game's Properties window in Steam, enable the "Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool" option and select Proton 4.11-13 or older from the drop-down list.

Reduced color depth (Proton/Linux)

Color banding may occur with Proton 6.3-8 or newer.

Use Proton 5.13-6 or older
In the Compatibility tab of the game's Properties window in Steam, enable the "Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool" option and select Proton 5.13-6 or older from the drop-down list.

Other information

API

Technical specs	Supported	Notes
Direct3D	9

Executable	32-bit	64-bit	Notes
Windows

Middleware

	Middleware	Notes
Audio	FMOD	3.74
Cutscenes	Bink Video	1.7d

Mods

Game is mod-friendly. Most game variables are within editable config files located at <path-to-game>\Conf.

ColdFear - Extended Edition

A rebalance mod that makes you move faster, gives a flashlight to nearly every weapon, increases the max ammo of each weapon, increases the clip size of the pistol, etc.

Quick Unlock Extreme Mode

By default Extreme difficulty is locked until you complete a playthrough on Hard difficulty, this mod replaces the COLDFEAR.DAT file with one where the difficulty is already unlocked.

Extreme Difficulty sets your maximum health to 4% of Normal Difficulty so that you basically die in one hit. Enemies are made less aggressive and/or accurate to compensate.

System requirements

Windows
	Minimum	Recommended
Operating system (OS)	2000	XP
Processor (CPU)	1 GHz	2 GHz
System memory (RAM)	256 MB	512 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD)	2.2 GB
Video card (GPU)	Nvidia GeForce 3/4/FX/6 series ATI Radeon 8500/9000/X series 64 MB of VRAM DirectX 9 compatible	128 MB of VRAM