Penumbra: Black Plague

Penumbra: Black Plague

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
Reception
Metacritic	78
Taxonomy
Monetization	One-time game purchase
Microtransactions	None
Modes	Singleplayer
Pacing	Real-time
Perspectives	First-person
Controls	Direct control
Genres	Survival horror
Art styles	Realistic
Themes	Horror
Series	Penumbra

Penumbra
Penumbra: Overture	2007
Penumbra: Black Plague	2008

Penumbra: Black Plague is a singleplayer first-person survival horror game in the Penumbra series.

General information

GOG.com Community Discussions for game series

GOG.com Support Page

Steam Community Discussions

Availability

Source	DRM	Notes	Keys	OS
Retail		SecuROM v7 DRM disc check
GOG.com		Penumbra Collection
Humble Store		Penumbra Collection
Steam		Gold Edition. Includes the Requiem expansion.
Mac App Store (unavailable)		Penumbra Collection

The Penumbra Collection includes Penumbra: Overture, Black Plague, and the Requiem expansion.

DLC and expansion packs

Name	Notes
Requiem

Essential improvements

Skip intro videos

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

Enable quick save

Edit settings.cfg[citation needed]

Go to the configuration file location. Open settings.cfg with a text editor. On line 1 change AllowQuickSave="false" to AllowQuickSave="true" 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
Download the Mod DB: Penumbra Black Plague Texture Upscale Mod. Open <path-to-game>\redist and back up the contents of \models and \textures directories. Extract the contents of the downloaded archive to your <path-to-game>\redist folder, and overwrite the original textures when prompted Notes At least 4GB 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)	$HOME/Library/Preferences/Frictional Games/Penumbra/Black Plague/ ~/Library/Preferences/Frictional Games/Penumbra/Requiem/
Linux	$HOME/.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)	$HOME/Library/Preferences/Frictional Games/Penumbra/Black Plague/ ~/Library/Preferences/Frictional Games/Penumbra/Requiem/
Linux	$HOME/.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.

Advanced video settings.

Graphics feature	State	Notes
Widescreen resolution		Some resolutions not listed; see Widescreen resolution.
Multi-monitor		See Widescreen resolution.
Ultra-widescreen		21:9 resolutions are possible (see Widescreen resolution).
4K Ultra HD
Field of view (FOV)		See Field of view (FOV).
Windowed		See Windowed.
Borderless fullscreen windowed
Anisotropic filtering (AF)		Up to 16x.
Anti-aliasing (AA)		FSAA 2x and 4x.
Vertical sync (Vsync)
60 FPS
120+ FPS		See High frame rate.
High dynamic range display (HDR)		See the glossary page for potential alternatives.

Widescreen resolution

Edit settings.cfg
Go to the configuration file location. Open settings.cfg with a text editor. On line 7 change Screen Width="XXXX" Height="XXXX" to the desired screen width and height respectively. 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
The addresses provided will only work for the GOG version. To change FOV open Penumbra.exe with a hex editor such as HxD. Go to address 9D8A1 and change 8C 42 (which is 70°) to: 94 42 for 74° A8 42 for 84° B4 42 for 90° BE 42 for 95° Do the same at address A6DD4. For the GOG version of Requiem.exe, edit address 9EB17 and A8014. To calculate different FOV values, use this Floating Point Converter.

Windowed

Mouse is captured by hovering pointer over the window.

Edit settings.cfg[citation needed]
Go to the configuration file location. Open settings.cfg with a text editor. On line 7 change FullScreen="true" to FullScreen="false" 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 unfortunately it will only affect particles and some animations.

Remove FPS cap
Go to the configuration file(s) location. Open settings.cfg with a text editor. 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 feature	State	Notes
Separate volume controls		Single volume control.
Surround sound		Up to 7.0 output.
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
Royalty free audio

Localizations

Language	UI	Audio	Sub	Notes
English
Czech				Retail only.
Hungarian				Retail only. Available to download.
Italian				Retail only.
Japanese				Fan translation for Black Plague and Requiem. Available to download.
Korean				Fan translation. Available to download from here or here. It substitutes the english localization. Localization for Black Plague only.
Polish				Retail only. Available to download
Russian				Only on Russian retail copies of 1C-SoftClub (of this game and full trilogy).
Slovak				Fan - 1 2
Spanish				Improved fan translations by Clan Dlan, Black Plague and Requiem DLC
Turkish				Fan translation for Black Plague and Requiem.
Ukrainian				Fan translation for Black Plague and Requiem.

VR support

Devices	State	Notes
Novint Falcon

Other information

API

Technical specs	Supported	Notes
OpenGL	1.4

Executable	PPC	32-bit	64-bit	Notes
Windows
macOS (OS X)
Linux

Middleware

	Middleware	Notes
Physics	Newton Game Dynamics
Audio	OpenAL

System requirements

Windows

macOS (OS X)

Linux

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