Orange Hat Tech

Dread Hunger Secret Settings

Dread Hunger is a UE4 game, and as a result has some secret settings that you can play with.

The files needed for this are in:

C:/User/WhateverYourUserIs/AppData/Local/DreadHunger/Saved/Config/WindowsNoEditor/*.ini

"AppData" is a hidden folder. The easiest way to access it is to open up the "run" dialog by pressing WindowsKey+R, then typing in "Appdata" without the quotes, and pressing "OK". This will open up an explorer window with your appdata directory.

Simply insert the blocks of text into the files specified.

Focus/Alt&Tab audio

Dread hunger mutes audio when it loses focus. You can stop it from doing this via the following change.

Engine.ini

[Audio]
UnfocusedVolumeMultiplier=1.0

HDR output

Dread hunger can output in HDR! The skybox is arguably a little dim, but otherwise I can't find any flaws. It really helps the snow look nice, and makes the footprints actually visible.

This is only a good thing if your monitor outputs HDR. If you don't know if it does, it doesn't.

In order for this to work, Dread Hunger has to be in fullscreen mode, not windowed or borderless. You can adjust this in the in-game settings.

This block also disables UE4's "autoexposure", which lightens and darkens the scene based on average brightness. I think this is reasonable to disable as an HDR display will simply display the entire brightness range and force your physical eyes to adapt instead.

Make sure you actually have HDR correctly set up in windows, and that your monitor supports HDR output, or you'll get some truly horrific output.

This doesn't work in linux, because linux doesn't have HDR yet. Grumble.

This config assumes you're using a monitor that can do DCI-P3. I'm not aware of any monitor that an average person might have that will exceed the DCI-P3 color space currently.

Engine.ini

[SystemSettings]
r.AllowHDR=1
r.HDR.EnableHDROutput=1
r.HDR.Display.OutputDevice=5
r.HDR.Display.ColorGamut=1
r.HDR.UI.CompositeMode=1
r.FullScreenMode=0
r.HDR.UI.Level=1.75
r.DefaultFeature.AutoExposure=0

GameUserSettings.ini

These lines may already be in this file. If they are, delete them and paste these new ones. Or edit them to fit. I can't tell you what to do; I'm not your mom.

bUseHDRDisplayOutput=True
HDRDisplayOutputNits=1000

Performance/quality

Here are a couple things that might improve performance, but I haven't tested yet.

These are all in Engine.ini

• r.OptimizeForUAVPerformance=1

  • Optimizes for GPU performance over GPU memory. If you have a lot of GPU memory, this might help fps.

• r.SeparateTranslucency=0

  • This is a minor performance boost, but messes with transparent objects with depth of field. But I don't think Dread Hunger uses DoF, sooo... free boost?

• r.SSR.Quality=3

  • Reflection quality. I don't think Dread exposes this in its options, but it can have an effect on the visual appeal and performance. 0 is lowest quality, 4 is highest, but is probably too slow.