Twice a month, Pixel Boost guides you through the hacks, tricks, and mods you'll need to run a classic PC game on Windows 7/8. Each guide comes with a free side of hi-res screenshots from the LPC celebrating the graphics of PC gaming's past. This week: inside the twisted mind of Clive Barker.
If you consult horror master Clive Barker on a video game story, it turns out you get something very, very Lovecraft—but with first-person shooting and spellcasting. Clive Barker's Undying hit the PC in 2001 with a weird mix of occult psychological horror (reminiscent of the GameCube's Eternal Darkness, released the next year) and first-person combat. Barker cited Lovecraft and Poe as inspirations for the game, and that macabre fantasy atmosphere is apparent within the first five minutes of the game. Like Resident Evil, Undying begins in a mansion, but it mixes in spellcasting and an involved occult story. It still feels fresh nearly 15 years later, and you can run it on modern Windows at a high resolution thanks to GOG.
Install it
Clive Barker's Undying is available on GOG for $6M . In typical GOG fashion, the game is bundled with nGlide, which translates the old 3Dfx graphics API into something modern machines understand. That means we don't need to install anything but the game to get it working, though to fiddle with the resolution, we'll want to tweak a couple .ini files.
Run it in high resolution
After installing Clive Barker's Undying, run it once to make sure the user.ini file you'll need to modify is in place. This is always a good policy. Now, navigate to the folder where Undying is installed. If you downloaded it from GOG, the default directory is C:\GOG Games\Clive Barker's Undying. Now open the System folder. If you plan on running the game in widescreen, open User.ini and do a search for “FOV.” You'll find two lines related to the FOV, which is set to 90 by default. For widescreen, I recommend a higher field of view of around 100 or 105. Make that change and close the file.
The easiest way to run Undying at high resolution is to open up the nGlide configurator located in the system folder. Simply pick your resolution from the drop-down box, hit apply, and run the game. You're running in HD!
You can also edit Undying's System.ini file to change the resolution, but the nGlide configurator is easier. I tried to run Undying at a variety of resolutions, ramping up to 8K, using nGlide, and using Durante's GeDoSaTo with Undying's 3Dfx and DirectX graphics options. Unfortunately, the game crashed at any resolution I tried greater than 1440p.
If you have issues with Undying crashing on modern hardware, the issue may be its sound settings, which some GOG users have pointed out have issues with Nvidia graphics. If you run into that issue, open up the System.ini file and make the following changes:
Search for GalaxyAudio
Set UseDirectSound=False
Set Use3dHardware=True
Save your changes and exit. Hopefully that will prevent the game from crashing.
Mod it
Most of the mods for Undying are collected at Undying Italia .
I'd recommend the updated textures , but keep in mind this mod is still 10 years old, and isn't going to make the game look dramatically better.
Clive Barker's Undying at 1440p on the LPC
These screenshots were taken on the Large Pixel Collider, with Undying running with original textures at 2560x1440.
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