Alien: Isolation

Discover the true meaning of fear in Alien: Isolation, a survival horror set in an atmosphere of constant dread and mortal danger. Fifteen years after the events of Alien™, Ellen Ripley’s daughter, Amanda enters a desperate battle for survival, on a mission to unravel the truth behind her mother’s disappearance.

Required

• OpenCAGE by Matt Filer
• Alias Isolation by Ryan J Gray

Optional

• Reshade

Installation

OpenCAGE

Download the tool from Steam and that it. That’s all you have to do for now.

Alias Isolation

There are two versions of this anti-aliasing mod. One for old pre-2011 CPUs that don’t support the AVX (vector extensions for performance optimisation) (AliasIsolation-v1.2.0-SSE3-Legacy.7z), and the other version that only supports AVX (AliasIsolation-v1.2.0.7z). you will very likely want to download the one with AVX support for best performance on post-2011 hardware.

Extract the mod files into the root game directory, make sure to check that the mods folder is there. Once again, you are done with the installation at this point.

Configuration

OpenCAGE

Start OpenCAGE and the tool will set itself up. Click on the cogwheel and check Receive updates from staging branch and click Apply Settings. OpenCAGE will then start updating. The update will resolve some bugs regarding Alias Isolation and the Graphics Settings Editor. When all is done, click on Edit Configurations.

Add your resolutions, shadow map size, lod etc. exactly the way you want.

• The Shadow Map Resolution maximum value is by default 2048. You can go up to 4096 as this is the maximum value allowed by the engine. Everything set above that value will fallback to the engine maximum value.
• Regarding the LOD, the default Ultra value is by default 1.0. You can go to 999 for no texture pop-in.
• The Shadow Map Filter Quality has a maximum engine value of 6. Higher value will have the same effect as High (5).

Alias Isolation

For this mod’s configuration, you have 2 choices to change its settings. While in game by pressing DELETE or via a file called settings.txt. This file can be found in \steamapps\common\Alien Isolation\mods\aliasIsolation\.

An example of the contents of this file is below:

sharpening = 0.600000
chromaticAberration = 0.000000

About Modded Engine File

If you have a modded ENGINE_SETTINGS.XML from one of the mods available on Nexus Mods, be sure that the Anti Aliasing section is exactly as follows.

			<Setting name="AntiAliasing">
				<Quality name="Off"  				int="0"		precedence="1"/>
				<Quality name="FXAA"				int="1"		precedence="2"/>
				<Quality name="SMAA T1x"			int="2"		precedence="3"/>
				<Quality name="SMAA T2x"			int="3"		precedence="4"/>
			</Setting>

The names are case-sensitive, and the x after T1 and T2 MUST be in lower-case. Without that, Alias Isolation will not work and the game’s anti-aliasing will be disabled entirely.

About Missing Shadows And Reflections After Planar Gloss Activation

For performance reasons, some, or most, objects are not reflected as they can add performance overhead on lower-end systems. The only way to activate most of them would be by using game scripting (via Visual Studio).

Controls

Alias Isolation

Cinematic Tools

How to Take A Screenshot

After completing and saving the graphics configuration click on Save and close the window. Click on Open Game.

Be sure to to check Enable Cinematic Tools then press Start Alien: Isolation.

You should see the log windows popping up.

In your game, the Cinematic Tools UI should be displayed. Press F5 to close it.

If you decide to use Alias Isolation, I would recommend to rebind Insert and Delete to something else, as they could conflict.

Note About ReShade

The game can crash after taking 2, 3, or maybe 4 shots. This because the space needed in the game’s memory goes above the 2 gigabyte allowed in 32-bit applications. A workaround would be to take your shots in BMP. Be warned that the files can be VERY large.

Special Thanks

Special thanks to Ryan J. Gray and Matt Filer for their precious help!