In this guide, I'll document the messy procedure I use to take high resolution screenshots, such as these:



This is not a neat process, and I'm not a programmer, so please pardon the horrible hacks!

Let's begin!

• Simple Runtime Window Editor (SRWE)[github.com] - Necessary for hotsampling and non-standard aspect ratios.
  
  
• Cheat Engine - Used for Speedhacking to "pause" the game and get a posed shot or ensuring that a character is looking right where we want them to. I use v6.6, but any version should work fine. Please be careful with downloading and installing this, there's dodgy installer stuff out there. Follow a guide[framedsc.github.io] if you, like me, get THE FEAR.
  
  
• Timescale mod Breathing Room - Space and Time[www.nexusmods.com] - This is an optional mod for giving us enough time to take shots on some days by modifying the in-game solar timescale. Obviously, this will make each day longer, which can modify the stress associated with playing this game quite a bit, but I've found it really helpful when trying to get shots with exactly the right lighting conditions around sunrise or sunset.
  
  
• ReShade[reshade.me] - for all that fancy photoshopping in game stuff.

FIeld of View Unlocking

Modify this file:
C:\Users\<YourUserName>\AppData\LocalLow\Ice-Pick Lodge\Pathologic 2\Settings\ExternalGraphicsSettings.xml

You want to modify the values for MinFov and MaxFov. These values should initially be 40 and 100 respectively, but changing these to 1 and something like 120 will make adjusting the framing of your shots much easier. You may also want to increase MaxLevelOfDetails above 2, but that's probably only necessary if you want to use your GPU to heat your entire house.

• Save your game - Not even joking, you'll definitely want to reload once this process is done.
  
  
• If you're going to be hotsampling, switch the game to Windowed mode (Borderless Window or Fullscreen will not work).
  
  
• In the main menu, increase the Rendering Resolution to something that your GPU can handle. Something like 1.5 is nice.
  
  
• Enable Fly Mode using the Unity Inspector (see the below section for how this works)
  
  
• Modify the Field of View using the Unity Inspector (once again, see the below section)
  
  
• Exit the Unity Inspector and frame your shot with the Fly camera.
  
  
• Use Cheat Engine to Speedhack the game down to something like 0.005 at the lowest for the shot. Values lower than this make what I think is Temporal Anti Aliasing freak out.
  
  
• Apply Reshade effects according to your tastes
  
  
• (If you're going to be hotsampling, Enable SRWE after switching the game to the aspect ratio you'd like to shoot in, I'm a fan of 2:3, 1:1, and 1:2 ratios.
  
  
• Take the screenshot using your preferred method (ReShade with Printscreen is mine).
  
  
• Disable the Cheat Engine Speedhack, swap back to the standard aspect ratio in SRWE, and swap back to FirstPersonControlling in the Unity Inspector, drop back to the main menu and set your Field of View back to normal, drop the render scaling back to 1, then reload your previous save and keep trying not to die.

Ice-Pick Lodge have very kindly left the Unity Inspector accessible. This is effectively devmode access to lots of stuff going on in the game, including console commands, but quite a few of these commands can be used to help take fancy screenshots without interfering with a standard play-through.

Note: You will have to do the following every time you want the full photography modes ready to go.

You can access the Inspector with the keys Ctrl + Shift + F4.

If you want to be careful, enable immortality temporarily. This won't be necessary during Dreams, the Intro, or if you're in Conversation from what I can tell.

For the settings that we'll be interested in, click on the Inspector tab, which should look like this:
.

Under the Services tab, there are 65 elements. We're interested in Element 8 (CameraService) and Element 52 (SettingsViewService).

We'll start with the Element 8 (CameraService).
This is where we swap from our walking and standard gameplay mode into a Noclip Flycam mode. This is the most important feature for photography, so when you're ready to shoot a scene, swap from whatever the current Camera service is to Fly. (Normally, this will be either FirstPersonControlling, or Dialog if you're in conversation when you're attempting this).


When you're in Fly camera mode, you can't access the main menu, and will need to change back to whatever Camera you were previously in when it's time to end the photography session. This also means that we're going to have to change the field of view using the Inspector, rather than the main menu.
We change FoV in Element 52(SettingsViewService) > Settings > Element 2 (GraphicsGameSettings) > FieldOfView(FloatValue) > Value.
.
This Value field here updates instantly and will only accept values that are between the locked MinFov and MaxFov values. You can't leave this field empty at any time, so you might have to fiddle around with typing to get it to work. Once you're done, hit Apply and the game will update.

Hey Gravel, how's 20 degree Field of View treatin' ya?.

After your photography is done, we can reset things to the way they should be by going back to Element 8 (CameraService) and going back to FirstPersonControlling, then jumping out to the menu, and going in to the menu settings, resetting the Field of View to something like 85 degrees, and then loading your previous save.

In the event that you accidentally get too carried away with setting up a shot and forgot to enable immortality, only to get murdered or starve to death or something equally ignominious while just trying to get someone to pose right, and you don't want your extremely stressful photography session to count on the profile you're playing with (since any death in this game is permanent across all saves), you can edit the your Profiles.xml data, which is usually located in
C:\Users\<YourNameHere>\AppData\LocalLow\Ice-Pick Lodge\Pathologic 2\Saves\Profiles.xml

Please only do this in hilarious emergencies though, we don't want anyone chucking a Brendan.

Some aspect ratios will straight-up break the depth mapping, particularly if you're hotsampling in the 1:1 aspect ratio.

The player's arms will stay in game, and if you're holding something when you start the photography session, you might be able to get some good out of frame shots, but be forewarned that adjusting the FOV to very small values will shrink them to be absolutely tiny.

Right, so that's my collection of notes that I've made on photographing this game, hopefully you've found them useful!



Stay safe out there!