Drifter Beta Help

This is a catchall page for info about the Drifter Beta, please come here first to see if your question has already been answered here.

Prefs File

There is a (currently) HIDDEN preferences file for the game if you want to change the resolution of the window or activate FSAA!

In Windows you can find it under Documents\My Games\Drifter\Drifter.prefs

In OSX you can find it under ~/Library/Application Support/Drifter/Drifter.prefs

In Linux you can find it under either $HOME/.config/Drifter or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/Drifter

This file is auto-generated by the game after you run it for the first time.

Save Game Location

Savegames are located in the following locations:

In Windows: Documents\My Games\Drifter\Save

In OSX: ~/Library/Application Support/Drifter/Save

In Linux: either $HOME/.config/Drifter/Save or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/Drifter/Save

FAQ

What are Drifter's system requirements?

While Drifter is still in beta and these requirements may change by the time the game releases Drifter has been known to work on fairly old systems. It has been reported to run well on a Pentium 4 3.0GHz with a relatively robust video card for example.

Operating System: Windows XP SP1 or later, Mac OS X 10.6 or later on x86-64, Ubuntu Linux 12.04 LTS or equivalent

GPU: The default Drifter renderer only requires an OpenGL 1.5 compliant video card however it may run poorly on older Intel embedded GPUs. We recommend at least 256 MB of video RAM.

RAM: 1 GB

Why is movement restricted to a single plane?

Drifter is 2.5D by design. Originally it was going to be top-down much like Star Control, Starflight or Escape Velocity but part way through the development process I tried moving the camera behind the ship and really liked how expansive it made the game feel. As much as I'd like to add full 3D flight it would require rewriting the entire flight engine. Certainly there is a long history of great 2D space games out there, both old and new, and hopefully Drifter will be counted among them.

I have multiple monitors on Linux, how do I get fullscreen to only use one monitor?

In the terminal before running the game type export SDL_VIDEO_FULLSCREEN_DISPLAY=0 and hit return. This will tell SDL to only use the first monitor.

I'm on Windows and the game stops running after a few seconds, what gives?

Are you running Avast anti-virus? It seems like it does not like Drifter for some reason. Try adding the game to Avast's white list to see if that fixes the problem.

My gamepad isn't working!

Technically that isn't a question, but if you go into the game's Config menu and go to Gamepad Config there's a drop-down with a few pre-sets for common controllers and you can also map the controls however you like here. Hopefully that helps!

Common Issues and Workarounds

If none of these help solve the issue you're experiencing please post on the Celsius Drifter forums, the Steam Drifter forums, or send an email to contact@celsiusgs.com describing the issue you're experiencing.

The game crashes after clicking the New Game button

Try disabling the HUD glow effect by setting deactivateHUDGlow to 1 in Drifter.prefs

The game won't start at all

Try deleting Drifter.prefs and starting the game again