Battlefield Performance Guide

[t0et0e]

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/420/battlefield_1942_tweak_guide/index6.html


Battlefield 1942 Tweaking FAQ

CONTENTS

I. Introduction
II. System Requirments
III. The Basics
IV. Video Settings
V. Sound Settings
VI. Advanced Tweaks
VII. Conclusion


I. INTRODUCTION

Hi, and welcome to my BF:1942 tweaking guide. The goal of this guide is
to help people have the best expierience they can while playing BF42.
I've found that many people have quit this game due to poor system performance.
So I've come up with some things that can help run this game smoothly and lag
free. They might not work for everybody, but for the most part, if applied
correctly, you'll be able to enjoy this game to the fullest.



II. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

***Straight from the box***

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS

Windows 98/ME/2000/XP(WIN 95/NT not supported)
500Mhz PIII or Athlon AMD Processor
128MB RAM
32mb DirectX8.1 video card
DirectX8.1 Sound card
1.2GB hard drive space
4X CD Rom Drive
56K, Cable, DSL or faster

My suggestions to run this game decently are as follows:

Windows XP
1.5GHZ Processor
512MB DDR RAM
64MB Video Card

They're pretty much the main players in perfomance, and the main things
you need to pay attention to.


III. THE BASICS

***All settings are based on WINDOWS XP***

Many factors contribute to slow down and lag.Make sure youknow if
you're lagging or slowing down. You can check your FPS(Frames Per Second),
by opening the CONSOLE. This is achieved by pressing the TILDE KEY(~`). Its
usually next to the 1 key. Once open, type in FPS 1. Hit enter, then the
console key again.You should see your FPS in the upper left of the screen.
To turn it off, repeat the steps above, but use FPS 0.

Make sure you don't have a lot of programs running in the background.
The most I suggest to be running would be 15. You can check to see how many
you have running by opening up the TASK MANAGER. Press CTRL-ALT-DEL at the
same time to bring this up. Don't just start shutting down things, as they
may be vital to your system stability. I suggest going to Black Viper's
(www.blackviper.com) website. This guy has taken the time to go thru WIN XP
and WIN 2000, to find out what you can safely turn off in the WINDOWS
SERVICES. Follow his directions, and you'll see a huge improvement in
performance.

Try not to use dial-up if you don't have to. 56K sucks!

If you can, I suggest getting a second hard drive, and running a
dual-boot system. Install the bare minimum on it. Make it your gaming system
side. Its not very hard to do and it gets the most perfomance out of your
hardware. The OS isn't bogged down by extra, un-needed programs. Go to
www.microsoft.com for tips on running a dual-boot system. Also, if you can
afford it get more RAM. That always helps performance.

Defragment! This is a very important thing to do. Files get spread all
over your hard drive and in turn, degrade the performance of your machine.
Run the windows defragmenting program at least once a week or after you've
installed or un-installed 2 or more programs.

Spy-ware can cripple a system, too. I suggest you get Ad-aware and
Spy-bot. Both have free versions for download. They can remove all adware
and malware from your system. Google for them!

Make sure you have the latest drivers for all your hardware. They can
really be a factor in performance sometimes. Drivers usually fix performance
related issues. I highly recommend this step.

Increasing VIRTUAL MEMORY, or the PAGEFILE size, can sometimes help out
systems with lower amounts of RAM. I've read numerous articles on the subject,
and found that size really does matter.LOL! I suggest making the size 3 times
the amount of RAM that you have installed. So, if you have 256MB of RAM in your
system, make your PAGEFILE size 768MB. If you have at least 1GB of RAM, I
wouldn't even worry about this at all, since its never really a factor. Let
Windows manage this or have no PAGEFILE at all. To access the PAGEFILE, go
into the CONTROL PANEL and click on SYSTEM. Click the ADVANCED tab. Select the
PERFORMANCE SETTINGS. Click ADVANCED. Click CHANGE under VIRTUAL MEMORY.
Select CUSTOM SIZE. Plug in the numbers and click SET. I have another tweak
for the PAGEFILE you can find under the ADVANCED TWEAKS of this guide.

While we're there, CONTROL PANEL, SYSTEM, ADVANCED,PERFORMANCE SETTINGS,
VISUAL EFFECTS. Select ADJUSTFOR BEST PERFORMANCE. This can help some slow
moving systems, also.



IV. VIDEO SETTINGS

***Make sure you have the latest patch for the game***

If you're at or slightly above the system requiements, run the game at low
to medium settings. Don't try to run it at high. Its going to suck for you if
you do.Everyone's system is different, so try out different settings to see what
your system can do.

Its not worth it to run this game at 800X600. You miss out on so many
beautiful things. I wouldn't go any lower than 1024X768. You'll lose maybe 2
FPS. No big deal. Sometimes, it helps to run this game at a 60Hz refresh rate.
I haven't tried it, but some people say it does wonders. Turn off AA
(Antialiasing) and AF(Anisotropic Filtering) if you don't have a high end
system. Especially if you have an ATI card. EA has stated this themselves.

Sometimes it helps to run in 16 bit mode. Less colors, more perfomance.

In the video settings uncheck shadows and environmental mapping. You'll
get a few more FPS without noticing any degredation in quailty. Turn down the
draw distance, too. This can help tremendously.


V. SOUND SETTINGS

I usually turn the menu music and map loading music off. This is especially
important if you do not have a lot of RAM. It seems to take up a lot of memory
to produce the menu music and map loading screen music. It definetly helps
perfomance to eliminate menu music. Turn your sound settings to low or medium
for a perfomance increase. Use the least amount of channels that you're
comfortable with. I know I need sound to play this game, so do some
expirementing with sound channels. Same thing with the KHz. I usually leave
mine at 22 KHz. Get the latest drivers for your sound card.


VI. ADVANCED TWEAKS


***Use these settings at your own risk! I claim no responsibility for any
damage done to your system***

First off, make back-ups of all the files we are about to go over. These
are just some .con changes, I have found very useful. I use them all myself.
You can find these all by following this path: by default C:\Program Files\
EA GAMES\Battlefield 1942\Mods\bf42\settings.

This trick only works if you turn VERTICAL SYNC off. There are different
ways of turn this off, depending on your video card. Check the help guides on
your system for more information.

Open up the VideoDefault.con file with NOTEPAD. By default it looks
like this:


rem * TEMP *
renderer.setFullScreen 1
renderer.fieldOfView 1
renderer.globalLodRadius 1
renderer.globalLodRadiusScaleFactor 5
console.showStats 0


Make it look like this:


renderer.setFullScreen 1
renderer.fieldOfView 1
renderer.globalLodRadius 1
renderer.globalLodRadiusScaleFactor 5
console.showStats 0
renderer.allowAllRefreshRates 1
renderer.lockfps 250


Notice I've added the line, renderer.allowAllRefreshRates 1 and I added the
line, renderer.lockfps 250. You don't have to put in 250, but I've found this
is the best and most stable number to use. Make sure you hit save, not save as,
and close the file.

If that doesn't help any, you can make the VideoDefault.con look like this:

renderer.setFullScreen 1
renderer.fieldOfView 1
renderer.globalLodRadius 1
renderer.globalLodRadiusScaleFactor 6
console.showStats 0
renderer.allowAllRefreshRates 1
renderer.useTrilinearFiltering 0
renderer.mipmapbias -3
renderer.lockfps 250

Sometimes this can lower image quality, but in cases where you can't get the
game to run well at all, try the above settings.

Sometimes fooling with that good old PAGEFILE can solve a lot of problems.
If you're running a dual-boot system, delete it on the side of WINDOWS that is
not running. For instance, if you're running WINDOWS on your C drive, delete the
one on your D drive, and vice-versa. Make sure you have show hidden files and
folders checked in your folder options, so you can see the PAGEFILE. Again, if
you have a GB or more of RAM, I suggest having no PAGEFILE at all.

If you don't like deleting things, here's another trick for clearing the
PAGEFILE. Make sure you back up the REGISTRY before you do this. Type REGEDIT
in the RUN box. Navigate to this point:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\
Memory Management

Look for the registry string:

ClearPagefileAtShutdown

Double click it and change the value to 1. Hit OK. Restart your machine.
Now the PAGEFILE will be cleared every time you shutdown or restart. Now it
acts like RAM does, clearing itself, erasing any bad happenings. I must warn,
that this does increase shutdown and restart times to about 40 seconds on
average.


VII. CONCLUSION

BF42 is a stellar game that should be enjoyed by everyone who plays it.
EA makes it hard sometimes for us gamers, but maybe these tweaks will help you
out a bit. Thank you for taking the time toread this guide. If you're in dire
need of help, ask me.
Once again, if you do have a comment, question, or suggestion, please feel free
to contact me. If you have a tweak you would like me to add, email it tome and
I'll give you credit for it. Thank you EA for an awesome game!!!!! See you on
the battlefield.