Tweak3D.net

Posted: June 17, 2000
Written By: Keith "Farrel" McClellan

Advanced Video Settings

There are two settings under the advanced tab of the MDK 2 launcher. The first of these setting is 'Disable 3D sound Acceleration.' MDK 2 makes use of DirectSound to add 3D sound to the game, as well as supporting EAX (Environmental Audio Extensions). If you want to disable any hardware acceleration available for these things and run the entire sound engine in software, you can enable this setting (which disables 3D sound acceleration). I would only recommend doing this if you find that it is either causing problems with your system or you don't have the hardware to support the feature in the first place.

The other setting tells the game to use DirectX to set the game's video modes. If you are having trouble with in-game flicker at your chosen resolution (the refresh rate is running at 60 Hz), and you know your screen can handle a higher refresh rate, give this a shot and see if it fixes your problem. Personally, I have had problems with getting this setting to work - but it is worth a try. The only other way to get rid of the flicker would be to lower the resolution and 'hope' that the MDK 2 video mode setter recognizes that it can use a higher refresh rate.

In-Game Settings

There are still a few game settings that can't be changed with the MDK 2 launcher. The first of these is the enabling/disabling of EAX. If you have the Soundblaster Live! card or are using the Aureal drivers with EAX support, enabling this is probably advisable. There isn't much overhead to the EAX subsystem over the regular 3D sound and it sounds pretty cool.

Within the video settings, you can disable shadows. Disabling shadows will increase in game performance but you will, well, sacrifice the shadows. There is another way to disable shadows from within the game, but it is a bit more complicated. There is a file in your MDK2/save directory called opt.lua. Open the file in notepad and look for a line that says omSceneSetShadows(1). To disable shadows, change the 1 to a 0, and to re-enable shadows change it back to 1. Neat, huh? You can disable/enable a bunch of the settings within the game from within that file.

Another setting that you can choose to enable or disable is movie text. Because of the way the game does its cutscenes, they have a lot of flexibility (including adding movie text). If you have trouble understanding the characters or generally play games with the volume turned down so you don't get caught by your parents/significant other late at night, go ahead and enable this; otherwise leave it disabled.

The final setting that you can change is 'Show Performance.' If you have this enabled you will be able to see your 'instantaneous' frame rate as well as some other various information. If you are really into knowing how fast your system is going, this is the way to go - otherwise leave it disabled (it gets annoying and overlaps with the movie text).

Next Page