Tweak3D.net

Posted: November 3, 2000
Written by: James Kennedy

Introduction

Now you can make that once-empty threat of beating someone to death with their own limbs a reality. While to some Rune is nothing more than just a simple hack n' slash gore fest, no one can deny the game's sense of adventure and playability. The only problem is that the game seems to run choppy on even some of the best of machines. This Unreal engine-based game is much like the others needing that little bit of attention to run just right. While this guide isn't totally different from our Deus-Ex and Unreal Tournament guides, there are enough differences to have you decapitating smoothly in no time.

Installation

Unfortunately, Rune doesn't have a lot of options when installing. You can go with a minimum install and just install the game itself, and read the maps, speech etc. from the CD, or you can install all the game content to your hard drive. I recommend installing the game content to your hard drive as it can drastically improve performance and load times. The only downside to this is that you MUST install all game content to the hard drive. You don't have the luxury of loading maps off of your hard drive and speech off of your CD-ROM so if you don't have enough disk space this can be rather frustrating. As usual, you should check to make sure your version of DirectX is up to date. The Rune CD is packed with the latest DirectX 7.

Drivers/Patches

As always, you should have the latest stable manufacturers' drivers installed. New video card drivers should be used for speeding up rendering and assuring compatibility, and new sound card drivers should be used to make sure your CPU isn't being strained any more than it has to be. Sometimes it is the smallest things that offer the biggest performance boosts.

Another important thing to do is to check for game updates. Patches don't always fix bugs but often times add features as well. The latest patch for Rune (version 1.01), which you can download here, fixes a number of bugs along with offering an updated Glide driver.

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