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In the Forums... |
Updated: March 15, 1999 Written by: Keith "Farrel" McClellan Originally, the idea was to post this information in the news; however, Dan felt that there was too much here to post, so I offered to author a tweak guide for Shogo. Hopefully this will make your gaming experience much more enjoyable. David Gallay, over at Nevolution, has informed me that there IS an fps counter in the Lithtech engine, accessible through the showframerate 1 command. Several others e-mailed me later with the same information, which I appreciate, but David got the scoop! Nevolution is working on an expansion pack for Shogo right now, so it's a site that you might consider visiting if you have a hankering for some more single player Shogo action. Thanks David! Introduction At the time when I originally authored this tweak guide, I did not know of the command to access the fps counter, and since there isn't a built-in timedemo (you have to record your own, and they don't always playback the same way you recorded them), I decided (read this as had to) to delve into the realm of "perception." With Shogo, when the game is lagging, there is considerable control lag. So instead of relying on the fps counter, I relied on my eyes to determine if the game was running smoothly. The only problem with this approach is that it makes my system specifications much more important, so here they are. Reference System: Pentium II 300 MHz at 66 MHz bus speed 96 MB RAM Diamond V550 16 MB at 110 / 90 Using Powertweak On a fresh install of Windows 98 DirectX ver. 6.1 The settings below are the HIGHEST settings that didn't make the mouse lag when I was using the mouselook feature. Universal Settings *** How to add settings to your autoexec.cfg file *** Open the autoexec.cfg file from your Shogo directory in Notepad. Anyplace in the file [on a new line] place your command, surrounding both the command and the value in quotes... [ex: "Dither" "0"]. Optionally, you can also insert settings to your autoexec.cfg file by typing them into the console [~]. Use the format [ex: Dither 1] Saturate [0,1] - Try the saturate feature (enable by typing Saturate 1 in the console) if you are having trouble seeing. Once you are out of that area I recommend turning it off though, because some areas become too bright (effectively white out) using this feature. To turn it off, type Saturate 0 in the console. BumpMap [0,1] - Use the command Bumpmap 1 to turn on bumpmaps... They are not enabled in any of the maps supplied with the game (thus no performance decrease) but they may be enabled in d/loaded maps and expansion packs... ;) Dither [0,1] - Colors are richer with this shut off... experiment with both settings and choose what you like CoolFog [0,1] - Another Bumpmap situation... or at least I haven't gotten to any levels that use this yet. Also, make sure that under the advanced button (when first starting Shogo) that Enable Optimized Surfaces , Enable Poly Gap Fill , and Enable Triple Buffering are checked. If after applying the settings below, you are still unsatisfied with the games performance, disabling Poly Gap Fill will give you a SLIGHT performance increase... not much though. Video Settings 640x480x16 Settings (Recommended for Multiplayer) This is really easy, just turn everything on. Ran Beautifully. No complaints here... so smooth I had to turn my mouse sensitivity down ;). Only problem is that antialiasing doesn't do a very good job in 640x480... so you will definitely notice jagged edges on buildings and the like. Note: Set Dynamic Lighting to soft, not hard. Also, personally I like Shadows turned off, I don't think they are very realistic. However, at this resolution it doesn't effect the speed of the game. 800x600x16 Settings These are quite a bit more complicated. Here are the settings that are changed (assuming you are using the High detail settings as default). NOTE: Only use these settings in Multiplayer or if you continue to lag after applying the tweak below. Model LOD - Med Shadows - Off BulletHoles - Some Texture Detail - Med Dynamic Lighting - soft Lightmapping - off (note that this makes some funny looking shadows, but turning it on is a larger performance hit than turning up the texture resolution) SFX Detail - Med Remember, this was done on a PII 300... if you have a faster processor, you may be able to turn up more of the settings on the 800x600x16 set without noticing control lag. If you find that the above settings are still too slow for your computer, I think you will find that you will enjoy the game a great deal more in 640x480. The Still Not Satisfied Department Not satisfied with having to run Shogo with less than optimal settings in 800x600x16? Think your TNT card should be able to handle the load (heck, it can run Unreal reasonably in 1024x768). Well, you might be right. A guy by the name of Igor sent me an e-mail telling me how he was able to up the performance of Shogo at 800x600 (Thanks Igor!!!). He told me he was running it with VSync on. Well, that got me to thinking, so I looked at my D3D setting and noticed that I was allowing my video card to render up to 12 frames ahead. Normally, the TNT is only capable of rendering around 2 or 3 frames ahead at the very most (creating no noticeable control lag), but I suppose that Monolith did an excellent (Kudos to Monolith) job on optimizing their renderer, because my monitor just couldn't keep up (you could also attribute this to my crappy monitor, but it IS 17", so I'm not going to complain ; P )! Once I turned down the render ahead settings to about 4, my lag improved considerably and I was able to run the game in its full glory. However, this tweak only seems to work with Shogo, so if you are playing another game and you start having problems, this new setting is probably the culprit. Just change it back and the other game should run fine. The 800x600x16 settings remain in case you continue to lag after the fore-mentioned tweak, and they remain the optimal 800x600 multiplayer settings. Multiplayer Settings I recommend that you use the 640x480x16 settings (found above) for Multiplayer. Playing the game in 800x600 could create substantial lag unless you have an ultra-fast connection to the Internet (xDSL, Cable Modem, etc.). Even then I recommend you use the slightly less demanding 800x600 settings given above, rather than testing your luck with everything turned on. Dialup Settings MaxFPS 30 - Sets your max frames per second to 30 fps. (can be changed in the SMW) UpdateRate 6 - If you are lagging, turn this down. If you aren't lagging, you may want to try to boost this up for a more responsive game. (can be changed in the SMW) Bodylifetime 5 - 5 sec body life for dead bodies in multiplayer. IPDevice [0,1,2,3] - If you just happen to be one of those lucky few that have multilinked modems, make sure you are set to the # of the fastest modem (check your connection rates before jumping into a game). I don't know if the game will use both modems, but if it doesn't, you are better off on the faster connection, don't ya think. ;) Direct Connection (non-LAN... AKA Null Modem connection, etc.) Same as above except you may be able to turn up the Updaterate setting. Typically you should try settings between 6 and 10. LAN Updaterate 20 - You may be able to go even higher than this. You probably do not need to limit the MaxFPS You can also turn up the bodylifetime setting if you like... Recommended BodyLifetime 15 Extras! ModelWarble 1 - makes stuff move around. WarbleScale 2 [default 0.95] - How much the model warbles WarbleSpeed 20 [default 15] - how fast it warbles. What's new in Shogo v2.2 The single-pass multi-texturing in Shogo finally works now. In the Advanced area in the Shogo startup screen, check the Enable Single-pass Multi-texturing box to enable the feature. It may or may not give you a performance boost depending on your system configuration. With Voodoo2 based systems and TNT based systems, there should be a noticeable performance increase. Also, there is a new D3D renderer that has been released which supports 3D-Now instructions. I don't have an AMD processor to check it with, but it should give you a significant performance boost on AMD K6-2 and K6-3 processors. (or any processors supporting 3D-Now) This can be implemented in the Display system area within Shogo. Well there you have it. Enjoy!
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