Unreal Tournament Tweak Guide

Are you sick of losing to bots or other people while playing Unreal Tournament (or the demo)? It might be your computer's fault! A low frame rate and/or lag while playing over the Internet can severely hinder your gaming abilities. This guide will help you optimize Unreal Tournament.

Frame Rate Explained

Throughout this guide, I will refer to the term Frame Rate. This is just the number of frames your computer draws every second. To view the frame rate in Unreal Tournament, hit the ~ key on your keyboard (next to the 1) and type: timedemo 1. This will enable timedemo mode, which shows the frame rate. The more visually complicated and the slower a computer is, the lower the frame rate will be. If the frame rate drops below 30 (or so), you will notice that the game seems slow or rough, as opposed to fast and smooth. Try to keep the frame rate above 30 at all times. This guide will help you do this.

Graphics Tweaks

The best way to improve the graphics and/or frame rate in Unreal Tournament (or any game for that matter) is to tweak the graphics settings. Start Unreal Tournament and at the menu, choose Options. Now choose Preferences, and then Video at the top.

First, set the Resolution to the lowest you can stand. I recommend setting this to either 640x480 or 800x600. Setting it higher will result in a much lower frame rate with most video cards, but it will increase the overall quality of graphics. If you have a large monitor (21"+), you might want to set this to 1024x768 as a minimum. Keep in mind that the higher you set this, the slower the game will run and the lower your frame rate will end up. The lower your frame rate, the less control you have over the game and your character.

Proceed down to Skin Detail. This option configures the detail of characters in the game. This setting should be set to either MEDIUM or LOW, depending on the speed of your PC. If your PC is slow (less than 266 MHz), try setting this to LOW. If your PC is average (266 MHz - 400 MHz), set this to MEDIUM. If your PC is faster than 400 MHz, you can try setting this to HIGH. If the frame rate is low, lower the setting accordingly. The World Texture Detail setting configures the overall detail of a scene. Setting this to anything lower than HIGH will impact the visual / graphics quality but it will also boost the frame rate. I recommend setting this to MEDIUM for most computers. Also note that with these two settings, the frame rate will drop more rapidly at a higher resolution.

The Color Depth should probably be set to 16-bit unless you have a very fast video card and/or computer. The frame rate will be significantly higher if the color depth is stuck at 16-bit.

Graphics Tweaks: Advanced Options

The Advanced Options area has plenty of tweaks for the graphics. Enter this area by choosing at the menu: Options, Advanced Options. You will notice that there are several choices and there are [+] symbols. Clicking these [+] will expand the list to show other options. Start by expanding the [+] Game Engine Settings and choose CacheSizeMegs. This setting should be 4 or something similar. If you are having massive slow downs as a result of low memory (you can tell if this is the case if your hard drive is reading a lot during the game), set this value to (1/2 * your total system memory). E.g. if you have 32 MB ram, set this to 16 MB. It should help a bit.

Now expand [+] Rendering from the main Advanced Options menu. You must know what your video card is using for Unreal Tournament to proceed. When you first started Unreal Tournament it should have told this... if you are totally unsure, consult your manual or run Unreal Tournament in Safe Mode and choose to setup your display again. If you have a 3dfx card (Voodoo, Voodoo2, Voodoo3, or Banshee), expand [+] 3dfx Glide Support. If you have almost any other video card, expand [+] Direct3D Support. The [+] Software Rendering option should only be used if you are sure your system is not 3D accelerated. Some systems might use one of the other options like [+] OpenGL Support. To "enable" these settings, set the value to "True" and to disable the setting set the value to "False".

If you chose 3dfx Glide Support, check out the following options:
Coronas - This is a lighting effect. Disable for higher frame rate.
DetailTextures - Enabling this will greatly impact the frame rate. This will increase the detail of all textures in the game, but the frame rate will drop severely. I highly recommend that you leave this disabled unless you have a very fast PC.
DisableVSync - Enabling this will result in a higher frame rate, but the game may be flickering. If the game flickers badly, disable this feature.
ShinySurfaces - This is just what it sounds like, and it will drop the frame rate slightly. Disable if you need more FPS (frames per second).
VolumetricLighting - This uses an impressive lighting method which eats performance. In other words, disable for frame rate, enable for pretty effects.

If you chose Direct3D Support, adjust these settings:
UseDetailTextures - Set this to False because Detail Textures take plenty of memory and slow down a PC significantly - Especially with Direct3D. Enable if you want better visual quality at the sacrifice of game play.
UseMultiTexture - Set this to true if your hardware supports it. Note that not all video cards support this feature. If your video card is a TNT or TNT2 (or Ultra), it should work. This is a method by which the program applies two textures in a single clock. In other words, it speeds up the game considerably. Only disable this if you are sure that your video card does not support it.
UseTrilinear - If your video card is very fast, enabling this feature shouldn't lower the frame rate by too much but it will increase the detail of distant and filtered objects. I recommend you leave this alone for most PCs.
UseVSync - This setting synchronizes the display to the refresh rate. Disabling it will increase the frame rate. Enabling it will make the game look a bit smoother in some situations. Try both settings and compare the frame rate with each using the method I mentioned at the top.
VolumetricLighting - Keep this enabled unless your frame rate is unbearably low.
ShinySurfaces - Enabling this will drop the frame rate a bit but will add some new details. I recommend that you keep this disabled for performance reasons.
HighDetailActors - This configures the detail of all characters in the game. Leave this disabled unless you really need detailed characters.
UseGammaCorrection - Make sure this setting is enabled. For many video cards, you will need to adjust the brightness in the Options/Preferences/Video area.
UsePrecache - This setting should be enabled because it will load all of the necessary textures into system RAM. This is much faster than reading the textures and details from the hard drive. Enabling this will result in a short delay when starting a level, but should increase memory performance significantly.

If you chose OpenGL Support, search above for the settings that pertain to your PC. If you chose Software Rendering, consider these tweaks:
Coronas - Definitely set this lighting effect to False. Software rendering is extremely slow and you will need all the performance you can acquire.
LowResTextures - Set this to True. It will lower the detail of the scene but the game will run more smoothly.
VolumetricLighting - Set this to False. This should boost performance slightly... you'll need every bit you can get!


Audio Tweaks

Tweaking the sounds can add to the enjoyment of game play and even increase the frame rate in some cases. Access the Audio Options menu by choosing from the menu: Options, Preferences, Audio (at the top). Consider these tweaks:
Sound Quality - High quality sounds use CPU power and memory. The low quality sounds don't sound too bad, and conserve these precious resoures. I recommend that you set the sound quality to Low unless you really want high quality sound effects. Setting this to high isn't a major deal because you can further tweak the audio system later.
Music and Sound Volume - Although it won't greatly affect performance, this is something that most people prefer to adjust. I personally like the music to be somewhat quiet so I can concentrate on the game. You may want to do the same.


Audio Tweaks: Advanced Options

You can access the audio advanced options by choosing from the menu: Options, Advanced Options. Expand the [+] Audio section. First I recommend that you adjust OutputRate. If you want higher quality sound, set this to 44100 Hz or 48000 Hz. If you want performance, set this down to as low as 11025 Hz. I wouldn't set it lower.
Use3dHardware - Set this to True if you want to hear A3D or other 3D hardware APIs. Most recent, high-quality sound cards support these features. The sound difference is amazing if you have a good set of speakers, but I recommend you leave this set to False for performance reasons.
UseCdMusic - If you want to listen to a CD while playing Unreal Tournament (not the music that normally plays as part of the game), set this to True. Performance will suffer, however, so I recommend that you keep this disabled.
UseDigitalMusic - Set this to False to disable the music in Unreal Tournament. This should boost performance slightly.
UseDirectSound - Most sound cards support Direct Sound. This feature will boost performance so I recommend you keep it set to True.
UseFilter - An audio "filter" results in better quality of all sounds. However, it takes a bit of performance should be disabled unless you have a very fast PC.
UseReverb - Reverb is an echo effect that is rather cool. It, too, takes performance should therefore be disabled unless you have a fast PC.
UseStereo - Stereo sound differenciates between left and right channels. This doesn't take much performance with most systems / sound cards, so I recommend that you keep it enabled.
UseSurround - Surround sound is only valuable if you have the proper hardware, including speakers that are placed in the correct position. Most users should leave this disabled.

Other Tweaks

You can still tweak the game for Internet play. From the main menu, choose Options, Preferences, and the Network tab at the top. Uncheck the boxes at the bottom unless you are aware of the logging program (most players probably aren't interested). Set the connection speed to be optimized for your connection to avoid lag.

At the menu, choose Options, Preferences, then click the Game tab at the top. Set Weapon Hand to "Hidden" to boost performance slightly (it will not show your weapon model). Set Gore Level to Reduced or Ultra-Low to decrease the gore (obviously). This should boost performance slightly and of course, nausea factor for those with weak stomachs. Disable Weapon Flash unless you like the setting. When enabled, this can be somewhat disturbing, and disabling it will boost performance. As always, for more tweaks check out http://www.tweak3d.net/. Thanks for reading.

-Dan Kennedy

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