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DarkPlaces settings for the coolest looking 'BAD FPS' ever

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  • DarkPlaces settings for the coolest looking 'BAD FPS' ever

    These are all of the sound-related cvars in DarkPlaces I've found anything to configure with as of yet.
    Also don't try to do a 'snd_restart' while your game on the engine is currently running on a level... DarkPlaces doesn't like that.
    snd_channellayout "0"
    snd_channels "2"
    snd_soundradius 2048
    snd_speed 48000
    snd_staticvolume 0.5
    snd_wav_partitionsize "4096"
    snd_spatialization_min "0.5"
    snd_spatialization_max "0.96875"
    snd_spatialization_max_radius "32"
    snd_spatialization_min_radius "8192"
    snd_spatialization_occlusion "3"
    snd_spatialization_prologic_frontangle "22.5"
    snd_spatialization_prologic "1"
    snd_spatialization_control "1"
    If any of you folks are interested I'll share with you my DarkPlaces configs.
    Like 7 times over the course of a week and a half, some time ago, I actually put DarkPlaces into windowed mode with notepad and a few explorer windows on the side... just TAB-autocompletion'ing as many commands I could find and deciding on good 'fully set up' values for them.
    I must have set like half of every variable you can possibly set in DarkPlaces... Now it's REALLY SLOW on machines that aren't 'up to date' with everything enabled... but it looks sooo good...
    I can also give the names of some cvars to quickly toggle to trade down from full visual quality to better FPS... especailly those that don't require a 'restart' to take effect... and in some cases you may need 'em (like 'vid_dx9'... changing the rendering engine itself via console... *[SHUDDERS]*)
    r_shadow_realtime_world 0
    r_novis "1"
    r_viewscale_fpsscaling 0
    vid_samples 1
    vid_sRGB 0
    vid_dx9 0
    vid_gl20 0
    vid_gl13 1
    You can actually toggle 'r_shadow_realtime_world' off if you have like every 'rendering' feature as far as overall quality and details goes enabled and cut the 'bad FPS' effect in half.
    I go from 40 to 50 FPS to solid 125 at 640 by 480 windowed (I usually cap my FPS to 125 in homage of Quake 3 Arena) when I toggle this... though even though it takes effect immediately it seems to 'help FPS' more after a 'vid_restart'...
    That whole 'r_novis' thing is actually more than a little useful... It will slow down your rendering by a wide margin... and (I presume) disproportionately slower on larger, more complex, more multi-layered maps... because, after all, it's bypassing the VIS compiled into the map entirely in favor of its own interpretations of 'map visibility'.
    It will, however, allow you to do things that you can't normally do if the VIS of the map you're on at the time itself doesn't support it. Like transparent water. If your current map was VIS'd for transparent liquids, you get your transparent water, otherwise you'll have to just turn off the map's VIS and let the engine do it via 'r_novis'...
    If you are using DirectX 9 rendering in DarkPlaces (it doesn't work with OpenGL rendering... ) you can use 'r_viewscale_fpsscaling' to actively resize the view and scale it to fit the screen... cutting back on visual quality a tad to maintain a minimum of FPS at regular intervals...
    I hadn't seen this before DarkPlaces and quite frankly I'm sure I've thought of it before while daydreaming about code or whatever but hadn't figured it would actually be done... DarkPlaces seems to do it right (even though my GFX card/drivers appear to have only very limited support for 'DX9').
    I'm still having mixed feelings about 'vid_samples'. I know it's a lot less slow when set to ''1'' as opposed to set to ''4'' or somethin' higher but I haven't seen much in the way of higher quality at higher settings than ''1''... ''4'' is the default... It's about antialiasing, so I dunno, maybe I just don't have as much trouble about 'antialiasing' issues in my PC games that I play...
    That whole 'vid_sRGB' thinger seems to affect how colors are displayed in the rendering... for me it just makes 'em all 'washed out' for some reason and so I usually have it off... but you should try it out yourself 'cause supposedly it improves color quality on some types of monitors.


    I do know many features in DarkPlaces only work with the DX9 rendering... such as coronas and motion blur and even the water reflections seem to work differently depending on which one you're going with... though
    I'm not sure about my GFX drivers and I suspect I have only very limited 'DX9' support as I've tried DarkPlaces' 'DX9' rendering mode and been able to use it after updating my nVidia drivers... yet
    seen features I presume working incorrectly... particularly 'motion blur'.
    So those features that only really work with the 'DX9' rendering I can't assure will have very good values set for them in my DarkPlaces configs though I've tried to use common sense values in the absence of being better able to tell how they are supposed to work (when your GFX card and drivers support enough for the features themselves to work correctly)...


    As far as I know if 'vid_dx9' is anything other than ''1'', OpenGL and all that will be used instead of it, which I guess is better supported by nVidia cards/drivers given my experience.
    I'm not sure about 'vid_gl20' and 'vid_gl13'... Appparently these are used to 'unlock' features in later versions of OpenGL rendering systems that can speed up the rendering process and/or add features... I would just enable the ones that yield better FPS and disable the ones that yield lower FPS...


    One last thing I recommend trying out in DarkPlaces before I go here with this post.
    It's probably one of the less well-known features in DarkPlaces but if your 'card and drivers' support it and it doesn't totally kill your FPS then I'd go so far as to recommend having a 'bind' for it to be pressed at the start of every level... so you can come closer to always having it on.
    bind "KP_5" "fog 1.0625 0.53125 0.5625 0.625 0.5 8 2048 200 3200"
    ..
    DarkPlaces has a 'fog' command that can place volumetric fog throughout the whole level. It's strictly visual and only on the client end between 'client and server'.
    If you make it more than just a tad 'thick' it will really impair your visibility of your enemies/opponents ingame but it looks sooo good...
    I find it uncanny that even though it's location-based in 'height' you can still have the fog in very fitting placement throughout almost all of the 38 or so maps included with stock Quake one... using all the same values every time... if you set the values right.
    What I've quoted here is the 'fog' bind I used back when my nVidia driver supported DarkPlaces' 'fog' feature... though I've since downgraded my nVidia drivers (because newer ones lack support for features I know and like in other games... *[SHRUGS]*)... so if you try the 'fog' out yourself and only see a thick white mist no matter what parameters you set then I guess that means your graphics drivers don't support it...
    I've even tried out the 'fog bind' while playing different levels Online at 'quake.shmack.net' server...
    Those really are about the best values to get the fog positioned right in 'vertical range of effect' on as many different stock Q1 maps as possible... as far as the height goes... so you should be able to fiddle with the other parameters to your liking without impairing its 'location of effect' all that much.
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