Soldat Configuration Help
Graphics
STAY Vertical Sync OFF
Vsync is used to synchronise the output of your graphics card with the display of your monitor.
When your graphics card has finished rendering the next frame it waits for the monitor to finish displaying the current one before switching to the new one. This means that the maximum framerate you can obtain will be equal to the refresh rate of your monitor (which is usually 60hz, 75hz, 85hz, or 100hz). If you disable Vsync then your graphics card will continuously render without waiting for the last frame to be displayed in its entirety. With fast graphics cards this means that your monitor may switch to a new frame halfway down the screen. This effect is known as tearing as there appears to be a visible line separating two different halves.
*Using this at the same time as fps limiter, may cause FPS issues.
STAY Animated Scenery ON
Allows seeing animated scenery on maps that use animated scenery
REMOVE Dithering ON
Only relevant when using a color depth of 16bits.
Creates a dissolving effect when fading between neighbor colors.
More about dithering:
REMOVE UNLESS REWRITTEN Antialiasing OFF
Smoothen hard pixel-ish polygon edges
*Antialiasing doesn't work
STAY Fullscreen OFF
More info needed
REMOVE Windowed mode resize %: 0
0% = no resize; 100% = fullscreen
If you want a lower resolution in windowed mode you can scale it up to fit your screen.
STAY Fps Limit ON-500
Limits FPS (Frames Per Second). Some players have reported that setting this can reduce stutterissues. Some others need to uncheck it to get a smooth experience. Try both.
*Using this at the same time as Vertical Sync, may cause FPS issues.
REMOVE High Resolution Timer ON
Uses a high resolution media timer as base for the FPS limiter.
It's a timer with a higher accuracy which costs more "CPU" when calculating fps and fps limits.
*This timer isn't available on old Windows versions (pre Windows 2000).
REMOVE? Video Adapters: AUTO DETECT
More info needed
REMOVE Bitrate 32
Sets the color depth of the game.
*Better left at default
REMOVE? Refresh rate ?
*MM confirmed that this option actually does nothing at all
Reported in the bugtracker:
http://bugs.soldat.pl/view.php?id=454[Edit]
<skoskav> If you're using fullscreen and don't have compatibility mode enabled then the refresh rate is being picked up and stuffed into DirectX
<skoskav> but Average and High does the same thing
<skoskav> Default does something different
AUTO-DETECT Resolution
640x480 - Standard soldat resolution
854x480 - Soldat 1.6.0rc1added support for widescreen resolutions, which means you are able to see a wider area of the map, but to keep widescreen from being too OP, player is not at the edge of the screen, meaning the extra view will be behind you, not in front of you.
STAY Scale Interface ON
Scales the interface images to your screen resolution
*This is also used to emulate malfunctioning fullscreen mode on Windows 8.
Sound
REMOVE Sound Quality HIGH
More info needed
REMOVE? Sound Output Type: AUTO-DETECT
More info needed
REMOVE? Sound Driver List: AUTO-DETECT
More info needed
Performance
REMOVE Particles on screen Max
Limits the particles showing on screen.
There's a setting in soldat.ini where you can set the number of particles even lower than 'Even less'. If you set it at its lowest (Max_Particles=43) you will sometimes not see jetpacks or explosion images if there's a lot of action going on.
*Better left at default
STAY Render bullet trails ON
Renders a trail after a projectile, making it easier to see the projectile trajectory. (Doesn't apply to knives)
STAY Render weather effects ON
Enables rain, snow and wind.
*If turned off you will still hear the sound of weather effects
REMOVE UNLESS RECODED Render smooth polygons OFF
Draws edges around polygons. The image used is located in soldat\textures\edges and has the same name as the texture used for the map.
STAY Render background scenery ON
Turns on drawing of scenery set behind players and polygons.
REMOVE File logging OFF
Saves log files with information about what happens in the game.
STAY Auto record OFF
Automatically saves a demo of every map you play.
STAY Show Death Console ON-7
You can customize KillConsole_Length= in soldat.ini
*Since the rendering of fonts is slow in soldat, turning it off can result in an increase of fps.
REMOVE Network
This whole tab can be in sildat.ini only
More
REMOVE Video Compatibility OFF
MM said it might help in some cases, but nobody seams to know exactly what it does.
REMOVE Force Software OFF
Runs the game without hardware video acceleration. Graphics are rendered by the CPU. Doomed to be slower, only use this if it doesn't work without it OR if it somehow magically is faster.
REMOVE UNLESS REWRITTEN Fix black screen during power-ups (ATI cards) ON
Old ATI graphics cards would sometimes draw the bonus overlay for berserker, flame god, and predator without the alpha (transparency) value, making the screen appear blank. This option disables drawing it completely. Use it either if you're playing on a potato or if you dislike the overlay effect.
REMOVE Troubleshooting: FAQ
Link is dead
DOES IT WORK? Backbuffer Count 2
When you render things, you're actually rendering to a backbuffer. After you finish rendering a single screen, you flip this buffer so that it's visible on the screen.
You can have more than 1 backbuffer. Just using 1 is called double buffering, 2 is triple buffering, and 3... I dunno, let''s call it quatra-buffering.
In a double-buffered system, you wait for the vertical retrace of the monitor before flipping. This makes sure an effect called "shearing" doesn''t happen. However, you could be waiting a while before the flip takes place since 1 surface is being shown and 1 surface was just drawn. However, if you're on a triple-buffered or more system, you don't have to wait until the flip happens to draw the next frame. 1 surface is shown, 1 surface was just drawn, and in the wait to flip those two surfaces you can render your next frame to another surface. Using more buffers obviously takes up more memory.
*Better left at default
REMOVE UNLESS REWRITTEN Play Intro OFF
Plays intro.sdm demo on startup
REMOVE Clanmatch OFF
Team colors are based on first player in team
STAY Automatically take screenshot of final game score OFF
Mandatory in some leagues such as SCTFL
DOES IT WORK? ActionSnap OFF
Press F5 after Killing/Dying and you can view+save that special moment! (Disabled in 16bit Bitrate)
DOES IT WORK? Texture Filters
Changes how the pixels of the map texture (and scenery textures?) are interpolated when the textures are stretched.
*Better left at default
DOES IT WORK? Resolution filters
Changes how pixels of the render target texture are interpolated when the texture is stretched over a screen area that has a different resolution than the resolution of the texture itself.
*Better left at default
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
The Gamer's Graphics & Display Settings Guide:
Win7 64' FPS issues?
Dramatic frame-rate drop after "F1" button?
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
I started the project of gathering information about the various config settings a while ago, and I've had help from other people:
(Fryer, Shoozza, Skoskav, Zakath, Dutchflame, MrBungle, AimlessArrow) <-- If I forgot someone please tell me.
If you have additional information or corrections on one or more of the settings please don't hesitate to share, but keep the thread clean from unnecessary comments.
If you have questions you can ask them here or contact the devs in #soldat.devs @Quakenet
