Sniper's Paradise-Unreal tweak guide

Unreal tweak guide
Last Updated on October 07, 2005 by Thomas McGuire

Troubleshooting

Overclocking, Unreal is sensitive to overclocking, if your system is overclocked & you have problems running Unreal, e.g. lockups during the game, try restoring the system/video card to its default speed, or applying more cooling.

Install DirectX 7.0A or higher on your system; you need it to use Direct3D & other features. For optimal performance you should do also do a full installation of the game to your hard drive too, i.e. nothing should be run from the CD.

Patch it, get the latest (& final) patch for Unreal, version 226. Download it from Unreal

If you are having problems with UnrealEd (Runtime error 50003, etc.), then get this.

Drivers, it is essential to get the latest drivers for you video card & sound card. Click here to find a list of hardware manufacturers driver's pages. This may solve (some) display or audio problems you might have encountered. This is particularly important for nVidia card owners. 3.68 drivers minimum should be installed. Check for current drivers, it is highly recommended from to upgrade to the newest driver.

If you get menu distortion while using an nVidia card try (re) setting the texel alignment to 3

If you have trouble with your mouse (e.g. Intellimouse Explorer doesn't allow you to bind the middle mouse button if DirectInput is enabled) update your mouse drivers. You can get the latest Intellimouse release from Microsoft

Some users may find that the game freezes momentarily when a new weapon/item is selected. This is not video card specific. Try increasing your cache size as described below. Re-installing the game may also fix it, or try lowering the Texture detail to medium.

This guide has been prepared on the 226 version of Unreal, although much, if not all of it can be applied to earlier versions of the game too, just don�t expect it to have the same level of fixes.

IMPORTANT - To gain access to the advanced options menu. Load Unreal, press the Esc key, then options, then advanced options. Please note this as you will be using the Advanced Options menu a lot.

Return to Na Pali
The Unreal mission pack will supposedly be updated with the latest Unreal code when Epic releases a new, official patch. Although this was stated last year Legend may still update Return to Na Pali accordingly. If/when this occurs rest assured this guide will be compatible with it.

General

Open advanced options, go into advanced, then game engine settings

Set CacheSizeMegs to between 4 - 8MB (The Cache is used to hold temporary data for the game, editing this setting can improve performance, although setting it too high may adversely affect performance. I'd recommend first trying 8MB (Some machines might find a setting of � or � system RAM to work better, particularly those with a lot of RAM). Although it is definitely worth playing around with this setting to find what is best for your system.

You can also change the cache directory to another partition/drive/folder. Open advanced, file system & edit the CachePath setting to the directory of your choice.

Visuals

Start by going into the Audio/Video menu.

Brightness. Use this setting to adjust the brightness level in the game, setting it higher may well improve visibility, although can the game look washed out if you set it too high. You may need to test different settings to see which results in the optimum balance between this.

Select Resolution. Selecting a lower setting will improve performance & maintain a stable (hopefully higher) frame rate. Although, higher resolutions will look better, they will run slower.

Texture Detail, Set it to high if you can, although a lower setting is advised if you need the performance, it will give a more blurrier look to the game though. Setting Texture Detail to High will improve visuals more than setting Skin detail to High.

Next, go into Advanced options & select the Display options. Note - The options you have selected in Audio/Video menu will be set here so there is no real need to reset some of these options as a result.

Brightness Use this setting to adjust the brightness level in the game, setting it higher may well improve visibility, although can the game look washed out if you set it too high. It is better to set this in the game menu itself (mentioned earlier), where the effects can be seen immediately.

CaptureMouse Set this to True if you use are using mouse (which most of you will be).

CurvedSurfaces. This should be set to False. This will improve performance & the difference to models is fairly unnoticeable anyway (only player models are affected). When set to True player model meshes are smoothed out which will result in more aesthetically pleasing player models in the game.

NoLighting Set this to False. Otherwise the game will look quite ugly. The difference in performance between both is very large, turn the lighting off if you are totally desperate for a frame rate boost.

ScreenFlashes. Set this to True, this is used to change the screen color, e.g. when you get hit, or are underwater. Setting is to False may marginally improve performance.

SkinDetail. I'd recommend setting this to Medium, the difference between High & Medium is fairly small, added to the fact this will free up video memory & you generally won�t be too close to player models this gives quite a decent performance improvement.

SlowVideoBuffering. Ignore this setting, unless you are using Software rendering. Set it to True if you are.

StartupFullscreen. If using a 3d card then you'll have no choice other than running in full screen, it is faster than running windowed anyway.

TextureDetail. Set it to High if you can, although a lower setting is advised if you need the extra performance (specifically cards with low texture memory, e.g. TNT1), it will give a more blurrier look to the game though. Setting TextureDetai to High will improve visuals more than setting SkinDetail to High (& also have a greater effect of frame rate).

In the case of TNT1 cards, do not to set texture detail to high, you could easily run out of texture memory & the game will crash. Try Medium instead.

UseDirectDraw. Set this to True. It will improve performance on most systems.

UseJoystick. Set this to False unless you intend to use a Joystick to play the game, however mouse & keyboard is the best way to play Unreal. It will improve slightly if you set it to False as well. Useful if you're on a low spec machine.

Renderer

Open the Advanced Options menu & open the Driver tab.

For the GameRenderDevice option you can select the renderer you wish to use for the game. If you have a - 3dfx graphics card you should select 3dfx Glide for Windows, s3 graphics card you should select S3 MeTaL for Windows, PowerVR graphics cards should select PowerVR SGL for Windows, all others should select Direct3D Support first, then OpenGL Support if Direct3d doesn�t run well. Finally if you have no 3d capable graphics card use Software Rendering.

Rendering - 3dfx Glide support

If you've selected Glide, then open up the 3dfx Glide support tab. Set the following options. Users of Glide should have no problem whatsoever running the game with all the details on.

Coronas. set this to True. This is the haze of light that appears around light sources in the game, such as lamps in the game. It has little effect on performance.

DetailBias. Try setting this to 0. This is semi-equivalent to LOD bias setting available in the Voodoo 4/5 drivers, lowering the setting may fix a few visuals anomalies.

Detail Textures. A detail texture is a very small, fine pattern which is faded in as you approach a surface, for example wood grain, or imperfections in stone. Set this to On for improved visual quality, although it may cause a severe performance hit on some graphics cards, particularly with older, nVidia based cards such as the TNT. 3dfx cards should be able to set this to On without any problems, although this is a setting you may want to try toggling to test the effects it has on your frame rate.

Set it to Off for increased performance.

DisableVSync. Set this to False to enable v-sync, to ensure that you get no display anomalies in games (tearing). Only set it to True if you�re benchmarking the games performance.

HighDetailActors Set this to True for better visuals. Setting it to False will improve performance.

RefreshRate. You should set this to the highest refresh rate your monitor allows at a given resolution. 85Hz is what most will users should set. This will effectively cap off your frame rate when vsync is enabled to whatever the refresh rate is. Setting it higher may damage your monitor.

ScreenSmoothing. Set this to True to enable screen smoothing for improved visual quality, set it to False if you want to improve performance a bit, although at the cost of some visual quality.

ShinySurfaces. Set this to True for better visuals. Shiny surfaces are the reflective surfaces in the game, e.g. on some floors you can see your (& others) reflections. Setting it to False will improve your frame rate in such areas.

VolumetricLighting. Set this to True for better visuals. Setting this to False will have a big improvement on frame rate. On most graphics cards that have trouble running Unreal setting this to False along with DetailTextures to False will mean the difference between a playable & an unplayable game.

Rendering - Direct3D support

If you've selected Direct 3d then set it as follows. Note - With the 226 patch installed Unreal uses the same Direct3d renderer as Unreal Tournament 420.

Coronas. Set this to True. This is the haze of light that appears around light sources in the game, such as lamps in the game. Set it to False if you really need extra performance.

HighDetailActors. Set this to True for better visuals. Setting it to False will improve performance.

ShinySurfaces. Shiny surfaces are the reflective surfaces in the game, e.g. on some floors you can see your (& others) reflections. Setting it to False will improve your frame rate in such areas. I'd recommend setting it to False.

Use3dfx. Only set this to True if you have a Voodoo 4 or 5 installed in your system (as it is about as fast as glide, although even still Glide runs & looks better). Do not use this for a Voodoo 3 or earlier, use Glide instead. This is only really for testing purposes.

UseAGPTextures. This setting can be used to force textures to be uploaded into local video memory only (significantly faster than AGP texturing). Setting this to True will enable Unreal to run on specific AGP cards that lack enough local texture memory. Setting it to False may improve performance &/or graphics quality on other hardware. Try setting it to False if you have a graphics card such as a GeForce or Voodoo 5 (although they don't support AGP texturing anyway). A general rule of thumb for this setting would this; If you have more than 32MB video memory set this to False If you have less than 32MB of video memory set this to True.

UseDetailTextures. A detail texture is a very small, fine pattern which is faded in as you approach a surface, for example wood grain, or imperfections in stone. Set this to On for improved visual quality, although it may cause a severe performance hit on some graphics cards, particularly with older, nVidia based cards such as the TNT. 3dfx cards should be able to set this to On without any problems, although this is a setting you may want to try toggling to test the effects it has on your frame rate.

Set it to Off for increased performance.

UseGammaCorrection This should be set to True, although if the game appears to be too dark in-game try setting it to False.

UseMipmapping. Mipmapping will help smooth transitions between textures (more specifically, between mip-map levels). Setting this to True will improve visuals. Performance will improve slightly when set to False. I�d recommend setting this to True.

UseMultitexture. Set this to True. It will improve performance on most cards.

UsePalettes. Setting this to True can improve visual quality. Performance may be reduced however.

UsePrecache. Setting this to False will eliminate the pre-caching that you will experience when loading a level. This will removes the delay & hard drive accessing that occurs as a result of it. It can also eliminates the crashes that occur with some graphics cards when precaching. Although performance may be adversely affected when set to False. Setting it to True may improve performance on some graphics cards, although level loading will take longer.

UseTrilinear. Set this to True for improved visual quality. It should be set to False if you have less than 16MB of memory on your graphics card (Trilinear texture filtering requires extra video memory).

UseTrippleBuffering. Set this to True for improved performance (Triple buffering allocates a 3rd frame buffer. This frame buffer can improve performance by allowing the hardware to render at the same time that the 3D application performs other tasks), although it will require extra video memory. Certainly set this to False if you have less than 16MB of memory on your graphics card though as this requires extra video memory.

UseVertexFog. This toggles volumetric fog on/off in Direct3D but only in areas which have meshes. In areas without meshes (for example, the opening castle flyby sequence), this setting is useless. When set to True this will yield improved visual quality. When set to False performance will be improved in areas with meshes (player models generally). This is not the same as the VolumetricLighting setting, although if VolumetricLighting is set to False you may ignore this setting.

UseVideoMemoryVB. If you are using a GeForce (1, 2 or MX) & it�s displaying many world polygons flashing & flickering set this to True. Otherwise leave it set to False.

UseVSync. Set this to True to enable v-sync to ensure that you get no display anomalies in the game. Only set it to False if you're benchmarking the game performance. Many nVidia card users may experience controller lag if they disable vsync in Unreal in D3D, or visual tearing - which is also a common side effect.

VolumetricLighting. Set this to True for better visuals (effects like fog), although with lower performance. Setting this to False will result in a big frame rate increase. On most graphics cards that have trouble running Unreal setting this to False along with DetailTextures to False will mean the difference between a playable & an unplayable game.

Rendering - OpenGL support

If you've selected OpenGL then set it as follows. Although, you should try using the Direct3d renderer before using OpenGL.

Coronas. Set this to True This is the haze of light that appears around light sources in the game, such as lamps in the game. Set it to False if you need extra performance (very slight at that).

HighDetailActors. Set this to True for better visuals. Setting it to False will improve performance.

VolumetricLighting. Set this to True for better visuals (effects like fog), although with lower performance. Setting this to False will result in a big frame rate increase. On most graphics cards that have trouble running Unreal setting this to False may mean the difference between a playable & an unplayable game.

You'll want to do some more advanced editing, go into the Unreal/System folder & open up OpenGlDrv.ini

If you are using a TNT or other OpenGL based card change DoPrecache=1 to 0 if you want to disable precaching in OpenGL. This will speed up the loading of levels, although may reduce performance.

If you encounter any visual problems try changing UseMultiTexture=1 to 0. This may adversely affect performance however.

Changing UseZTrick=1 to 0 can fix z-buffer related problems.

Rendering - S3 Metal support

In the case of S3 (Savage 3, 4 & 2000) users you should use the S3 specific, Metal renderer. Savage 2000 owners will need to download the patch first & install it. To install it, backup your current metal.dll & metaldrv.dll in the Unreal\System directory & then place the downloaded metal.dll & metaldrv.dll in the Unreal\System directory, over-writing the old one.

Although if you decide not to use the directions above (or have to revert to the backed up versions) your options will be as follows. Either way, ignore the settings that aren't available.

Coronas. Set this to True. This is the haze of light that appears around light sources in the game, such as lamps in the game. It has little effect on performance.

Description. This field displays the graphics card that you are using. Not much use unless you have multiple video cards in your system & want to check the correct one is being used in Unreal.

DetailTextures. A detail texture is a very small, fine pattern which is faded in as you approach a surface, for example wood grain, or imperfections in stone. Setting this to True will improve visuals, although can adversely affect performance when set to True. Set it to False for improved performance at the cost of some visual quality.

DisableTrippleBuffering. Set this to False for improved performance (Triple buffering allocates a 3rd frame buffer. This frame buffer can improve performance by allowing the hardware to render at the same time that the 3D application performs other tasks), although it will require extra video memory. Certainly set this to True if you have less than 16MB of video memory on your graphics card as this requires extra video memory.

Enable32BitZ. This setting is set to False by default. If you are experiencing flickering world surfaces & similar visual corruption when running in 16-bit color set this to True. This forces the use of a 32-bit Z buffer (even in 16-bit color) which should fix these display errors if they are occurring. You may ignore this setting if you experience no such errors or are running in 32-bit color.

EnableFastFlashblend. Set this to True to improve performance, setting it to False will improve visual quality slightly.

HighDetailActors Set this to True for better visuals. Setting it to False will improve performance.

Much like Glide, you should have few problems with this renderer at all.

Rendering - PowerVR SGL support

If you've selected PowerVR SGL then the options are as follows.

ColorDepth. Set this to 16 (bit) for optimal performance, although with slightly worse image quality (more banding). Set to 24 (bit) for best image quality, although with slower performance. I�d highly recommend setting it to 16 when playing online.

Coronas. Set this to True. This is the haze of light that appears around light sources in the game, such as lamps in the game. It has little effect on performance.

FastUglyRefresh. As the title suggests; setting this to True will improve performance at the cost of image quality & setting it to False will improve image quality at the cost ofperformance.

HighDetailActors Set this to True for better visuals. Setting it to False will improve performance.

TextureDetailBias. Use this to set the range at which detail is applied to textures, Near or Far. When set to Far textures will appear sharper further away than Near & when set to Near textures will sharpen when you are close to them. Set it to Near for improved performance & Far for improved image quality.

VertexLighting. When set to False, Lightmap lighting is used - which results in vastly improved lighting of a level as it is done in real-time. When set to True Vertex lighting is used - which is static (i.e. not real-time), which may improve performance a lot, although visual quality will suffer.

VolumetricLighting. Setting this to False amay mean the difference between a playable & an unplayable game. Although setting this to True will improve visuals significantly, with effects such as fog & space-filling.

Rendering - Software

If you've selected Software then the options are as follows.

If you really must use the Software renderer then you really should set everything to False, with the exception of Fast translucency. This will ensure software rendering is running optimally.

Also make sure that SlowVideoBuffering is set to True, in the Display section of Advanced options.

Also set the game to run in 32-bit color, this gives optimal performance in Software rendering. This is not the case with hardware rendering modes though. See the General console commands section for how to enable 32-bit color.

Consider purchasing a new(er) graphics card also. Most games now require a 3d card to work, such as Quake 3 or Soldier of Fortune.

You can find out how to optimize your graphics cards performance/visual quality in the Voodoo3 , Voodoo 4/5 & TNT\GeForce tweaking guides.

Audio

Open the Audio/Video menu. Note - With the 226 patch installed Unreal uses the same Audio code as Unreal Tournament 420.

Music Volume. Use this to set the volume level for the (Digital) music in Unreal. This setting can be ignored if DigitalMusic is set to False (See Advanced options Audio settings).

Sound Volume. Use this to set the global volume level for audio. I'd recommend leaving this set to the Maximum (slide the bar fully to the right).

Sound Quality. Setting this to Low can improve performance (particularly with older soundcards, generally ISA), although will result in reduced audio quality. I'd highly recommend leaving this set to High for improved audio quality & very little performance difference on newer soundcards.

Voice Messages. When this is set to True you will hear voice messages in supported games, setting it to False disables these voice messages. Performance may be affected when this is set to True, although if you are playing a game-type that allows voice messages it�s probably best to take advantage of it.

Message Beep. When this is set to True you will hear a small beep when a message is received, setting it to False disables this beep. This has a negligible effect on performance.

Go into the Advanced options menu for more advanced audio tweaking. Click on the Audio button. Note - The options you have selected in Audio/Video menu will be set here so there is no real need to reset some of these options as a result.

AmbientFactor. Use this to set the volume level of ambient sounds in Unreal. This value represents a fraction of SoundVolume, e.g. if AmbientFactor is set to .7 & SoundVolume is set to 255 then the ambient sounds are effectively played at 178. Valid entries are from 0 - 1

DopplerSpeed. I'd recommend leaving this at the default value of 6500

EffectsChannels. The higher the amount the more realistic the audio in Unreal will be (more simultaneously playing audio channels). A lower setting may improve performance. I'd recommend setting this from 8 - 16 depending on your soundcard.

Latency. The default value for this is 40, I'd recommend try setting it to 0 instead. This will mean no delay in audio playback.

LowSoundQuality. Setting this to True forces 8-bit sound quality. This can improve performance (particularly with older soundcards, generally ISA), although will result in reduced audio quality. I'd highly recommend leaving this set to False for improved audio quality & very little performance difference on newer soundcards.

MusicVolume. Use this to set the volume level for music. 255 is the highest value that can be used. Lower values will result in lower music volume. This setting is irrelevant if you set UseDigitalMusic to False.

OutputRate. The higher this setting the higher quality the audio. 44100Hz is CD quality. 22050Hz is optimal for MMX machines. If you are desperate for extra performance try setting it to 11025hz, although this is not recommended.

ReverseStereo. Set this to True to swap speaker positions for game audio, i.e. left speaker becomes right & right speaker becomes left. This setting is best left set to False unless you find that audio is playing from the wrong speakers.

SoundVolume. Use this to set the global volume level for audio. 255 is the highest value that can be used. Lower values result in lower overall volume. I'd recommend setting this to the maximum value of 255 & independently adjust the volume levels for music & such.

Use3dHardware. Set this to True to enable EAX/A3D support. With A3D2/3 capable cards there can be quite a performance hit when enabled (compared to EAX that is). This will yield improve audio quality. For optimal performance set this to False.

UseCDMusic. Setting this to True will allow you to play music from an audio CD in the game. See the General console commands section for how to play music CD�s in the game.

UseDigitalMusic. Set this to False to disable the in-game music from playing. This will improve performance very nicely. I�d highly recommend doing so.

UseDirectSound. Set this to True to improve performance. Setting it to False can fix audio problems with older (ISA in most cases) soundcards.

UseFilter. Set this to True to enable filtering, improve performance by setting it to False.

UseReverb. Set this to True to enable reverb effects. You can improve performance by setting it to False (especially with A3D2 capable cards), this will disable the reverb effects.

UseStereo. Set this to True for better audio quality where appropriate.

UseSurround. If you have a Dolby Surround sound receiver e.g. Dolby Pro Logic, then set this to True, so you may take advantage of 360-degree Dolby sound panning. Otherwise, set it to False.

You can find out how to further optimize your audio quality in the Soundcard tweaking guide

Netplay

Load Unreal, go into the Options menu. Select your Net Speed as appropriate, Modem, LAN, etc.

Note - Unlike pre-quake 3 engine games, the Unreal engine does not need a frame rate cap to improve online gameplay.

Now go into Advanced options menu.

When playing online you can use the stat net command in the console to enable the Unreal equivalent to Quake's netgraph. This will aid you in diagnosing & improving your online gameplay. Be wary of the ping & packet loss indicators in particular.

The default value for netspeed may not be correct for you. Depending on your connection, you can change this during gameplay to suit your needs. If your ping is high, indicated by a large (numeric) value for ping in stat net, you'll want to lower netspeed & when ping is low, you should try increasing netspeed, this will allow you to receive more data.

I suggest binding a key for each of these. To bind a key go into the Advanced options menu, open Advanced, then Raw key bindings, find the desired key you wish to bind, e.g. Backslash, & enter in these commands (you'll want to bind 2 keys with different values for xxxx).

netspeed xxxx

stat net

You can substitute in your own netspeed values (for xxxx), I use 2800 & 3500. Set one low in case your ping starts to rise, this is a sign you may have set it to high for the current server, try increasing it for better results whenever possible. Now you can simply change netspeed at the press of a button.

If Packet loss is occurring, try lower netspeed first. Packet loss may also be an indication of being connected to a bad server).

You can find out how to optimize your modem in the Modem tweaking guide for Windows9x & Windows 2000 & LAN tweaking guide.

Options

Open the Options menu. This menu contains a few items, which you can change to improve performance/visuals or just general playability.

Auto Aim. Set this to True (enabled) or False (disabled) as you feel appropriate. It's only effective in the single player mode of gameplay anyway, not multiplayer. When set to True your weapons will become a little more accurate.

Joystick Enabled. Set this to False unless you intend to use a Joystick to play the game, however mouse & keyboard is the best way to play Unreal. It will improve slightly if you set it to False as well. Useful if you're on a low spec machine.

Mouse Sensitivity. Setting this to higher values will improve mouse responsiveness although will make more accurate movement awkward due to the extra responsiveness. I�d recommend leaving this set to the default unless you find your mouse to be very slow to react to input.

Invert Mouse. Setting this to True inverts the x-axis for the mouse. This means pulling back (towards you) on the mouse will result in looking up & vice versa.

Look Spring. When set to True your view will immediately center upon letting go of the mouse look key. When set to False the view will stay in the same position.

Always Mouselook. Set this to True to always use the mouse for aiming, changing view. I�d highly recommend setting this to True.

Auto Slope Look. You can ignore this setting if Always Mouselook to True. Otherwise, setting it to True will automatically slope your view back/forward when going up/down terrain/stairs, etc.

Weapon Flash. When set to True your screen will flash when you fire a weapon. This is more distracting than anything else so I'd highly recommend setting it to False.

Crosshair. Use this to select the crosshair you wish to use, if any. This setting has a negligible effect on performance when you use no crosshair.

Weapon Hand. Use this to change the handing of your weapons. Options available are, Left, Right & Centered.

Dodging. When set to True double tapping either the Forward, Back & Strafe Left/Right keys will result in a quick dodge move in that direction. Useful if you need to quickly avoid weapon fire & such.

Customize Controls. Use this button to gain access to a menu where you may customize your controls.

Prioritize Weapons. Use this button to gain access to a menu where you may prioritise your weapons.

HUD configuration. Using this option you can change the layout of the HUD (Heads Up Display). Option 5 will display no HUD which can improve performance on certain video cards, particularly older nVidia graphics cards such as the original TNT.

View bob. Set this slider to the far left to remove the view bobbing while moving, this may help stop motion sickness that some users can experience, it will also make aiming that bit easier. Leave it at the default position for a more realistic feeling in the game. Although you can adjust the view bob as you see fit with the slider.

Net Speed. See the Netplay section for more detailed information on this setting.

Advanced Options. If you haven't already guessed it, this is used to gain access to the Advanced options menu.

General console commands

Here's a list of some of the more useful console commands. These can be used by everyone client/server admin, etc.

SETRES WxHxD	Set the resolution & color depth. eg SetRes 800x600x32 Note - 32 bit color is faster in software rendering.
BRIGHTNESS x	Cycle through 10 screen brightness values. Replace x with values from 0 - 10.
s_occfactor x	A3D 2.0 occlusion factor.
s_maxnodedist x	A3D 2.0 maximum node distance .
s_reflect x	A3D 2.0 reflections. A value of 0 for x disables reflections, 1 enables them. Disabled is faster.
s_occlude x	A3D 2.0 occlusions. A value of 0 for x disables occlusions, 1 enables them. Disabled is faster.
s_wavetracing x	A3D 2.0 Wavetracing. A value of 0 for x disables wavetracing, 1 enables them. Disabled is faster.
s_refgain x	A3D 2.0 reflection gain.
s_refdelay x	A3D 2.0 reflection delay.
s_maxpoly x	A3D 2.0 maximum number of polygons. Replace x with the number of polygons to limit it to.
s_maxreflectpoly x	A3D 2.0 maximum number of reflection polygons. Replace x with the number of polygons to limit it to. Larger values may improve audio realism, although reduce performance.
s_polysmall x	A3D 2.0 smallest polygon size.
s_polylarge x	A3D 2.0 large polygon size.
s_a3dsources	A3D 2.0 Sources.
SHOT	Take a screenshot & save it in the Unreal/System directory with a consecutive name like Shot0001.bmp.
DISCONNECT	Disconnect from the current server.
RECONNECT	Reconnect to the current server.
CDTRACK num	Play the specified CD track. Replace num with the desired track number.

Benchmarking

If you want to accurately gauge how well Unreal runs on your system then you'll want to run timedemo�s on it. Here are console commands for doing so.

DEMOPLAY <demofilename> [?noframecap] [?timebased] [?3rdperson]	Play a recorded demo. noframecap plays the demo back as fast as possible. This option is assumed if timedemo 1is enabled. timebased gives a smoother playback if the playback machine is significantly slower than the recording machine. 3rdperson lets you fly around a first person demo as a spectator. E.g. demoplay mydemo?3rdperson?timebased
DEMOREC <filename>	Record a demo to <filename>.
STOPDEMO	Stop recording or playing back a demo.

With these commands you can record your own timedemo's to playback at your own leisure.

If you wish you can also use the Flyby intro for Unreal as well. Simply type timedemo 1 into the console & hit Enter for it start. Let it cycle a few times then enter timedemo 0 into the console & hit Enter to finish it. This will finish the timedemo & give you a displaying showing your average frame rate.

Final Notes

Check out our other Tweaking guides for information on how to improve your system performance & get even higher frame rates in Unreal (Or improve other components).

You can check out the Unreal Techpage for more information about the Unreal engine.

DXTC, FXT1, S3TC (i.e. Texture compression) are NOT supported in Unreal in any renderer other than Metal (which is s3 card specific), & that is S3TC support only at that. This is what Tim Sweeney has to say on the matter (In this case specifically regarding Direct3D & Unreal).

Supporting DXT1 (DXTC) in Direct3D would very significantly slow down our texture management code, which isn't overly fast as it is. Though the DXT1 format is only 4 bits per pixel compared to 16-32 bits per pixel for our other textures on Direct3D, the DXT1 textures we shipped with are really high-res (many 1024x1024) so they consume a lot more video memory & texture bandwidth, as well as causing contention issues with other texture sizes & formats.

Some people then ask, "so why don't you support it as an option, & let us decide whether we want the really high res textures but a significant performance drain?" My view here has been closely influenced by the experience we had with Unreal 1's "Curved Surfaces" feature, an optional feature users could turn on which caused creature & player meshes (not world geometry) to be dynamically tesselated to up to 9X higher polygon counts, making them look more smooth and curvy -- also at a slowdown. Well, tons of users turned that option on thinking it would be cool, then later experienced the slowdowns & didn't realize the slowdown was caused by that one little "curved surfaces" menu option they had selected hours or days earlier. Moral of the story: don't add optional little features that cause major slowdowns.

There you have it from the man himself. I'm making this clear to avoid the confusion some users have encountered or incorrect information posted elsewhere.

Conclusion

You should now have Unreal running better on your system, hopefully a lot stabler as well with much improved audio, visuals, netplay or just plain performance. This guide won't be updated anymore unless Epic releases another Unreal patch which is highly unlikely.

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