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Updated
on June 2, 2001 by Thomas
McGuire
Graphics Options
When you load Sacrifice you should be greeted with the following screen (Depending on the Graphics card installed).
Select either Direct3D HAL or Direct3D T&L HAL as appropriate. The latter option should only be selected if you have a card with a T&L unit, this can provide improved performance, particularly when lots of models are visible (high amount of polygons). NOTE - Owners of 3dfx Voodoo 4/5 Graphics cards should select this option if they have Geometry Assist enabled in 3dfx Advanced Features (Available only with Pentium 3, Athlon or later CPU’s).
Once the game loads, select Options, then the Graphics Options tab.
Resolution. Selecting a lower setting will improve performance & maintain a stable, higher frame rate. Although, higher resolutions will look better, they generally run slower. Set this to 16 bit for optimal performance also (Albeit with more noticeable colour banding). If your card supports it you can select 32 bit for best image quality (Less apparent colour banding), although performance may be reduced.
Use 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. Tick this setting for improved visual quality, although it may cause a performance hit on older graphics cards. Untick it for increased performance, although with reduced visual quality.
Use Bump Detail Maps. Tick this setting to enable the use of DOT3 bump mapping on Graphics cards which support this feature. This will yield improved Graphics quality with such cards. Bump mapping uses a technique to give the perceived effect of depth to an otherwise flat texture. Untick this setting for optimal performance with Graphics cards which support this feature, it will be automatically disabled on other Graphics cards.
Use Light Maps. Tick this setting to enable Lightmap lighting of levels (real-time). Untick this to enable Vertex lighting, which is faster but uglier (static). The screenshots below illustrate the effects light map lighting has.
Lightmaps off |
Lightmaps off |
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As you can see, disabling Light Map lighting gives a duller, less dynamic image in Sacrifice.
Use Multitexture. Tick this setting to enable multi-texturing, this can improve performance. Untick this to disable multi-texturing (You should only really consider this on graphics cards that either can’t multi-texture or like certain 3dfx cards, cannot perform Multi-texturing & Trilinear texture filtering simultaneously). I'd highly recommend leaving this enabled at all times.
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