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Updated
on July 12, 2001 by Thomas
McGuire
Graphics
(continued)
Now select the Page down button.
Size. This setting controls the
resolution used for Shadow maps in Serious Sam. Moving this slider to
the Right should result in sharper Shadowmaps being used in
levels & vice versa. If you have a low amount of Video memory then
you should move this slider to the Left.
Quality. This setting sets the
colour depth used for Shadow maps in the game. Select 16-bit for
improved performance (Reduces Video memory requirements), with reduced
visual quality (More apparent colour banding in shadows). Select
32-bit for best visual quality (Less apparent colour banding in
shadows), although performance will be reduced – especially on older
Graphics cards or those with Low Video memory.
Dithering method. This option
modifies the dithering method used for 16-Bit Shadow map textures in the
game. This can give the appearance of greater colour depth to textures,
although it can make them appear speckled upon closer inspection. As you
can guess dithering is no substitute for using higher depth (32-bit)
Shadow maps.
Cache size. This controls the size
of the Cache used for caching Shadow maps in Serious Sam. Depending on
the Size you selected previously set this accordingly, i.e. if
you set the Shadowmap size to Low then it would be a waste
setting the cache size to Large.
Precache shadowmaps. This setting
controls whether or not shadow maps are cached during level loading or
not. Setting this to Yes will increase level loading time,
although overall performance should be better as the shadow maps need
not be loaded during the levels (As they are just being loaded from the
cache). Setting this to No will reduce level loading
times, but performance in the game will be reduced whenever shadow maps
need be loaded.
LOD quality. This setting sets the
LOD used in Models in the game, using a higher setting will
result in more detail models being used (More polygons) although given
the amount of Enemies regularly on-screen in Serious Sam you may well
want to use a Lower setting on older Graphics card/CPUs or those
with low Polygon throughput. Those with newer Graphics cards should be
able to set this to High or greater with little performance hit
expect in some of the larger battles.
Shadow type. This setting defines
the LOD used for shadows cast from Models, if any. Options available are
None, Simple (Default), Complex (1 light), Complex
(multiple lights). Given the number of shadow casting Models which
may be visible at any time I'd highly recommend not setting this
to Complex unless you have a Graphics card with an onboard
T&L Unit, or a very fast Processor if unavailable. It's also
worth noting that the Shadows cast are fairly unrealistic & subject
to various rendering errors as a result I'd only recommend setting this
to Simple (default) at the most anyway.
Precision. This controls memory
usage, should you be on a low memory system (64MB or less) then setting
this to Low may improve performance, possibly with some Rendering
errors as a side effect, those with greater than 64MB RAM should leave
this set to Normal.
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