Troubleshooting

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.

To get Unreal Tournament to load faster you should open your UnrealTournament.ini. Search for the line LocalMap=CityIntro.unr change it to LocalMap=UT-Logo-Map.unr & save the changes. The game should now load faster than it currently does. Press the Esc key to bring up the Unreal Tournament GUI.

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.

Visuals

Start by going into the Preferences menu (click on Options, then Preferences) & selecting the Video tab.

Video driver. Select your graphics renderer using this option. You’ll only have to use this if you want to change renderer, as Unreal Tournament should automatically detect the best renderer for you when you first load it.

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.

Color Depth. Set this to 16 bit if you’ve got a 3dfx card (not that you’ll have a choice). If you own an nVidia or other card you may be able to select 32 bit. This should be selected for best visual quality, although performance will be much lower as a result. Software rendering will actually run faster in 32 bit colour than in 16 bit colour. The opposite is true in hardware rendering though. NOTE - Voodoo 4/5 users can select 32bit colour.

World 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.

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.

Brightness. Use this slider bar to adjust the brightness level in the game. Sliding it to the right may well improve visibility (quite useful in multiplayer), although it can the game look washed out if you set it too high & vice versa. You may need to test different settings to see which results in the optimum level of brightness for this setting.

GUI Mouse Speed. Use this slider bar to adjust the mouse responsiveness in the GUI (Graphical User Interface) 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 in the menu. NOTE – This setting has no effect on mouse responsiveness in the game.

Font Size. You can use this setting to increase/reduce the font size in the GUI. A useful setting as text appears smaller as you increase resolution. Set it to Normal or Double as you require.

GUI Skin. Use this setting to select your GUI skin from a short list of presets. Change this setting as you see fit.

Min Desired Framerate. Set this to equal to whatever you feel is the minimum for a playable game. 30 would be the ideal minimum frame rate for most users. This specifies the frame rate threshold below which Unreal Tournament will start dropping detail - reducing model detail and not drawing optional effects. If this is set higher than your normal frame rate, then you will never see reduced graphics almost always, but get the best possible performance. The ideal setting for this is about 10 frames below your average frame rate.

When benchmarking it would be best to set this to 0 to give a more accurate indication of real performance (see later on in the guide for how to benchmark Unreal Tournament).

Show Decals. Untick this setting to improve performance, particularly with nVidia cards. Decals are the blood splatters or explosion marks that get left in terrain during a game. Of course if you have a 3dfx based card you should be able to tick this setting for improved visuals with little performance degradation.

Visuals (Advanced)

Next, go into the Advanced options menu & select the Display options. NOTE – Some of the options you have selected in Video menu will be set here so there is no 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 (dynamically tesselated to up to 9X higher polygon counts) which will result in more aesthetically pleasing player models in the game.

Decals. Set this to False to improve performance, particularly with certain nVidia cards. Decals are the blood splatters or explosion marks that get left in terrain during a game. If you have a 3dfx based card you should be able to set this to True for improved visuals with little performance degradation.

MinDesiredFrameRate. Set this to equal to whatever you feel is the minimum for a playable game. 30 should be the ideal minimum frame rate for most users. This specifies the frame rate threshold below which Unreal Tournament will start dropping detail - reducing model detail and not drawing optional effects. If this is set higher than your normal frame rate, then you will never see reduced graphics almost always, but get the best possible performance. The ideal setting for this is about 10 frames below your average frame rate.

When benchmarking it would be best to set this to 0 to give a more accurate indication of real performance (see later on in the guide for how to benchmark Unreal Tournament).

NoDynamicLighting. Set this to False for better visuals. Set this to True to improve performance a little.

NoFractalAnim. This switch can be turned on for a performance improvement for cards that slowdown with pre-frame texture uploads, especially with OpenGL & to a lesser extent D3D. Glide, Metal & Software rendering will run perfectly with this set to False & gain nothing by setting it to True. Direct3d & OpenGL users may see a slight performance boost when set to True, although the game will appear more 2D as a result (water, torches, etc. textures aren’t animated).

NoLighting. Set this to False. Otherwise the game will look quite ugly. The difference in performance between both is extreme, turn the lighting off (True) if you are totally desperate for a frame rate boost. This should only really be considered on systems below the recommended minimum spec.

ScreenFlashes. Set this to True, this is used to change the screen colour, 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 blurred look to the game though. Setting TextureDetail to High will improve visuals more than setting SkinDetail to High (& also have a greater effect of frame rate).

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

UseDirectInput. Set this to True. It'll performance/smoothness with Input devices, e.g. mouse. Although should you experience any problems with input devices try set this to False.

Rendering – 3dfx Glide support

Your renderer is chosen the first time you load Unreal Tournament. Follow the settings for whichever is applicable from the below renderers. If you've selected 3dfx Glide support, then open up the 3dfx Glide support tab. 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 of performance.

DetailBias. Try setting this to 0. This is semi-equivalent to LOD bias setting available in the Voodoo 4/5 drivers, increasing this value may fix a few visuals anomalies. I’d recommend setting it to 0.

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. Set this to True for improved visual quality. Set this to False 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. in the training mission on some floors you can see your reflection. Setting it to False will improve your frame rate in such areas.

Rendering - Direct3D support

If you've selected Direct 3D support then set it as follows. Check the Unreal Technology Direct3D page for the latest info. It is strongly recommended you install the latest official (Or otherwise) drivers for nVidia based graphics cards. The reason being as follows (Steve Polge);

One of our workarounds for an NVidia driver problem was causing some graphical quality degradation for all D3D cards. Since fixed drivers have been available from NVidia for some time now, we removed this workaround.

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.

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 Tournament.

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 reflection. Setting it to False will improve your frame rate in such areas. I’d recommend setting it to False.

Use32BitZBuffer. 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 colour) 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.

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. Only for testing purposes really.

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 Tournament 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 True 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. This is a setting you may want to try toggling to test the effects it has on your frame rate.

Set it to False 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 can help improve performance, it allows the resolution of a texture to scale with the viewpoint. Setting this to True will improve performance. Setting it to False can improve performance on video cards with low video memory (16MB or less) as mipmapping requires extra video memory. 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. Trilinear filtering interpolates between the mipmap levels as well as the weighted average of the texels around it. This gives the smoothest texture with the most blur in between texels. Set this to True for improved visual quality. It should be set to False to improve performance (Reduces memory bandwidth used).

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 video memory on your graphics card as this requires extra video memory.

UseVertexFog. Thanks to Reverend for the definition. This toggles volumetric fog on/off in Direct3D but only in areas which have meshes. In areas without meshes 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) as fog will not be displayed. 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.

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 – S3 Metal support

In the case of S3 MetaL support you should set it as follows. NOTE – An updated metal.dll was released by Diamond some time ago, although this is not needed.

S3 told us that all their recent drivers
automatically include a metal.dll (i.e. which doesn't need to go into your Unrealtournament\system folder) & the MetalDrv.dll that comes with patch 436 contains the latest fixes they sent us.

Basically just install the latest S3 drivers for your S3 based graphics card & the 436 patch (Well, 428+) to get the latest Metal renderer fixes.

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.

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 Tournament.

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. Set this to True for improved visual quality, although it may cause a large performance hit on older graphics cards such as the Savage 3. This is a setting you may want to try toggling to test the effects it has on your frame rate.

Set it to False for increased performance.

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 colour) 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.

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 reflection. Setting it to False will improve your frame rate in such areas. I’d recommend setting it to False.

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 - Software

If you’ve selected the Software rendering then set it 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.

Make sure that SlowVideoBuffering is set to True, in the Display section of Advanced options. This will also further improve performance.

Rendering – OpenGL

No doubt many of you have heard of a new OpenGL renderer for Unreal Tournament which is significantly better than the one that comes in the latest UT patch. For this reason I will not be covering the current Epic implementation here, rather Loki’s.

The requirements to run this are as follows;

1.      A graphics card that such supports texture compression, e.g. GeForce 2.

2.      You must have the 432 or greater installed.

3.      (Optional) Install the Textures from CD-2 of Unreal Tournament, which are S3TC compressed. You don’t need to install CD-2 textures however (Although if your graphics card supports them it is highly recommended).

Once you have downloaded the latest patch & installed the CD-2 textures download this new OpenGLDrv.dll (ATI Radeon owners are recommended to use this version – remove .old from the filename once downloaded). This file is to be placed in the UnrealTournament\System directory, over-writing the existing one (backup the old one before you do so, just in case – you may need to rename the downloaded one to the proper filename OpenGLDrv.dll).

Now open your UnrealTournament.ini, search for the following section;

[OpenGLDrv.OpenGLRenderDevice]
Translucency=True
VolumetricLighting=False
ShinySurfaces=True
Coronas=True
HighDetailActors=True
DetailTextures=True

Delete the existing lines & replace it with the following lines (These being my recommended initial settings);

[OpenGLDrv.OpenGLRenderDevice]

UseGammaExtension=1
UseModulatedGamma=0
UseS3TC=1

UseTNT=0
MinDepthBits=16
MaxLogUOverV=8
MaxLogVOverU=8
UseMultiTexture=1
UsePalette=1
UseAlphaPalette=0
ShareLists=0
AlwaysMipmap=1
DoPrecache=1
Translucency=True
VolumetricLighting=True
ShinySurfaces=False
Coronas=True
HighDetailActors=True
DetailTextures=False
UseTrilinear=False

Now to further tweak these settings for optimal performance, unfortunately you will need to make the relevant changes in the UnrealTournament.ini rather than the Advanced options menu.

UseGammaExtension=x. If you are having problems adjusting the gamma of Unreal Tournament then set x to 1 & make any gamma adjustments before loading Unreal Tournament. Leave it set to 0 if you have no such issues.

UseModulatedGamma=x. Setting x to 1 will modulate a white texture on top of everything once the scene is rendered. This can improve game brightness but will make textures appear washed out & reduce performance. Set it to 0 at all times unless you are desperate for an increase in brightness.

UseS3TC=x. Set x to 1 to enable S3TC, this will allow the CD-2 textures to be displayed in Unreal Tournament. Due to licensing issues, 3dfx Voodoo 4/5 graphics card are not currently able to use these textures. Set x to 0 to disable S3TC support, this can allow the OpenGL renderer to function correctly on other graphics cards, e.g. Voodoo 5 or TNT2.

UseTNT=x. If you are using a TNT ½ or Radeon graphics card or are experiencing graphical problems, e.g. missing textures with other cards set x to 1. Otherwise leave it at 0. This setting shouldn’t be needed with GeForce 1/2 or Voodoo 3/4/5 graphics cards. Deleting this line will have no adverse effects.

MinDepthBits=x. x sets the colour depth bits per pixel. Valid values are 16 or 32. Selecting 32 (If your video card supports it) will give best image quality, but slowest performance. Try setting x to 32 should you experience strange graphical issues.

UseMultiTexture=x. Set x to True to enable multi-texturing. It will improve performance on nearly all graphics cards.

UsePalette=x. Setting x to True can improve performance. Set it to False if your graphics card doesn’t support palettes.

AlwaysMipMap=x. Mipmapping can help improve performance, it allows the resolution of a texture to scale with the viewpoint. Setting x to 1 can improve performance. Setting it to 0 can improve performance on video cards with low video memory (16MB or less) as mipmapping requires extra video memory. I’d recommend setting this to 1.

DoPrecache=x. 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.

Translucency=x. Set x to True to enable translucent effects in the game, this can improve image quality, set it to False for improved performance.

VolumetricLighting=x. 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 Tournament setting this to False along with DetailTextures to False can mean the difference between a playable & an unplayable game.

ShinySurfaces=x. Shiny surfaces are the reflective surfaces in the game, e.g. on some floors you can see yours’ & other reflections. Setting x to False can improve your frame rate in such areas. Set x to True to enable shiny surfaces. I’d recommend setting it to False.

Coronas=x. Set x 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=x. Set x to True for improved visuals. Setting it to False will improve performance.

DetailTextures=x. 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 True for improved visual quality, although it can cause a performance hit on older graphics cards such as the TNT. This is a setting you may want to try toggling to test the effects it has on your frame rate. Set it to False for increased performance.

UseTrilinear=x. Trilinear filtering interpolates between the mipmap levels as well as the weighted average of the texels around it. This gives the smoothest texture with the most blur in between texels. Set x to True for improved visual quality. It should be set to False for improved performance (Reduces memory bandwidth used).

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

Audio

Go into the Preferences menu & select the Audio tab.

Auto Taunt. Tick this option if you wish to be able to automatically taunt your victims. Untick the setting if you wish to taunt manually, or not at all.

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.

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.

Music Volume. Use this to set the volume level for the (Digital) music in Unreal Tournament. Adjust the slider bar for volume as required, slide the bar right to increase volume & vice versa. This setting can be ignored if UseDigitalMusic is set to False (See Advanced options Audio settings).

Sound Volume. Use this to set the volume level for audio. Adjust the slider bar for volume as required, slide the bar right to increase volume & vice versa. I’d recommend setting this to the maximum & independently adjust the volume levels for music & such.

Play Voice Messages. Using this setting you may customize the voice messages which get played, e.g. you can have the playing of auto-taunts disabled by selecting No auto taunts. Other options available are All, No taunts & None. Selecting None may yield a negligible improvement in performance.

No Mature Taunts. Tick this setting if you don’t want any strong language taunts to be played in the game, such as “Die bitch”, ahem. This may of some use to parents, probably. Performance won’t be affected either way.

Announcer Volume. Use this to set the volume level for the announcer (“Rampage”, “Multi-kill”, etc.). Adjust the slider bar for volume as required, slide the bar right to increase the announcer volume & vice versa.

Use Hardware 3D Sound. Tick this 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 improved audio quality however (More positionally accurate). See the advanced options/console commands further below for how to disable unneeded components of A3D audio to speed things up (Make sure to download the latest A3D driver also). Untick this especially if you intend to play online with an A3D2 card or need the extra performance in single player. For optimal performance Untick the box.

The 3D sound implementation with A3D2 is superior to that of EAX though.

Audio (cont.)

Open 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 Tournament. 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 9000.

EffectsChannels. The higher the amount the more realistic the audio in Unreal Tournament 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 volume level for audio. 255 is the highest value that can be used. 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 improved audio quality (More positionally accurate & other effects). 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 (Generally ISA based in most cases).

UseFilter. Set this to True to enable audio filtering for improved audio quality, 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 improved 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.

HUD

Open the Advanced options menu & select the HUD tab. You can use this tab to customize your HUD, either for information displayed, or to improve performance (By displaying less useful information).

Show HUD. Tick this setting if you wish to display the HUD (Heads Up Display). For optimal performance Untick this, although you’ll have no information displayed as a result. I’d recommend leaving this Ticked & instead remove unneeded options as shown below.

Show Weapon Display. Tick this setting if you wish the HUD to display the weapons you have available. Untick this if you wish to have a larger viewing area, or a small performance boost.

Show Player Status. Tick this setting if you wish the HUD to your status (health). Untick this if you wish to have a slightly bigger viewing area & a small performance boost.

Show Ammo Count. Tick this setting if you wish the HUD to display the ammo available in the weapons you have available. Untick this if you wish to have an increased viewing area & a small performance boost.

Show Team Info. Tick this to display team information during team-play game types (Not deathmatch). You should Tick/Untick this setting depending on whether or not you feel the information it displays is of use to you.

Show Frags. Tick this setting if you wish the HUD to display your frag count. It’s not of too much use (you should be busy killing people, not checking your score). Untick it for a slight performance boost.

Show Chat Area. Untick this if you wish to have an increased viewing area & a small performance boost. Only Tick this if you want to chat with other players during a game.

Use Team Color in Team Games. Tick this setting as you see appropriate.

HUD Color. Use this setting to select a pre-configured HUD colour, e.g. Red.

HUD Color Red/Green/Blue. If you wish to have a custom HUD colour then you may adjust these RGB sliders as you see fit until you find the appropriate colour. The HUD colour will be displayed in the box in the middle of the HUD tab & the colours will change as you adjust the sliders.

HUD Transparency. The level of transparency will be displayed in the box on the middle of the HUD tab & the transparency will change as you adjust this slider. Sliding it to the far left will disable the transparency effect. This will improve performance on many graphics cards.

HUD Size. Use this slider bar to increase/decrease the size of the HUD. Again, a smaller HUD (slide to the left) will increase your viewing area (or to be more accurate, make it less obscured) & potentially improve performance.

Weapon Icon Size. Use this slider bar to increase/decrease the size of weapon icons in the HUD.

Status Size. Use this slider bar to increase/decrease the size of your status icon, which shows your health.

Crosshair Color. Use this setting to select a pre-configured HUD colour, e.g. Red.

Crosshair Color Red/Green/Blue. If you wish to have a custom crosshair colour then you may adjust these RGB sliders as you see fit until you find the appropriate colour. The crosshair will be displayed in the box on the bottom of the HUD tab & the colours will change as you adjust the sliders.

Netplay

With the release of the 436 patch, clients attempting to connect to a server running this version must have at least the 432 patch installed.

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

Open the Preferences menu & in the Network tab select your connection type as appropriate, e.g. Modem, LAN, etc.

Now go into Advanced options menu.

When playing online you can use the stat net command in the console to enable the Unreal Tournament 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).

Server setup

Currently the Unreal (Tournament) server guide is being worked, still. You can find the current unfinished version here (May of some use to some of you). Until our server guide is finished however I can highly recommend you check The Admin Page.

Input

Open the Preferences menu, then select the Input tab. In this tab you will find settings to tweak your input device preferences.

Joystick. Tick this setting if you intend to use a Joystick to play the game, however mouse & keyboard is the best way to play Unreal Tournament. It will improve performance slightly if you Untick this as well. Useful if you're on a low spec machine.

DirectInput. Tick this setting. It'll performance/smoothness with Input devices, e.g. mouse. Although, should you experience any problems with input devices try Unticking this.

Mouselook. Tick this setting to always use the mouse for aiming, changing view. I’d highly recommend Ticking this for best control of your view.

Mouse Smoothing. Tick this setting to enable mouse filtering. This will average out mouse movements resulting in much smoother scrolling. Untick this to disable the filtering. I’d high recommend Ticking this.

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

Auto Aim. Tick (enable) or Untick (disable) auto aim as you feel appropriate. It’s only effective in the single player mode of gameplay, not multiplayer. When Ticked your weapons will become a little more accurate.

Look Spring. When Ticked your view will immediately re-centre upon letting go of the mouse look key. When set to False the view will stay in the same position. Ignore this setting if Mouselook is Ticked.

Auto Slope. You can ignore this setting if Mouselook is Ticked. Otherwise, Ticking this setting will automatically slope your view back/forward when going up/down terrain/stairs, etc.

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.

Instant Rocket Fire. Tick this setting to automatically launch a rocket when you hit the fire button when using the Rocket Launcher (obviously). As a side effect you lose the ability to launch multiple, simultaneous rockets. Tick/Untick this setting as suits your style of gameplay.

Controls

In this tab you can customize the controls which you will use in the game.

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.

Benchmarking

If you want to accurately gauge how well Unreal Tournament runs on your system then you’ll want to run timedemos on it. Here are console commands for doing so.

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

Final Notes

Check out our other Tweaking guides for information on how to improve your system performance to get even higher frame rates in Unreal Tournament.

You can check out the Unreal Techpage for detailed & obscure info about the unreal engine.

Conclusion

You should now have Unreal Tournament running more comfortably on your system, hopefully a lot stabler as well with improved net-play, audio & visuals. This guide should be updated if/when further patches are released.

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