What are the lowest settings for MegaGlest

[unclesam]

I have a netbook and I need to know what settings will give me the most fps (or how I can get the best fps).
Thanks.

Edit (tomreyn): Changed title

[Omega]

Well, obviously these won't be the lowest in that literal sense (after all, you could presumably reduce the resolution to the point of which you can't see anything anymore), but practically reduced, try tweaking the following INI lines:

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ScreenHeight=600
ScreenWidth=800Lower resolutions = smaller window size = less work. Resolution is the easiest thing to change and would have some of the biggest impact, but if decreased too much, you may be unable to see what's even going on.

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Shadows=DisabledTurning off shadows gives a big performance boost.

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Textures3D=0Disabling 3D textures makes water instantly hideous, but can improve performance slightly, and really old video cards won't support it.

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TilesetParticles=0
UnitParticles=0Particles are very heavy on your computer. Sure, a couple of mages is manageable, but when we got an army of units that generate particles just by standing there, that's a fair bit of work on your computer. Disabling them completely misses out on a lot of eye candy, but reduces strain nicely. On a side note, some units (off the top of my head, the ghost-workers from the Undead mod) would not be the same at all without unit particle systems.

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FogOfWarSmoothingFrameSkip=5Higher numbers would mean the Fog of War clears less smoothly, but also slightly less work when doing so.

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Windowed=falseI'm told that fullscreen mode has slightly better performance, though, if you want better multitasking and/or the resolution is reduced to the point of which fullscreen is a blurry mess, windowed may be a better choice.

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MaxLights=1More lights = more work. You need at least one light, so that's the bare minimum.

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MapPreview=0Map preview should be pretty lightweight, and it isn't seen in game, but could slightly improve performance.

To use these, open glestuser.ini in the MegaGlest data folder, and find the line specified and change the value accordingly. On a side note, I don't recommend using all the tweaks, but start with the most apparent, such as changing the resolution and disabling shadows, since some changes (such as disabling 3D textures) have hefty visual cons to offset the performance boost. Once you get playable gameplay, it'd be best to stop there, as you shouldn't be expecting 60 FPS on a netbook anyway.

[unclesam]

Thanks for the reply.
I tried what you suggested, but is there anything else I can do to turn the graphics down even more (I don't care how ugly it looks).

[Omega]

Games do really have a "floor" in terms of how low you can go. Does your computer meet the minimum requirements? While it's possible to "push" past those minimums, there's only so far a computer can go with performance, however. Netbooks, for example, aren't made for "real" games (defined as anything that's not solitaire ).

[unclesam]

To answer your question, my computer is an acer aspire one aoa150.  On your website it says it needs to be at least dual core.
My netbook isn't dual core, not even close, here's what I got:

Processor / Speed    Intel® Atom™ processor N270 (1.60 GHz, 533 MHz FSB, 512 KB L2 cache)
Video Subsystem    Integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950
Hard Disk Drive    8GB NAND flash module or
80GB 2.5" hard disk drive for internal storage
(varies by model)
System Bus Speed    533 MHz

I know it sucks, but Is that good enough?   

And also is there any tweaking of the graphics I can do to increase my fps (past the instruction you gave me)?  Anything at all?

[tomreyn]

You're not disclosing how much RAM this system has - the maximum configuration possible seems to be 1.5GB and it seems to ship with just 512 MB by default. And how much of that is actually available to MegaGlest?

Even if you have enough RAM, this is really an extra low spec system which is clearly not meant to be used for 3D gaming, I'm afraid.

[unclesam]

okok fine, I've heard that a lot (that my machine sucks).  But I just want to know some more things I can put in my glestuser.ini file.

[Omega]

https://docs.megaglest.org/MG/INI

[unclesam]

I read your link, and I have some questions.

Will setting FilterMaxAnisotropy to 0 help me?
And from reading the link, I think FogOfWarSmoothingFrameSkip is should be set to something low not five, am I right?  And if so what should I put it to?

[tomreyn]

About FogOfWarSmoothingFrameSkip: Skipping 5 frames means rendering less frames, means less stress on your GPU. I.e. a higher value may provide better performance.

We may not yet have expressed this well enough, yet, so I'll give it another try: there is some kind of minimal hardware capabilities involved in playing some games. MegaGlest is more demanding than other applications and with the system you currently have it is very unlikely that you will ever get a close to acceptable experience no matter what you change and how many INI values you try to modify. So do keep trying but chances you will end up with something which works for more than a 2 player game are highly unlikely.

X-mas is coming up, maybe there's a chance you can convince your friends and family to help you buy a cheap desktop computer with a cheap dedicated graphics card and 4 GB RAM? For example, a new desktop PC which would work (Inspiron 570) is USD 560 incl. monitor from Dell (and Dell does not have the cheapest offers), or you could buy it used from some friends.

[softcoder]

You could also try:

ColorBits=8

or if that doesn't work

ColorBits=16

FactorySound=None
FactionPreview=false
Filter=Bilinear
MapPreview=false
PerspectiveFarPlane=300

[unclesam]

Alright! I have 0 lag in game.  Know my netbook plays like a quality gaming machine!  Awesome!
Thank you all very much for your help.

[tomreyn]

Congratulations! Please post the configuration you have now, so that others can reuse your work in this area.

[unclesam]

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; === propertyMap File ===

AutoLocaleLanguageDetect=false
ColorBits=8
DisableScreenshotConsoleText=0
EnableFTPServer=1
EnableFTPServerInternetTechtreeXfer=1
EnableFTPServerInternetTilesetXfer=1
EnableFTPXfer=1
EnableTextureCompression=1
FTPServerPort=61358
FactorySound=None
Filter=Bilinear
FontSizeAdjustment=0
Lang=english
MapPreview=1
MasterServerExternalPort=61357
MaxLights=1
MouseMoveScrollsWorld=1
NetPlayerName=UncleSam
PrivacyPlease=0
RainEffect=0
ScreenHeight=600
ScreenShotFileType=jpg
ScreenWidth=800
Shadows=Disabled
SoundVolumeAmbient=0
SoundVolumeFx=0
SoundVolumeMusic=0
Textures3D=0
TilesetParticles=0
FogOfWarSmoothingFrameSkip=5
UnitParticles=0
VisibleHud=1
Windowed=0
DepthBits=16
DisableVBO=true
FogOfWarSmoothing=false
StencilBits=0
FactionPreview=false
_{Edit by Omega: Added code tags}

[tomreyn]

Thanks. The only in-game performance related options on this list are these:

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ColorBits=8
EnableTextureCompression=1
FactorySound=None
Filter=Bilinear
MaxLights=1
RainEffect=0
ScreenHeight=600
ScreenWidth=800
Shadows=Disabled
Textures3D=0
TilesetParticles=0
FogOfWarSmoothingFrameSkip=5
UnitParticles=0
Windowed=0
DepthBits=16
DisableVBO=true
FogOfWarSmoothing=false
StencilBits=0


[tomreyn]

Since this topic is now discussed in the MegaGlest FAQ, this is no longer a sticky.