Popular Settings/Configs

[Funkencool]

I'm working on an options menu (chili) and need some help coming up with useful configs.

I'd like to know
- Which spring settings are often changed.
- Which settings impact performance the most or are most important.
- If any of those are often changed together relatively (for example, maxParticles and maxNanoParticles, or drawdist and icondist)
- If possible, well known values for any or all of them (even some .cfgs would help a lot)

Basically, I'd like to shrink the options down into something a little more concise. Any shared knowledge would be greatly appreciated

[Beherith]

Changing some options sometimes only has an effect if the game is rebooted.

Performance:
Shadows is a biggie, it has 3 states, off, full and unit shadows only. The second parameter is the shadow map size from 1024 to 8192.

Code: Select all

shadows 1 4096

A shadow map size of 8192 is EXTREMELY expensive, 4096 is nice, and 2048 is fine for lower resolutions. Shadows can be changed ingame

Water can be expensive too, and can be changed ingame, from /water 0 to /water 4

Anti aliasing can be a big gpu hog, but needs a restart.

[jK]

A shadow map size of 8192 is EXTREMELY expensive,

Offtopic note: it depends on your gpu's pixel fillrate, i.e. my GTX460 1GB has more than enough free bandwidth left, so it's `for free`.

[Beherith]

I run spring at QHD rez, and with all the shaders in BAR, I fill my 1gb 560ti all the way. Thus no 8192 shadows for me, but as jK said, your results may vary.

I'm trying to fit BAR into 512MB @1080p but that means I gotta cull some stuff...

[Silentwings]

For what it's worth, I think its best to edit most spring settings via the lobby and not an in-game menu. All the major lobbies have interfaces for doing it.

This is because (1) Several options only take effect after restarting spring (2) Changing some options (including some of which only take effect after restart) can cause crashbugs on load with some systems, particularly with ATI-fail.

None of the options require regular change. The only thing I change is whether or not I'm in fullscreen mode or not. I don't think mods should be setting their own defaults; by and large the engine defaults are good and essentially the only reasons people change them are (1) ATI-fail or other hardware/driver issues and (2) personal taste for the tradeoff between looks & performance.

Anyways, here is a list of what I'd guess an average player might care to change, either for perf or compatibility reasons. I haven't actually checked up on what any of these settings do, I just wrote it from memory, so there might be mistakes.

Ingame menu
ShowClock
ShowFPS
ShowSpeed
snd_volmaster

Lobby menu
FullScreen
XResolution
YResolution
3DTrees
AdvMapShading
AdvUnitShading
AdvSKy
AllowDeferred**Rendering
FeatureDrawDistance/FeatureFadeDistance (set first, second should be first-1500 or suchlike)
UnitIconDist/UnitLodDist (best set equal afaik)
GroundDecals
GroundDetail
InvertMouse
LogFlush
MapBorder
MaxParticles
Shadows/ShadowMapSize
Water (there are various options controlling the 4 different kinds of water; should be able to toggle between the 4 different waters but not edit the config for a particular kind of water).

Things to be wary of:
1) A small number of options (none of the above) have no effect at all, because they relate to now inactive code.
2) On top of the ATI-fail etc, some options when set badly will completely bugger Spring (e.g. ModUICtrl). So in some cases it's best to leave adventurous ppl to run spring.exe -> edit settings and experiement. Afaik the default options for such settings are all good.

[Funkencool]

Here's basically what I have added so far

(default engine settings)
I haven't tested all of them thoroughly but they're all based on UI commands so I assumed none need a restart.

[Jools]

ShowClock

Is that spring game clock or real world clock?

Is there a widget that shows real world time?

[Beherith]

thats really superb, funken! the next biggest load after shadows is usually lups, but i would refrain from touching that until i can unify all the shaders. BAR depends heavily on the deferred pipeline for its superb visuals.

[smoth]

how would that deferred pipeline work with the material stuff I am doing

[knorke]

Could add Lups settings.

Shadows has /shadows 2 mode which is a bit faster iirc. (only units cast shadows, terrain does not)

Is "Draw Engine Trees" == 3DTrees?
I think the same names should be used everywhere, otherwise that will get very confusing. Can add tooltips etc to explain some settings.

Hardware Cursor, 3DTrees, AdvancedMapShading and others:
imo those only needs changing if there is a serious problem.
But such problem would usually be so severe that one can not get into game and thus not into that menu. If a setting like 3DTrees causes crash then one can not turn it off ingame. If Hardware Cursor makes the mousepointer invisible, can not click that either.

Those things are ways to "debug/fix" and think they should not be grouped together with real game options like "Draw defense ranges."

[Funkencool]

Since I seen shadows a lot here's the options

Code: Select all

			comboBox{y=40,name='Shadows',
				labels={'Off','Very Low','Low','Medium','High','Very High'},
				options={'0','2 1024','1 1024','2 2048','1 2048','1 4096'},},

and the rest of the combo boxes

Code: Select all

			comboBox{y=0,name='Water',
				labels={'Basic','Reflective','Dynamic','Refractive','Bump-Mapped'},
				options={0,1,2,3,4},},
			comboBox{y=80,name='DistDraw',title='Unit Draw Distance',
				labels={'Low','Medium','High','Very High'},
				options={100,300,500,1000},},
			comboBox{y=120,name='DistIcon',title='Unit Icon Distance',
				labels={'Off','Low','Medium','High','Very High'},
				options={10000,100,200,300,400},},
			comboBox{y=160,name='MaxParticles',title='Particles',
				labels={'Very Low','Low','Medium','High','Very High'},
				options={500,1000,2000,3000,5000},},
			comboBox{y=200,name='MaxNanoParticles',title='Nano Particles',
				labels={'Very Low','Low','Medium','High','Very High'},
				options={500,1000,2000,3000,5000},},

Most of the numbers are just best guesses

Most of the options I have in it are just in for testing my "framework" behind adding options.

Could add Lups settings.

Shadows has /shadows 2 mode which is a bit faster iirc. (only units cast shadows, terrain does not)

Is "Draw Engine Trees" == 3DTrees?
I think the same names should be used everywhere, otherwise that will get very confusing. Can add tooltips etc to explain some settings.

Hardware Cursor, 3DTrees, AdvancedMapShading and others:
imo those only needs changing if there is a serious problem.
But such problem would usually be so severe that one can not get into game and thus not into that menu. If a setting like 3DTrees causes crash then one can not turn it off ingame. If Hardware Cursor makes the mousepointer invisible, can not click that either.

Those things are ways to "debug/fix" and think they should not be grouped together with real game options like "Draw defense ranges."

Based on behe's post I'll probably just wait to add lups. I'm mostly working on making it more straight forward to add new widget or engine options.

I'll probably drop the mentioned rare use ones and add them as an advanced option for testing etc.. because why not? Many , such as defense range will probably end up in the interface menu as well.



Personally I believe 3Dtrees is much more confusing. A lot of maps have 3D trees which aren't 3Dtrees. Although, I could add clarification in the tooltip.

My hope is maybe one day when there is a LuaLobby, there can also be a LuaLobbyOptionMenu. Then people who love options can have a little more digestible feed then http://springrts.com/wiki/Springsettings.cfg

[Silentwings]

No wait needed there is already SpringSettings within SpringLobby and I think ZK lobby also has a decent interface for editing Spring options; the others I don't know about.

[smoth]

Is "Draw Engine Trees" == 3DTrees?

why are some of the trees 3d and others are not? oh I turned off the engine render thing.

I think when dealing with the average player it is safer to KISS all over them

[Silentwings]

I think what funk means is that although most maps have trees as features there are few with trees that are really units.

I think when dealing with the average player it is safer to KISS all over them

+1!

[smoth]

I always thought the engine trees were something outside of the feature/unit paradigms

[knorke]

why are some of the trees 3d and others are not? oh I turned off the engine render thing.

Which is why such option should not be there. There is no reason anyone would ever turn on/off the 3DTrees setting EXCEPT if it to find cause to crash. For graphic/fps tweaking there is no reason to have it there.

What does an "Engine Tree" look like to player?
Such word construct makes no sense.


Engine's trees are ~normal features just with different drawType
http://springrts.com/wiki/Gamedev:FeatureDefs#Visual and their featureDef and animDef is in engine. (like geovents too)

[Jools]

Engine tree makes just as much sense as ally team

[smoth]

For graphic/fps tweaking there is no reason to have it there.

Some of the older maps have loads of the engine trees and it may make a fps difference.

[gajop]

I don't know the details, but engine trees just don't behave as normal features do, which is slightly annoying as they're marked as 'features'. I've had issues getting their build pic as well as drawing them in the world via opengl (using the same code as with the other features).

[knorke]

engine trees just don't behave as normal features do

True, they are a bit different to most other features. Also see
http://code.google.com/p/xta-springrts/ ... volume.lua but why would a player care about such details things when setting graphic options?

Some of the older maps have loads of the engine trees and it may make a fps difference.

Why would a player care about that either:
Such maps, especially the ones where dozen of trees were spawned "on top of each other", can be considered buggy and are already either fixed or rightfully forgotten.