Core.ini Settings Explained
This originated as a thread in RSC from here by Bob Simpson.
I’ve been trying to think about what helps frames rates to be higher in GPL. There are many factors such as resolution, FSAA, graphics add-ons and graphics menu choices. I don’t know how much the core.ini settings affect frame rate, but the image should be affected as shown below. This is my interpretation of the readme and might be old news for many of you, but it’s taken me 2 years to roll up my sleeves and dive in (it’s really not that confusing). Newbies might find this enlightening, since I keep seeing the same questions pop up over and over. My recommendations for a top end graphics card after studying the ReadmeD3D.txt from Papyrus, located in your sierra\gpl folder are:
(Note that settings for “lower end cards” might help to speed up frame rate, but the image might suffer as well. CPU speed and FSAA will determine which direction to go in as well, I think.)
"Quotes" from the readmed3d.txt
DisableZBuffer = 0....."To gain a significant frame rate improvement (about 60%) this D3D renderer will try to use - or not disable - a Z buffer to minimize state changes."
TossHighestMip = 0.....0 gives best, sharpest image / 1 for lower end cards "Setting to 1 will result in slightly more blurry textures when up close."
DoubleMirrorResWidth = 1.....1 gives best mirror resolution / 0 lower mirror res for lower end cards DoubleMirrorResHeight = 1.....1 gives best mirror resolution / 0 lower mirror res for lower end cards
DirectMirrorRendering = 1.....Use 0 only for problems with image location (i.e. it’s in the corner of the screen)
AlphaThreshold = 1.....1 for better cards / 240 for lower end cards TransparentMipsDrawOrder = 1.....1 for best image / 0 for lower end cards "With AT=240 and TMDO=0 trees look moth eaten. You can improve the appearance of trees and fences by drawing the transparent polygons from furthest to closest (TransparentMipsDrawOrder = 1), and then this allows you to draw the transparent edges of the trees and fences completely (AlphaThreshold = 1), but at the cost of a small framerate hit. If you've got a fast PC, use the latter settings."
TrilinearFiltering = 1.....1 for best image / 0 for lower end cards "non-single pass filtering, Setting this value to 0 will help speed up the framerate on slower cards"
AnisotropicFiltering = 16.....higher for best image (1 (0 level), 2 (1 level), 4 (2 level), 8 (3 level), 16 (4 level filtering)), enabled in newer cards only
LODBias = -50 .....Try 0 (blurrier), -50 (sharper), -100 (far textures tend to speckle). Aim for a setting that looks sharp without speckling. "100 brings lower mips exactly 1 mip level closer to the foreground making everything a bit blurrier and anything much lower than -50 starts to make the textures "speckle" a lot in the distance, even if they look sharper"
Added from below - after reading the readmegl.txt (OpenGL values)
TossHighestMip = 0.....0 gives best, sharpest image / 1 for lower end cards (image will be blurry) - same as the D3D
MipFiltering = 4.....0 is faster, poor image, 1, 2, 3 in between, 4 is full TiriLinear Filtering, best image MirrorsEvery = 1.....mirror fresh rate where 1 is faster and 8 is slower refresh (jerkier image).
