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Limbo Tweaks


Tweaks that should make a difference in screenies, but don't appear to really. They can all affect your performance, however (especially gl_texturemode), so make sure you experiment to find the settings that suit you best.

set gl_32bitatextures

Turn on or off 32bit alpha textures. No visible differences found in screenshots.

set gl_allow_software

This variable tells DK whether or not to "fill in" missing OpenGL functions in your video card's driver. This likely was useful during early to mid development phases when 3dfx Voodoo2 cards were still very prevalent and using a minigl driver. 3dfx was forced to finally release a "full" OpenGL driver for all of their cards when id Software was periodically publishing Q3Test releases (though many people still preferred to use the latest minigl--and a few hacks to get it to work--because of stability, bugs, and performance issues with the full driver). Likely anyone with an nVidia or ATI card (which is most of us nowadays, especially with 3dfx dead and gone) won't notice any differences with this off. Voodoo3\\4\\5 owners got a full, mostly stable, pretty functional OpenGL driver before 3dfx kicked the bucket as a corporation, so they probably wouldn't want to turn this on, either. No visible differences found in screenshots.

set gl_alphasurfaces

Turn on or off alpha surfaces? Sounds like it would affects things like water, lensflare, pseudo-reflective surfaces, etc. No visible differences found in screenshots.

set gl_bitdepth

Controls whether the game is rendered in 32bit or 16bit color. Theoretically 16bit color only uses half the video bandwidth, though you're unlikely to see 2X the speed in 16bit rather than 32bit due to other limitations in your system and video card. 16bit color is what is lovingly described as "butt fucking ugly," and especially on nVidia cards (which have stunning 32bit color anyhow), so it's better to set this to 0 and lower your resolution a notch to regain performance than to set it to 1 and increase your res. At the time of testing there was a conflict with DK in 16bit color and the video card being used (that was disallowing full-screen mode), so screenshot comparisons were impossible.

set gl_round_down

This pertains to the accuracy of calculations for textures on items the player can pick up. Rounding-down is faster and a bit blurrier, while disabling round-down makes things like health-boxes and ammo appear a bit sharper. Quake 2 shows noticeable differences between the two modes, but it also has an underlying software renderer, whereas DK requires a 3D accelerator, so the item-textures may not've been drawn in a way where rounding-down or not would affect them. At any rate, no visible differences were found in screenshots.

set gl_texturemode

Mipmap accuracy ("distance blurring" on textures). Theoretically GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_NEAREST is worst-looking but best performance, and GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR is best-looking but worst performance. No visible differences found in screenshots.

set gl_ztrick To clear or not to clear the Z-buffer? The Z-buffer is where depth-of-field information (what is in front of other things or blocked from view to the player). Clearing the Z-buffer (gl_ztrick 0) between each frame is better looking, and not clearing it can result in things flashing or being transparent when they shouldn't be. IF YOU SUFFER FROM EPIPILEPSY, DO NOT SET THIS TO 1 UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. Then again, if you suffer from epilepsy, you prolly shouldn't be playing FPSes in the first place. *heh*

Visual Tweaks 2 Non-Visual Tweaks (beginning)