Tweak. Guides. com - Mass Effect Tweak Guide. Mass Effect Tweak Guide[Page 7] Advanced Tweaking. Mass Effect is based on the Unreal Engine 3. In this section we look at how you can undertake such tweaking and examine all the major variables and commands necessary to do so. Mass Effect holds all of its main settings in a range of .
Documents and Settings\User\My Documents\Bio. Ware\Mass Effect\Config directory in Windows XP, or \Users\[User]\Documents\Bio.
Ware\Mass Effect\Config in Windows Vista. These . ini files can be viewed and edited using a text editor like Windows Notepad, but I recommend backing them up before changing any settings. If something goes wrong and you want to return these files to their defaults, simply delete them and they'll be recreated using the original templates (found under \Program Files\Mass Effect\Engine\Config) the next time you start the game. For this reason, don't ever edit or delete the Base . The main . ini files we will be examining here are BIOEngine. BIOGame. ini which holds various game world parameters; and BIOInput. Each config file is covered in separate sections below.
Important - Make sure you understand the following before reading this section: Some settings appear under multiple sections - change only the setting under the relevant section shown below. For example, Depth. Bias appears under both the [Engine. Engine] and [Engine. Game. Engine] sections of BIOEngine.
Engine. Engine] has absolutely no impact on the game, the setting under [Engine. Game. Engine] is the one which should be changed.
Therefore pay close attention to which section of the . Many areas of the . PC version of Mass Effect - they are unused sections of the Unreal Engine, generic sections designed as templates for other areas, or are for debugging or for the Unreal Editor and hence are excluded (e.
Texture Streaming] or [Editor. Editor. Engine] sections have no impact).
Commands which are unclear, appear to have no significant or useful impact, or can be adjusted fully using the in- game settings are not covered in this section. Just because a setting has a tempting name, doesn't mean it has any impact at all on the game. I've pesonally tested all the relevant major settings and hence what is included below are the main settings which appear to have some useful impact. BIOEngine. ini[Engine. Game. Engine]b. Smooth. Frame. Rate=True. The game engine is capped to a maximum framerate, as determined by the value of the Max.
Advice for anyone playing through Mass Effect 1 on the PC (self.masseffect) submitted 3 years ago * by philo23. Now open up the BIOEngine.ini file in Notepad. This guide will get you setup with Mass Effect Updated/Improved Textures Mod (TexMod free version) by CDAMJC (Catechrism) Welcome Mass effect Modders and Mod users.
Smoothed. Frame. Rate variable (see below), which is 6. FPS by default. This is done by the developers to prevent FPS spikes and thus provide smoother performance. However, by setting this option to =False, you can completely remove this FPS cap. Keep in mind though that if you then find your framerate varying a great deal and causing jerkiness, this option is best set back to True. Uncapping your FPS doesn't increase overall performance as such, i. FPS in certain areas with the cap, you'll still do so without the cap.
Min. Smoothed. Frame. Rate=2. 2Max. Smoothed.
Frame. Rate=6. 2These settings control the framerate range between which the game engine attempts to smooth frames. As covered under the b.
Smooth. Frame. Rate setting above, if that setting is set to True, the framerate limit specified by the value of Max. Smoothed. Frame. Rate will be enforced.
Mass Effect Bioengine Iniquity
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Mass Effect Tweak Guide [Page 8] Advanced Tweaking (Pt.2) BIOEngine.ini (Cont.) [SystemSettings] StaticDecals=True. Static decals are markings or posters in the game. Mass Effect Tweak Guide [Page 7] Advanced Tweaking. Mass Effect is based on the Unreal Engine 3.0, which allows users to access a range of configuration variables and. Making the most of your ME1 PC Experience, maximizing graphics and sound. - posted in PC & Xbox 360 Technical Support.
Although you can disable this FPS cap, ideally if you want smooth FPS but don't want the default 6. FPS cap, one thing you can do is to set the Max. Smoothed. Frame. Rate to a higher value, e. It's usually best to set your FPS cap to match your Refresh Rate, since even with VSync disabled, any framerate above your monitor's refresh rate will simply be partial frames anyway. There's no reason why uncapping your FPS will necessarily provide you a better gameplay advantage, and in fact it may do the opposite due to greater FPS variability, so experiment to see if simply using a higher framerate cap is actually a better compromise of smoothness and performance. Use. Texture. Streaming=True.
The Unreal Engine 3 on which Mass Effect is based uses a streaming approach to loading up textures. Streaming is actually designed more for helping loading times on consoles. However if this option is set to =False, textures won't be streamed in at all, but instead most of the environment will be black due to a lack of textures. Other texture streaming- related variables in the . It appears that unfortunately texture streaming cannot be properly disabled in UE3. Use. Post. Process.
Effects=True. This setting controls a range of 'post processing' effects, namely effects which are overlaid on the main game image - these effects include Film Grain, Motion Blur, Light Bloom and the Depth of Field effects which are visible throughout the game. When this setting =False, all such effects are removed, and the result is a performance improvement, and a very clear though somewhat blander image. Since you can already enable or disable Film Grain and Motion Blur individually from within the in- game settings, and adjust Depth of Field using the Depth. Of. Field settings further below, disabling this setting is generally not recommended unless you are really struggling for FPS and/or want to remove all blur/grain/bloom effects from the game at once. Note that light halos are not affected by this setting. Enable. Branching. PCFShadows=True. This setting controls a form of soft shadow rendering called Branching PCF.
If set to False, it results in the removal of soft filtered/smudged edges for shadows, which in turn may increase performance but can also make shadows seem more blocky. Use. Sound=True. If set to False, this disables all sound in the game. The main use for this setting would be when troubleshooting an issue such as crashes or stuttering, to see if the audio system is the culprit. If disabling sound helps your game performance or stability, see the Sound section of the in- game settings and Troubleshooting Tips section of the guide for more details of how to fix the issue properly. Use. Music. Sound=True.
Similar to b. Use. Sound above, this setting disables music in the game if set to =False. However it doesn't disable all music - the menu music and some in- game music can be heard periodically even when this setting is disabled. Use. Background. Level. Streaming=True. This setting is related to the streaming textures in the game, and appears to control whether streaming occurs in the background or not. In my testing setting this to =False seemed to dramatically increase level loading time and then resulted in a crash at the end of loading, so it is not recommended. Shadow. Filter. Radius=2.
This setting controls the shadow filtering in the engine, basically determining how sharp or dispersed the outlines of shadows appear. The higher the value, the more 'blob- like' and faint shadows become, the lower the value, the less dispersed and sharper the outlines of shadows.
Depth. Bias=. 0. 12. This setting controls depth calculations for shadows, and effectively determines the way Dynamic Shadows appear. Higher values gradually reduce the number of shadows shown; a value close to 1. Lower values increase the number of shadows, however this can also result in glitches. A current workaround to removing some of the glitchy shadows in Mass Effect is to change this setting to =0. Update: As of the 1.
Patch, the Depth. Bias value may now default to =0. Set it to =0. 0. 12 to return shadowing. Min. Shadow. Resolution=3. Max. Shadow. Resolution=5. These two settings appear to determine the minimum and maximum possible values for shadow resolution in the game.
The higher the minimum value, the darker and richer shadows should appear; conversely the lower the maximum value, many shadows may appear less distinct and grey. Raising or lowering shadow resolutions may result in an impact on performance, but more importantly, it can also result in visual glitches - for example any values above 5. Min. Shadow. Resolution result in obvious glitches, while very low values for Max. Shadow. Resolution similarly result in glitches. In practice the difference between the default and higher values for these settings is minimal to none, but if you wish to test it for yourself, set the minimum to 5. You may get missing shadows if the minimum is set higher than 3.
Mod. Shadow. Fade. Distance. Exponent=0. This setting controls the distance at which shadows fade into/out of view. The higher the value, the shorter the distance from the object at which shadows fade in/out, and also the fainter all dynamic shadows appear. For example at 0.
Shadow. Volume. Light. Radius. Threshold=1. This setting controls the way in which lights affect the generation of shadows. Lights which have a radius below this threshold value will not cast a dynamic shadow. In practice changing this value generally appears to have no real impact, except perhaps to cause some lighting glitches. Shadow. Volume. Primitive. Screen. Space. Percentage.
Threshold=0. 2. 50. Any 'primitive' (basic graphical component) which takes up a screen percentage lower than this threshold will not cast a dynamic shadow. In practice altering the value appears to have no visual impact.[Win.
Drv. Windows. Client]Note: Most every setting in this section can be altered using the in- game settings, however several of them are still useful to examine for troubleshooting purposes: Audio. Device. Class=Class'ISACTAudio.
ISACTAudio. Device'This setting corresponds with Mass Effect using the default proprietary Creative ISACT Open. AL- based Audio System (as shown above), or the more generic Open. AL audio system if =Class'ALAudio. ALAudio. Device'. Unfortunately trying to force the generic Open. AL audio by changing this line to =Class'ALAudio. ALAudio. Device' will result in a crash.
ISACT should work fine on all systems, however there is a quirk with the way the engine detects your audio device, and there is a workaround to try to fix this - see the Sound section of the in- game settings along with the [ISACTAudio.