INFO MSC Settings for Low End Computers

Thothie

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MSC is not the most resource friendly game, and maybe indeed the most un-resource friendly HL1 mod in existence. But here's some settings you can use to attempt to make it play nice with older machines.

Place these in your msc/userconfig.cfg with notepad. Many of them will require you to restart MSC before they take effect:
Code:
r_mirroralpha 0 //turn off mirror alphas
r_traceglow 0 //occlude check monsters
r_decals 0 //don't track decals
r_dynamic 0 //disable most dynamic lighting (including glow spell and torches)
r_mmx 1 //force MMX optimizations
r_detailtexture 0 //disables detail texts (used by a few maps)
cl_giblife 0 //don't track gibs
cl_gibvelscale 4 //scale gibs (def 1)
cl_himodels 0 //lq models (prob no effect in msc)
gl_alphamin 1 //don't blend alpha
gl_cull 1 //obey occluders
gl_dither 0 //dont dither
gl_keeptjunctions 0 //dont do fine calc on junctions (default 1)
gl_lightholes 0 //dont do fine calc on lights (default 1)
gl_max_size 64 //max texture size (default 256)
gl_palette_tex 0 //ignore local texture palettes (default 1)
gl_round_down 6 //round down textures, (default 3)
gl_smoothmodels 0 //do not anti-alias models (default 1)
gl_texturemode GL_NEAREST_MIPMAP_NEAREST //texture scaling mode
//(this is fastet, highest quality is: GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR)
gl_texsort 0 //disable texture sorting (default 0)
gl_wateramp 0 //do not render water waves (default 1)
gl_ztrick 1 //speeds up some older graphics cards (default 0 )
ati_npatch 0 //disable ATI poly additions (default: 1.0)
ati_subdiv 0 //ditto (default 2.0)

These three will have a high impact on quality:
Code:
gl_picmip 2 //scale textures (0 is default) - makes world textures pixilated
gl_playermip 2 //scale textures on models (0 is default) - makes model textures pixilated
r_drawviewmodel 0 //hides weapon model (best if you use 3rd person)

I think gl_picmip and gl_playermip can actually go all the way up to 4. But not entirely sure if MSC supports these options proper.

There's also these MSC specific ones:
Code:
ms_bloom_level 0 //disables bloom
ms_bloom_darken 0 //disables exposure adjustment for bloom
ms_lildude 0 //disables lil reg guy, without disabling health panel
ms_reflect 0 //disable reflections
ms_hidehud 1 //remove ms hud (both red guy and health)

Making the txt huds transparent might be good too. (ie. no alpha blend on it.) - but makes them harder to read:
Code:
ms_txthud_bgtrans 1
ms_evthud_bgtrans 1

You can adjust the size of the event huds and chat, so they put less lines on the screen. Maybe not such a good idea with chat, as often you cannot find said chat in console:
Code:
ms_evthud_size 6 //combat text, default 8
ms_txthud_size 3 //chat text, default 8

From FEB2007a on, you may find this alias useful. It toggles off the hud (including health/mana bars, and little red model), and reports your health/mana in the evt text scroll instead:
Code:
alias toggle_hud_on "show_health 0;ms_hidehud 0;alias toggle_hud toggle_hud_off"
alias toggle_hud_off "show_health 1;ms_hidehud 1;alias toggle_hud toggle_hud_on"
alias toggle_hud toggle_hud_on
bind "x" toggle_hud
Replace "x" in the last line with key of your choice
 
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Thothie

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The fact that the guide STARTS with telling you to defrag your HD worries me. I dunno where people got it into their heads that defragging their HD would have any effect on their FPS. Plus half the links are dead, and it was written in 2004 - but most of the cvar stuff seems reasonable at least.
 

Tetsmega1

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Does this mean people can play MS:C with video cards that don't support OpenGL?
 
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Thothie

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Sad but true. :( On the list of things I want done, but aren't very likely to happen.
 

The Man In Black

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Thothie said:
Sad but true. :( On the list of things I want done, but aren't very likely to happen.

Especially since, as many people know, I'm a noob with computers, so I have no idea what any of this involves (and PLEASE don't explain it >_>)
 

CSS

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Oh come on, HL came out in 1998. 10 years from now and your pc still can't play it/mods, don't you think its time to upgrade? :roll:
 

CrazyMonkeyDude

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I can host almost any mod but this one quite well, as well as games that came out well after Half-life 1. This mod takes up a LOT of memory and processing ;)
 

Thothie

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In relation to this subject, I'd like to say that the nVidia 182.50 drivers are made of FAIL, and it looks as though nVidia is prepared to abandon the OpenGL standard with all the glee that ATI already has.

MSC was being hella unstable for me on this fresh install with the 182.50 drivers (mostly refusing to start due to graphic interface errors), and it wouldn't even let me run it at my preferred resolution (960x600, windowed). Further, Hammer would CRASH whenever I looked at J-M's islesofdread2 from certain angles, lest I disabled the textured view.

They also removed the temperature monitor from the classic control options, and disabled many critical legacy gaming features, such as extension limits. Why, I have *no* idea.

I "downgraded" all the way back to 169.28 - which I think is amongst the earliest drivers that support my card, and now all these issues are gone. (Albiet, I had to downgrade my sound drivers too, due to other issues - cuz Creativelabs fails at legacy support as well.)

So, MSC's days maybe quite numbered, lest we can find some way to abandon the OpenGL standard, and get DX to work again. Albeit, even then, in the near future, you may need to pull out some legacy computer just to do map editing - since Hammer is also OpenGL based... Either that - or learn Quark.
 

Dejiko

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I tried using these settings, thinking they would help with the terrible performance due to my ATI card...

it made it worse >_> now the sound stutters too =/

oh well...it's only deralia and cavecity that give me real problems...
 

Thothie

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Meh... Well, the problem here is that these settings are made with the thought in mind that you have an old (legacy) graphics card, and thus need to use older, more legacy, settings...

The new ATI's have the opposite problem - they lack backwards compatibility, so it does make sense that using even older legacy settings would make them worse, rather than better. It gives them less information to process, but probably returns protocols the corner-cutting card doesn't recognize more often, causing it to dump to the software driver's OpenGL emulation, instead of using hardware acceleration.

With that in mind, everything from the "MSC specific" cvars on should likely be used... For changes to those entries before it, hrmmm:

gl_texturemode GL_NEAREST_MIPMAP_NEAREST
should be swapped for
gl_texturemode GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR
As the newer ATI cards probably only support linear mipmapping on the hardware side (if at all), and default to software processing for the other modes.

gl_ztrick 0 //new ATI wont support gl_ztrick 1
gl_keeptjunctions 1 //0 might skew the order of processing on newer cards
gl_lightholes 1 //0 might skew the order of processing on newer cards
gl_max_size 256 //less will cause memory fragmentation on newer cards
gl_palette_tex 1 //ATI doesn't support palette textures proper in OpenGL

...the rest I'm not sure of, but try combining those edits with with the previous changes, and it might work out. Removing the "lil dude", not using alpha transparencies on HUD's, and keeping their size to a minimum should all help, regardless of the card being too old, or new and poorly made.

Deralia and GateCity are sloppily occluded (ie. not at all) with the idea that there was to be no combat in those zones... Helena may get you from some angles too (I tried to add some occluding by extending out those apartments in the middle, but without a complete redesign of the map, it was rather hopeless). Lostcastle_MSC may get you as well (which is a map I really shoulda redesigned from scratch - as it woulda been a lot less effort than fixing it was. ^_^)
 

Dejiko

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Thanks Thothie, those seem to help a bit.
 

cartman-2000

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The gl_dither 0 command makes it easier to read text on low resolution textures, as well as improving performance a little.

And yeah, open gl support in newer drivers of ati and nvidia are pretty bad, for my ati card, I'd probably get better performance and stability with my old x800 xt and a set of 7.8 drivers(ones they had before the performance problems.), then my new hd4650 with a set of newer drivers. Hell the newer drivers will even bsod in some open gl games, 1-2 trying to load and a couple others if you try to take screenshots from an overlay, which was the case in hl1 games up to the 2010 drivers.
 
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