[Brennus]

Ok, after an extensive 3 day marathon of tweaking and pulling my hair out, I have found a solution to unexpected poor performance! First, we need to understand that its not the configuration of your machine, it is in fact the fault of the game itself. Running other Quake3 based games flawlessly, especially on "highend" machines, leads to confusion about the really bad performance we have come to love. So, "how do i increase my performance" you ask, I'll be more than happy to tell you. First, my system specs are below, so this WILL work on similar configurations. If your system is different than mine, its hard to tell if it will actually work, but it should. Here are the options that I have singled out that you need to change:

- Anisotropic Filtering: Disable this in your "Display Properties", gives you a +10FPS increase, and ONLY effects distant textures.

- Shadows: From the "Advanced" menu under the "Options" menu turn the "SHADOWS" to "simple" or "none" (this is by far THE most effective technique, especially in single player, trust me, +20-30FPS increase!)

Now, this next option is of the "do this OR this" type, that requires only one of them to be changed. It is based totally on prefference, and just for the record, I prefer detail over smooth colors. If "Texture Detail" is lowered, details become blended. A good example are the details in the weapon model, they become blended, and not so distinct. Posters become hard to read, and wall textures become less focused, like you had on a pair of wrong prescription glasses. Now, if "Texture Color Depth" is lowered, colors contrast more abruptly. A good example are the textures in the sky, they become less transitional, and more like Operation Flashpoint. Your just gonna have to make a choice between the two, but lowering both will not yield twice the boost, and I don't recommend doing so!

- Quote from README: "Video cards with less than 64MB Video memory cannot set texture detail to high and texture color depth to 32 bit simultaneously. These cards can get very poor performance at times, so lower your texture detail [AND/OR] lower your texture depth to 16 bit." (I suggest that even 64MB cards lower ONE of these.)

- Texture Detail: Turn this down from "high" to "medium", although it uses the Q3 engine, it does'nt manage textures very efficiently. (lowering this value "blurs" the details, so if you prefer detail over smooth color blending, leave this on "high".)

- Texture Color Depth: Lower your texture color depth to "16". (lowering this value makes texture color transitions less attractive, so if you prefer better color blending over detail, leave this on "32".)

Now, I also believe that the lockups that occur with a sound loop are single player ONLY, and are a result of the newly released multi player patch. My suggestion is to play the single player game WITHOUT the patch, then when you are done, install the MP patch to play online! Keep in mind that every other option can be set to "max" or "highest", and just the options that I have singled out have any effect on performance! System specs:

- AMD Athlon(tm) Processor @ 1GHz
- VIA Tech KT133 System Controller
- 384MB Kingston PC/133MHz
- NVIDIA GeForce2 Pro (23.11)
- Creative SB Live! (5.1)
- Microsoft Windows 98SE