Crysis Tweak Guide

[Page 12] Advanced Tweaking (Pt.5)

Graphics Commands (Cont.)

Sky and Weather Effects

e_clouds [0,1] - If set to 0, disables the rendering of clouds in the sky. This can noticeably improve FPS, particularly at higher levels of the Volumetric Quality in-game setting, but can reduce realism.

e_wind [0,1] - This setting controls whether the wind system is activated, and setting it to 0 disables wind impacts. Note that this does not stop things like vegetation movement, as some of that is independent of wind. It can however improve performance in windy areas at the cost of realism (system).

e_fog [0,1] - If set to 0, disables all fog globally. This means that local fog, distance fog, as well as underwater fog, is removed. The FPS result can vary - it can reduce or raise your FPS depending on the scene. The most noticeable impacts are that everything appears sharper, and the water in the ocean becomes crystal clear at all depths (system).

e_fog_volumes [0,1] - If set to 0, similar to e_fog this option disables fogging. However it only affects local fog, and not distance fogging. Once again, most noticeably it will make the water completely clear, but disabling this setting is a reasonably good compromise between completely disabling fog with e_fog, and having all fog completely enabled. Some people may even prefer the look of clear water for example (system).

e_sky_type [0,1] - If set to 0, this option turns the sky from a dynamic entity into a static background, which can improve performance at the cost of realism and atmosphere. Note that if you do set a static sky, it's best to also use the e_clouds 0 command to turn off clouds, for both extra performance and to prevent the static clouds from clashing with the dynamic clouds.

r_ImposterRatio [value] - This setting controls the resolution of imposters, which are clouds. A value of 1 equals a 1:1 resolution, but higher values can make clouds thin out but may also improve performance. You can also use the r_ImpostersDraw or e_clouds commands to enable/disable clouds.

r_Rain [0,1] - If set to 0, disables any rain effects in the game, which can improve FPS when raining at the cost of a major drop in realism. If you don't wish to disable rain altogether, use the r_RainMaxViewDist command instead to determine the distance to which rain is visible, as lowering that value will improve FPS during rain without completely removing rain effects.

Water Effects

r_WaterReflections [0,1] - When set to 0, this setting disables any reflections of surrounding objects and terrain on the surface of water. This can noticeably increase FPS, and while water still doesn't look too bad, it doesn't look as realistic.

r_WaterUpdateFactor [value] - This setting controls how often per second the images on water are updated. The higher the value, the less often things like reflections are updated on the water's surface, and this in turn improves performance. However at very high values the lack of updates can make things look quite jerky, so I recommend no higher than 0.5 for this setting.

e_water_ocean_fft [0,1] - This setting determines whether Fast Fourier Transform (FFT)-based water rendering is used. If set to 1, fft-based water increases the realism of water, including the way it undulates and reacts to other objects, but this may reduce performance. Setting this to 0 uses a calmer form of water movement simulation, which can improve performance and indeed some people may also prefer it this way.

e_water_tesselation_amount [value] - Effectively determines the underlying amount of water movement, the higher the value the greater the volume of water which appears to be moving.

r_WaterCaustics [0,1] - If set to 0, disables the wavy light effects reflecting on the bottom of the ocean when underwater, and also makes underwater scenes brighter and can increase FPS, but reduces realism.

r_WaterGodRays [0,1] - If set to 0, disables the shafts of light visible when underwater, and also removes any visual distortion when underwater, which noticeably reduces realism, but can boost FPS.

Audio Commands

i_soundeffects [0,1] - If set to 0, disables weapon-specific sound effects, such as the sound of a firing weapon.

s_SoundEnable [0,1] - If set to 0, this option disables all in-game sound. The main reason to use this command would be if you are troubleshooting a sound-related problem or slowdown for example.

s_SpeakerConfig [0-7] - This setting lets you choose the specific speaker configuration for the game. The values are 0 = Uses your Windows Control Panel setting; 1 = Mono; 2 = Stereo; 3 = Headphone; 4 = 4.1; 5 = 5.1; 6 = Prologic; 7 = 7.1.

s_FormatSampleRate [value] - Determines the sample rate in KHz of the sound output, with higher values providing better quality audio at the possible cost of performance.

s_FormatType [0-5] - This setting determines the output format type, with 0 being none; 1 = PCM 8-bit; 2 = PCM 16-bit; 3 = PCM 24-bit; 4 = PCM 32-bit; and 5 = PCM 32-bit Float. The higher the value the better the sound output quality at the potential cost of performance.

s_MaxChannels [value] - This setting determines the maximum number of channels to use for sound reproduction. It is recommended that you set this value to the maximum number of channels possible on your sound hardware for optimal performance. Almost all sound cards support at least 32 channels, many such as the Audigy series support 64 and the X-Fi series support 128 channels.

s_MusicSpeaker - There are a range of settings here which allow people with multi-speaker configurations to set up the volume levels for the in-game music for each individual speaker location.

Update: The following variable was added as of the 1.2 Patch:

g_useHitSoundFeedback [0,1] - This setting controls the new sound effect which occurs whenever your bullets hit the enemy. By default it is enabled, and any time you successfully hit an enemy target, even over a long distance, you'll hear a slight but distinctive 'thud'. If you wish to disable this and return to the way things were prior to the 1.2 patch, set this variable to =0.

Multiplayer Commands

Note: The bulk of multiplayer-related commands usually start with sv_, net_, cl_ and g_. The most important known MP commands for players (clients) are covered below:

Name [playername] - By default, your in-game multiplayer name will be that of your Profile. However if you're using the standard Default profile, the game appears to assign the generic name Nomad along with a number. If you wish to change your name, enter the Name command followed by your preferred nick in the console while on a server. Alternatively, create a new profile under the Profile item in the main in-game options, and give that profile your chosen name, then load it up and use it for Multiplayer and that name will be used.

cl_bob [0-1] - Determines the extent to which your weapon bobs and sways as you move; 1 is the highest, and fractional values down to 0 will steadily reduce it to nothing. This is the same as the in-game Weapon Inertia setting, however the command may be useful if you just wish to adjust your weapon bobbing 'on the fly' within multiplayer.

cl_bandwidth [value] - This setting determines the maximum bandwidth in bits per second to use when communicating with the game server. You can try lowering this value from the default on your system to see if it helps stabilize your Ping (system).

cl_packetRate [value] - This setting determines the number of packets per second sent from the server to your machine. You can experiment with lowering the packet rate if you find packet loss (manifesting as in-game warping) is quite high (system).

I will update this section with more multiplayer commands as I get the chance to experiment and discover what practical impacts they have.

That covers the main command variables which I found to be of most use in tweaking Crysis. I spent many days testing and going through all the cvars, however I may have missed something important, or made a mistake in my descriptions, so please Email Me if you have confirmed information on a command which you believe would benefit the guide - please no guesses though. Once again I encourage you to experiment and find how these cvars affect your system; just remember that no two systems are alike, so don't just use someone else's .cfg file. Only you know what your preferences are for the tradeoff between performance and image quality, and precisely what type of things you're willing to sacrifice or customize to suit your exact needs. If you use someone else's .cfg or command recommendations without understanding what they do, you'll only run into problems.

The next page brings the guide to a conclusion and covers some important information you shouldn't skip.

Go to Page... Page 1: Introduction Page 2: Essential Optimization Page 3: Troubleshooting Tips Page 4: Patches & Mods Page 5: In-Game Settings Page 6: In-Game Settings (Pt.2) Page 7: In-Game Settings (Pt.3) Page 8: Advanced Tweaking Page 9: Adv. Tweaking (Pt.2) Page 10: Adv. Tweaking (Pt.3) Page 11: Adv. Tweaking (Pt.4) Page 12: Adv. Tweaking (Pt.5) Page 13: Neat Stuff & Concl.