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.INI file tweaks

The .INI files are files that contain configuration for Gothic 3. They can be edited to change various aspects of the game's engine. The .INI files are located in the Ini folder of the Gothic 3 installation folder.

Warning: be really careful NOT to put spaces to delimitate thousand in the numbers you type. Type 1234567 and not 1 234 567 ! Gothic engine does not understand spaces in numbers.

Visual tweaks

The following tweaks concern improving the visuals of Gothic 3. Note that by decreasing these, performance can also be improved.

Increasing grass draw distance

VegetationAdmin.ViewRange=3500.0

Raising this value to 6500.0 doubles the distance at which grass is rendered. You can further increase or lower it to improve the draw distance or performance.

Increasing NPC and creature draw distance

Entity.ROI=4000.0

Raising this value to 8000.0 doubles the distance at which NPC's and creatures are rendered.

Increasing item and object draw distances (high details)

ObjectDetails.fScreenObjectDistanceCulling_High=0.008
ObjectDetails.fProcessingRangeFadeOutRange_High=300.0
ObjectDetails.fRangedBaseLoDOffset_High=300.0

Suggested values are:

Changing the first value to 0.016
Changing the second value to 600.0
Changing the second value to 5000.0

Moving the blur effect farther away

Render.DOFStart=1000.0
Render.DOFEnd=8000.0

Suggested values are:

Raising the first value to 4000.0
Raising the second value to 12000.0

Increasing the distance at which the ground textures switch from high to low resolution

DistanceHigh.fFarClippingPlane_High=10000.0
DistanceHigh.fFarClippingPlane_Medium=8000.0
DistanceHigh.fFarClippingPlane_Low=6000.0

Suggested values are:

Raising the first value to 12000.0
Raising the second value to 10000.0
Raising the third value to 8000.0

Make sure that the difference between the three is equal to one another (2000.0 in this case) or you may get graphical glitches.

Far clipping plane

The Gothic 3 engine will render far away objects with less polygons and textures of lesser quality, which will save memory and processing power for those models. The distance at which this occurs by default is rather low. This results in a visible line between the high quality and lower quality textures. The following settings influence this:

DistanceLow.fFarClippingPlaneLowPolyMesh_*: the whole viewing range (low quality)
DistanceHigh.fFarClippingPlane_*: the high quality viewing range

Increasing the values of these settings will improve the visuals, but stress the system more. Furthermore, if the values are raised high enough, the rendering of low polygons can be disabled altogether:

Render.EnableLowpolyRendering=false;

Performance tweaks

The following tweaks are centred around improving performance in Gothic 3 without significantly impacting visuals.

Bug in default ge3.ini file

The default ge3.ini file seems to have a bug in it:

ResourceCache.u32ImageMaxMemUsage_Low=32000000
ResourceCache.u32MeshMaxMemUsage_Low=30000000
ResourceCache.u32SoundMaxMemUsage_Low=10000000
ResourceCache.u32MaterialMaxMemUsage_Low=18000
ResourceCache.u32CollisionMeshMaxMemUsage_Low=13000000
ResourceCache.u32AnimationMaxMemUsage_Low=25000000
ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_Low=500000

ResourceCache.u32ImageMaxMemUsage_Medium=70000000
ResourceCache.u32MeshMaxMemUsage_Medium=40000000
ResourceCache.u32SoundMaxMemUsage_Medium=15000000
ResourceCache.u32MaterialMaxMemUsage_Medium=20000
ResourceCache.u32CollisionMeshMaxMemUsage_Medium=16000000
ResourceCache.u32AnimationMaxMemUsage_Medium=30000000
ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_Medium=750000

ResourceCache.u32ImageMaxMemUsage_High=96000000
ResourceCache.u32MeshMaxMemUsage_High=96000000
ResourceCache.u32SoundMaxMemUsage_High=20000000
ResourceCache.u32MaterialMaxMemUsage_High=21000
ResourceCache.u32CollisionMeshMaxMemUsage_High=18000000
ResourceCache.u32AnimationMaxMemUsage_High=40000000
ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_High=100000

The last entry should be "1000000" and not "100000". You count your memory usage from 500k --> 750k, but at the highest setting it's 100k. This tweak seems to have an influence on the frequency of save-game corruptions. Stuttering also appears to occur less often.

Cache tweaks

The following values have been reported to increase performance on all systems. The results may, however, vary. Increasing the SizeImage cache appears to impact performance the most. Increasing the value for this can improve performance especially if you have 2GB of RAM or more. Prior to patch 1.09, which fixed a memory leak, having this value set too high was reported to increase the frequency of crashes. A suggested compromise is a value of 160000000; however, doubling the size could lessen stuttering even more.

%�che.SizeImage=160000000
Cache.SizeMaterial=80000000
Cache.SizeMesh=87500000
Cache.SizeSound=100000000
Cache.SizeCollisionMesh=50000000
Cache.SizeAnimation=50000000
Cache.SizeSpeedTree=12500000

Performance has been reported better than the default settings with the following tweaks. This has been tested with 2GB of RAM; with less RAM, the results may be different. You need to play the game with Resource Cache on medium for these.

ResourceCache.u32ImageMaxMemUsage_Medium=96000000
ResourceCache.u32MeshMaxMemUsage_Medium=60000000
ResourceCache.u32SoundMaxMemUsage_Medium=20000000
ResourceCache.u32MaterialMaxMemUsage_Medium=21000
ResourceCache.u32CollisionMeshMaxMemUsage_Medium=17000000
ResourceCache.u32AnimationMaxMemUsage_Medium=35000000
ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_Medium=800000

ResourceCache.u32ImageMaxMemUsage_TextureQualityHigh=0

=== Switching to a lower screen resolution ===
For an additional performance boost you may try switching to a low screen resolution. Open the UserOptions.ini file in your My Documents\gothic3 folder. In the [Options.Video] section there are two variables Resolution.Width and Resolution.Height that set the in game resolution. To select a resolution of 640x480 change the lines containing those variables to:

Resolution.Width=640
Resolution.Height=480

I haven't tested this tweak with low resolutions other than 640x480, but it should work with resolutions like 640x400 if your monitor supports them.

==== Marvin Mode (Debug mode) ====

=== Activate it in the ini file: ===
Find the following line inside the file ge3.ini

TestMode=false

Change this to:

TestMode=true

And then launch the game. Press � or ~ to trigger the game console, depending on your keyboard localization.

=== Marvin Mode console display stat fix (... 1.07, 1.08, 1.09) ===
Press left control key   s simultaneously to display statistics about memory usage.
If you get graphics corruption, you need to do the following simple thing due to a Gothic 3 engine bug.
Make a new empty directory named _compiledImage inside your Gothic 3 "Data" folder, and a new empty directory named _Intern inside this one.
For instance:

C:\program files\Gothic III\Data\_compiledImage\_Intern%%
Urban legend: in ancient days people thought that you need to decompress the whole _compiledImage.pak in this folder. It is now proven that this is not needed.

CategoryGothic3

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