Gothic 3 tweaks?
 

Just got my Gothic 3 import yesterday and am looking forward to some serious playtime over the next few days.

The intro sets an exciting tone, although I'm not sure of the wisdom in dumping you into a big fight before you've even touched the controls.

…which brings me to my point. The performance in that first fight was a bit uneven. I have a modest rig (P4 3Ghz, 6800GT, 2Gb RAM) - what should I play with to get the best compromise between visuals and performance? I'm happy at 1024x768…should shadows go? Any .ini tweaks?

Set the resource cache to max, disable postprocessing, set shadows to low or off. Use the highest shader model your card supports.

I'm jealous!! I ordered my copy from the same place as Dhruin and mine hasn't arrived yet!!! :(

Hmmm… I wouldn't base my impressions of overall performance on that first fight :) . That fight was stuttering like hell on my machine as well (since the game keeps loading/streaming stuff into RAM even when it's "officially done" :D loading).

The game is elsewise performing much better after that battle (and in other battles, too) with a rather steady 20-25 FPS on average on my AMD XP 3200+ (slower than your CPU), 2048MB RAM (even), GeForce 7800GS (marginally better than your card) at 1280x1024 with all details maxed except anisotropic filtering (which I've set to the lowest, i.e. 2x) and no depth of field.

Regarding your rig and resolution, I'd try to lower AF first and maybe go as far as switch to bilinear filtering and turn off depth of field.
Then edit the g3e.ini and make sure it says "Shader.CurrentShaderVersion=3_0 ".

Important Note: Even if the in-game options slider is set to shader 3.0 this entry might still be "…2_0" (!!!) so make sure to check what the ini says in any case (mine was wrong for example).

Shadows would be a shame to disable. The lighting effects are great when you carry a torch at night and the looong shadows at sunset add a great deal to the atmosphere. Naturally, if performance is too crappy then this should be the next one to go but at 1024x768, you should be doing fine with lowering AF and depth of field only, I hope.

Have fun playing :) .

Since this is about performance tweaks… I have a P4 2.2GHz, 1GB Ram and a GeForce 6. Should I get Gothic now or wait until I have a whole new rig? I'm planning to upgrade for Vanguard, which is due in Q1 2007…

I think it'd be a shame to miss out on the beautiful graphics of Gothic III so I'd recommend to wait. It would also make sense because of the much needed patches. I have put the game on hold for now and am only fooling around the starting area when I'm playing at all for performance tests etc.
It's just not fun to continue due to the imbalanced gameplay (risk vs reward, gold, XP, LP, equipment etc).
Well, and there's also always the chance of your save games getting corrupted which is an issue that is downplayed by JoWood but has happened to a lot of people.

I'm in no rush and will wait until the game is fully playable, enjoyable and more like PB intended it to be because the current state just can't be it unless they have turned into brainless retards since NotR :D .

You have an older computer and want to have fun with Gothic III - here we go:

You need:

2 GB ram or more (use dual channel technique if your motherboard supports this)

2 GHz CPU (AMD XP 2400) or better

a good 256 MB grahics-card ati x800 gto or better (at least shader model 1.4)

a good harddisk - raid is better

best tuning tip for all games (if you have the time)

fresh windows xp install + SP2

install the newest grafics driver (ati catalyst 6.9) (nvidia 91.47)

install Gothic 3 + DirectX9.0c + patch

if you have a second harddrive install your windows swapfile there
this article explains all about swapfiles:

http://www.adriansrojakpot.com/Speed…ization_01.htm
my tip:

http://www.adriansrojakpot.com/Speed…ization_17.htm

defrag the harddisks

Gothic detail settings:
everything on maximum
except for

vegetation-> low
shadows -> off = there are still there, but in low quality
DoF (Depth of Field) -> off at least for ATI x8xx cards otherwise black graphic errors can occur

my personal taste -> bloom off, too -> everything is more "natural" then

***

TFT-Tip:

If you have a high resolution TFT and want to play in the native resolution
with a smaller game screen use the option "centered timings" in the ATI control center. 1280x800 looks very good on a native 1280x1024 TFT for example and fps increase.

***

All I have heard so far about ram

512MB to low - playing is not fun

1,0 GB sufficient - you can live with it

1,5 GB satisfactory - the fun begins

2,0 GB good

Of cause this depends also on how much background processes are running -
deaktivate virus scanner, firewall, starforce, unneccessary starting processes etc.

The problem with not sufficient ram is: your computer begins to swap beween memory and harddrive and then a high end cpu and graphic-card will be thwarted by the hard-drive speed.

Conclusion:
ram is the bottleneck for Gothic 3

***

Don't overclock too much

Although it can be very compelling to overclock cpu-clock, front side bus, ram timings, gpu-clock especially on an older system … this can result in random crashes in Gothic 3, because Gothic is very demanding in all categories at once.

For ati-cards the ATI-Tool http://www.techpowerup.com/atitool/ is the best overclocking tool.

***

Deactivate auto-update:

change the gothic 3 link to (right mouse click on the icon / select properties)

english:
C:\program files\Gothic III\Gothic3.exe

german:
C:\programme\Gothic III\Gothic3.exe

***

Deactivate starting logos

Delete all but one entries in C:\program files\Gothic III\INI\logo.ini with a text editor. One entry must stay, because Gothic need to initialize some video settings.

***

What is the "post processing" feature?

you can set post processing to

0: OFF

1: Bloom (german: "Überstrahleffekt") - shader model 2 is needed

2: Bloom and DoF = Depth of field (german: "Tiefenunschärfe")
I think shader model 3 is needed, on my shader model 2 ati card
I had black boxes around torches etc.

Shadows:
I don't miss them - and with shadows off I can set texture details to maximum and set the resolution to 1280x1024 on my older system - this was more important for me.

***

Another ati tip:

aktivate <Enable geometry instancing> in the ati 3d settings

this should help your cpu.

***

Another ati-tip:

Disable the Catalyst AI in the control center, so you can avoid some
strange effects like shining through crystals etc.

Thanks for all the input. It's definitely better (and the Shader 3.0 setting didn't stick in the .ini - thanks Mo).

Hello People.

Best wishes for the new start.

Now on Topic: I've been fooling around with graphic settings myself
waiting for the game to be patched to decency. Does anyone know
which .ini value to use to move the grass popping effect a bit further
away from the camera ? Currently its even worse than Oblivion's….

Also the same for the the texture switch from the high detail terrain one to
the low (these LOD textures are almost DX7 era ! and the smooth constant
transition makes it look wierder rather than helping) ?

I tried severall /culling and /clipping values but I cant seem to find the right one…

Also my "Shader.CurrentShaderVersion" setting is 2_0,3_0 I think
(do not have the ini in front of me) is everyone elses just 2_0 or 3_0 ?

Thanks in advance.

I've changed this:

; Vegetation view range
VegetationAdmin.ViewRange=4500.0

It was 3500 from the start. I though the grass was horrendous at start.
I do not know if it do anything or if is purely a placebo effect. Now i don't change it back and forth since the game takes 2-3 min from when i click the start button and have loaded a game.

I also changed this one

PostprocessingAdmin.ActiveEffect=-1

to get rid of bloom effects. Altough, the same reason as above. I *think* its better, but i could aswell as been placebo.

Went back to Oblivion yesterday, thinking, that game was goodlooking, now i have revised that opinion. Gothic 3 is really smashing in high details. :)

Please, understand. I do not know if they do anything. Hm, perhaps i should have done that before talking?

About shader,
don't know if your looking in the ge3.ini or in the useroptions.ini.
In my ge3.ini my shader lever is 2_0 but in the useroptions.ini they are 3_0.

Likewise with vegetations, in ge3.ini they are high, but in my useroptions.ini they are the correct, medium. (Use medium cause its easire to forsee a Boar attack coming).

Thanks mute,

I have already tried
; Vegetation view range
VegetationAdmin.ViewRange=5500.0

But I dont think I saw any change… I'll try a higher value this evening…
Also together with the vegetation and terrain textures I think creature
fading should be pushed back a bit too. I dont really like transparrent
wolves ;)

As for seeing the Boars in time …
Well with the Stun lock I am dead anyway… At least I'll die with a nice view :)

the default ge3.ini has a bug:

ResourceCache.u32ImageMaxMemUsage_Low=32000000
ResourceCache.u32MeshMaxMemUsage_Low=30000000
ResourceCache.u32SoundMaxMemUsage_Low=10000000
ResourceCache.u32MaterialMaxMemUsage_Low=18000
ResourceCache.u32CollisionMeshMaxMemUsage_Low=1300 0000
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=1 6000000
ResourceCache.u32AnimationMaxMemUsage_Medium=30000 000
ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_Medium=75000 0

ResourceCache.u32ImageMaxMemUsage_High=96000000
ResourceCache.u32MeshMaxMemUsage_High=96000000
ResourceCache.u32SoundMaxMemUsage_High=20000000
ResourceCache.u32MaterialMaxMemUsage_High=21000
ResourceCache.u32CollisionMeshMaxMemUsage_High=180 00000
ResourceCache.u32AnimationMaxMemUsage_High=4000000 0
ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_High=100000

last entry should be "1000000" and not "100000"

You count your memory usage from 500k --> 750k -> but at the highest settin it's 100k and i am certain it's supposed to be 1 mil.

EDIT:
this tweak/correction is important:
the save-game bug occurs less often
stuttering occurs less often

Very interesting, Didn't notice that one.

Have you tried it HiddenX ? (will do this afternoon)
And can you shed any light in what values to tweak
to push the grass growing, terrain texture switching
and Actor fading further away from the camera ?

Thanks.

Maybe that has something to do with the used shader model or you need a restart.
I had shaders on 1.4 (I was too lazy to restart the game to set it too 3.0) and set the grass from low to high, but nothing changed. Then I switched too shaders 3.0 and let the game restart. All of a sudden the grass displayed correctly.

I tried these ini tweaks which seems to increase the view distance, but the ocean gets a white line across it which spoils the effect, so I only used the vegetation range increase.

VegetationAdmin.ViewRange=7500.0
Shader.CurrentShaderVersion=3_0
ObjectDetails.fProcessingRangeFadeOutRange_High=60 0.0
ObjectDetails.fRangedBaseLoDOffset_High=600.0
ObjectDetails.fProcessingRangeFadeOutRange_Medium= 1000.0
DistanceHigh.fFarClippingPlane_High=20000.0
DistanceLow.fFarClippingPlaneLowPolyMesh_High=1500 00.0
Render.DOFStart=15000.0
Render.DOFEnd=18000.0
Entity.ROI=6200

Thanks svencha,

I used some of these myself but from looking at the values you set
perhaps my increases were too cautious to see any real difference.
I'll try those.

Did you have DOF enabled when testing them ?

Edit: Sorry,
Obviously tested with DOF since two are about DOF.

Do this for more Detail-Geometry

Change

Render.GlobalVisualLoDFactor=0.01

to

Render.GlobalVisualLoDFactor=1.00

many things look better then.

You were right ofcourse about the White line. Its the Far Clipping plane.
I couldnt use a value above 12000.0 without introducing some visual
anomaly… But why not push Back DOF and Keep ROI anyway ? These
really make things far less "weird"…
After some tests I am most comfortable with these more modest values
They definetely give a more balanced look (but expect a ~10% performance
hit)

VegetationAdmin.ViewRange=7500.0 //I was initially trying 5500 this is GOOD
Shader.CurrentShaderVersion=3_0
ObjectDetails.fProcessingRangeFadeOutRange_High=50 0.0
ObjectDetails.fRangedBaseLoDOffset_High=500.0
ObjectDetails.fProcessingRangeFadeOutRange_Medium= 1000.0

//Pushes it back just a bit but is enough for most cases
DistanceHigh.fFarClippingPlane_High=12000.0
DistanceLow.fFarClippingPlaneLowPolyMesh_High=1100 00.0

//Pushes DOF a bit back so the foreground is much clearer and Natural
//and the DOF starts almost in the "grass growing line" further hellping to hide it
Render.DOFStart=5000.0
Render.DOFEnd=12000.0

//Absolute keep the appearing/dissapearing of critters is much more natural.
Entity.ROI=6200

Thanks again.

Damn this was about the first thing I noticed but Forgot it completely in my
fiddling yesterday (Heh I think even the comment on the .ini say that 1.0 is the
default… Or did I get that wrong ?)

Thanks HiddenX

I was experimenting with these tweaks, and found a weird glitch: I can't turn post-processing off. Or, rather, I can, and I get a massive frame rate boost -- but I also get some very major glitching with parts of the terrain becoming "transparent" with a different part of the map showing through as if seen from a quite a long way above. (I have a hunch the frame rate boost was simply due to large parts of the geometry not getting rendered at all, because of the glitch.) Any clues?

That said, I'm getting quite satisfactory performance at 1280 x 1024, shader model 3.0, textures Medium, filtering Linear, draw distances turned down a wee bit, everything else to High.

I'm also still getting an intermittent freeze -- first the screen freezes, and after a few seconds the sound starts to loop; the only way to get out of it is a cold boot.

Exactly the kind of glitch I was reproducing when fiddling with the Far clipping
plane value. I think a few other values having to do with the replacement
thresholds for the low/high poly terrain meshes have to be tweaked also but
couldnt find a proper balance for higher/lower values…

It does that some times even with the Default ini settings AND with DOF on.
But it is momentary (if you take a step forward the missing part of the terrain
is loaded). Perhaps moving the Clipping plane even closer might solve this in
your case ?

Hum, I did what you suggested and the problem went away. The weird thing is, I can't reproduce it now when turning the clipping plane settings back to where they were. Now I don't get the glitch at any settings (Low, Medium, High). Nice frame rate, though, so I'm not complaining. Go figure.

I may have made the SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage tweak after trying this, though, so it's conceivable that there's a relation there.

I just wish I could figure out what's causing the freezing. If I could get rid of that, I would be a happy panda.

Yeah, there seems to be some inconcistency with the ini settings in general.
i.e I had shaders 3 set in the menu and the ini had 2_0 saved…
I dont think we can be 100% sure which values are actually working and when.
I still get the glitch in preciselly one spot (havent see all that much of the
world though) and have set the absolutely necessary (Hell it Must be a
bug) SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage fix too…

Do you have an X2 perhaps ? I think I heard there were some issue there.
Other than that and assuming that all your drivers are up to snuff my mind
goest to a mem leak (there were already suspisions placing the root of the
save bug there)

P.S Heh, Friend of mine just reminded me That in several early videos they
demonstrated "Full" HDR it seems that one is a goner too eh ? Oh well I am
pretty pleased as it is now… I would just like the Balancing + AI to be fixed so
I can start playing… Wouldnt mind to get AA working though…

Yup, I have an X2. I did install the latest CPU driver and video optimizer (before them the game froze, like, every 30 seconds.)

I am starting to suspect it's something like a memory leak as well. It seems to happen most commonly just when finishing a battle.

Noticed a new video glitch, though -- when moving the camera up, I get a white flashing screen. I'll play with the clipping settings a bit to see if I can get that to go away…

No, everybody gets that white flashing from time to time
even with the original settings in the INI. It is a side effect (bug) from
turning off all the post-processing like depth of field.

It doesn't happen often but when it does it is annoying.

That one is a known issue I think. Do you have postprocessing completely off
or on Glow only ? try moving it to Glow if you have it off or to Glow and DOF
if just on glow… Also What is your Gfx Card ? HiddenX has that issue Covered
above for ATI cards If I recall correctly (Disable Catalyst AI and do not Force
settings from the Driver ?)… But I think The postprocessing switch will work…

P.S Oups Elkston Beat me to it :)

Thanks, I actually managed to figure that out myself. Good to know it's not just me. Also nice that Glow doesn't appear to affect frame rate noticeably. I've got the game running quite nicely now, other than that freezing thing. (May be coincidence, but I managed to play for nearly an hour straight without freezes, after switching on Glow.)

this tweak worked wonders for me, dense areas around Montera don't lag me out anymore after this single tweak

@JonNik
I have tried it

@Melvil
the "tweak"

ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_High=1000000

is more an error correction - PB simply missed the last "0" in the default ge3.ini

I'm aware of that :lol:

but I also "tweaked" my image cache and installed a mod ini file for image quality perks

What mod ini file?

someone on the Jowood boards posted a fully modified g3.ini file that included all the stuff in this thread plus some other modifications to draw distance, cache size etc. It was just a combination of all the stuff people have been doing independantly. Made my performance a tad worse though, so keep in mind the trade off as always.

Anyone know of a way to turn off Speedtree completly for testing purposes?

Thanks.

Edit

Has anyone tried setting Gothic3.exe to Higher Piority yet?
I know how to do it in the Task Manager for Services but an exe is a little more complicated and I can't remember how to atm.

Also is there a way to turn off Music, not because I don't like it but for testing.

One thing I have tried with a little success is preventing the Lockup/Freezes in dialogue, at least I think atm, is if I do a full 360 to make sure the surrounding area is loaded in to memory before I talk to an NPC so far has worked.
It seems that in dialogue there was/is a problem with Lockup?Freeze when the camera started panning in dialogue.

Edit
Is there anyway to turn off the Dump file in the Save folder as it is 5x larger than Save files @ about 10 meg, plus you get one every crash and they default the Save folder to WinXP Admin folder which cause totally unnecessary fragmentation on your Proccessing Partition if you use Multiplule Partitions.
I do have my Swap file on a different drive but still that is just bad judgment, most people have there Swap file, Admin and Window directories on the same Partitiion which is not good planning or design by ms, well imo. ;)
So add to the list is there a way to change the Save Folder location also. :)

Some new ge2.ini tweaks for 2GB systems
(as always: make a backup for this file, before you change something)

;optimize memory usage (all systems):
;use these cache settings (25% more):

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


; the maximum settings for 2GB Systems (ResourceCache on Medium)
; settings tweaked towards high

ResourceCache.u32ImageMaxMemUsage_Medium=96000000
ResourceCache.u32MeshMaxMemUsage_Medium=60000000
ResourceCache.u32SoundMaxMemUsage_Medium=20000000
ResourceCache.u32MaterialMaxMemUsage_Medium=21000
ResourceCache.u32CollisionMeshMaxMemUsage_Medium=1 7000000
ResourceCache.u32AnimationMaxMemUsage_Medium=35000 000
ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_Medium=80000 0

ResourceCache.u32ImageMaxMemUsage_TextureQualityHi gh=0

EDIT: optimized
Play on Resource Cache and Texture Detail <Medium>

These settings minimize the "smartheap-out of memory error",
the performance should be better than on un-tweaked <medium> settings.

Isn't this going to cause some heavy performance problems on smaller systems? At least the .ini says it will.

@Sem
I have tested it with 2GB only - but over at WoG some guys say it works with 1GB, too.

my current Settings (ge3.ini):

Cache.SizeImage=160000000
Cache.SizeMaterial=60000000
Cache.SizeMesh=90000000
Cache.SizeSound=100000000
Cache.SizeCollisionMesh=50000000
Cache.SizeAnimation=50000000
Cache.SizeSpeedTree=12000000

ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_High=1000000 ; old value 100000
Render.GlobalVisualLoDFactor=1.00 ; ol value 0.01

Gothic-Detail-Settings - Savegame-folder (UserOptions.ini):

[Options.Details]
Performance=Custom
[Options.Custom]
DistanceHigh=3
DistanceLow=3
ResourceCache=3
ObjectDetails=3
ShaderQuality=2_0
TextureQuality=2
TextureFilter=1
VegetationQuality=1
ShadowQuality=0
PostProcessing=0

this settings are working with my older system
AMD XP 2600 / 2GB Ram / ATI x850 PRO AGP / Catalyst 6.9

- > good performance and graphic quality

for ATI-User only:
catalyst A.I. off
Anti-Aliasing - Application managed / off
Anisotropic filtering - Application managed
Adaptive Anti-Aliasing - off
Mipmap Detail Level - performance
geometry instacing - actvated
support DXT Texture formats - on

I can verifiy it was a huge help to my medium system, thanks HiddenX. :)
I was worried about increases to those sizes, but was shocked when it was huge help.
I had even decided to give up graphic quality, trying Shad 1.4 and all graphic settings to low to increase stablity and prevent crashes.
It was quite ugly, worst part is if you set everthing to low it looks worst than G2. :(
Now I have medium quality and its smooth as it has been. ;)

The only thing I can suggest is if you intend to free a city I would highly suggest turning down both the Distance draws one notch for the huge fights with the active AI.

You seem to know alot about ATI, is there a fix for the flicking and garbbled charaters on the Console yet?
I have lost some NPCs and would like to use the goto feature.

One other thing HiddenX your links to your Swapfile Optimizations were very helpful, though I noticed if I read correctly they were orgianlly talking about older Win OSs do they apply equally to XP, at least for the most part?
More specificly I am refering to total Swapfile size, thanks. :)

I see that there are a lot of tweaks here, but it seems that none of them have stopped these out of memory crashes, at least for me. These crashes occur every 5-20 minutes, which leads to my question:
Which of these tweaks help reduce the number of crashes and in which combination should I use them?
System:
Athlon 2600+
2x 512 MB RAM
Geforce 6600GT with latest forceware

Thanks in advance…

@Aposthrophe

I have 2GB so I can only tell you, what other gamers have said:

Play on resource cache and textures on medium.
Optional for speed you can use these settings:

;optimize memory usage (all systems):
Cache.SizeImage=160000000
Cache.SizeMaterial=60000000
Cache.SizeMesh=90000000
Cache.SizeSound=100000000
Cache.SizeCollisionMesh=50000000
Cache.SizeAnimation=50000000
Cache.SizeSpeedTree=12000000

; the maximum settings for 1GB Systems
ResourceCache.u32ImageMaxMemUsage_Medium=96000000
ResourceCache.u32MeshMaxMemUsage_Medium=40000000
ResourceCache.u32SoundMaxMemUsage_Medium=20000000
ResourceCache.u32MaterialMaxMemUsage_Medium=21000
ResourceCache.u32CollisionMeshMaxMemUsage_Medium=1 7000000
ResourceCache.u32AnimationMaxMemUsage_Medium=35000 000
ResourceCache.u32SpeedTreeMaxMemUsage_Medium=75000 0

Use Shirons Tool to bypass the "smartheap - out of memory"-bug completely.
This tools is a Gothic Starter and it reserves some memory (choose 100 MB).
When the error occurs, you can change to the desktop, release the 100 MB
and the push the retry button on the smartheap requester. Gothic can finish the save game process.
Then close gothic and start again.

Description (german)
http://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum…7&#post2507867

short:
Unpack "G3Starter.exe" and "memTool.dll" in your Gothic 3 folder and make desktop link to "G3Starter.exe" then start it.

Download:
http://rapidshare.com/files/32446515/Shiron.zip

PS:
make sure that no unnessary processes are running on your computer - the msconfig.exe - tool can help.

Speed up your NTFS-drive:

http://www.windowsdevcenter.com/pub/…TFS_Hacks.html


Not verified:

Running in a window should help with memory problems:
ge3.ini:
Fullscreen=false