Optimizing HL2 (For those who need more FPS)

I've seen alot of complaints on low FPS or long loading times, these were taken from hlfallout.net


The tweaks are starting to roll in for those of you who want a few extra frames

Listed below are the known tweaks for Half-life 2

Console Commands:
sv_forcepreload "1" (Preloads game assets at start of level.)
cl_forcepreload "1" (Preloads game assets at start of level.)
cl_smooth "0" (Disables client-side smoothing.)
cl_ragdoll_collide 1 (Enables collision detection between ragdoll models.)
r_lod "-2" (slight increase in image quality (Of objects at a distance) without decrease in framerate.)


Command line Parameters:
Go to you "My Game" tab and select empires and click on the "Properties" button at the bottom of the window.


www.empiresuniverse.com/pic1.jpg


Now click "Set Launch Options" and it should bring up this tab.

www.empiresuniverse.com/pic2.jpg

Now put this in that text box:
"The path to your steam.exe" -applaunch 220

EXAMPLE:
"C:\Program Files\Valve\Steam\Steam.exe" -applaunch 220

Add the following behind it:
-heapsize 512000 (heapsize is the total RAM hl2 is allowed to use the defualt is 64. modify this number to at most half of your total RAM in Kbytes.)

After editing, the line should look something like this:
"C:\Program Files\Valve\Steam\Steam.exe" -applaunch 220 -heapsize 384000

The heapsize greatly increased my FPS in gmod (went from 50-60 to over 100) and greatly improved loadtimes for me :p

 

also, putting -novideo in front of it will also make it skip the Valve video sequence. Great to join games and you have to go to the bathroom, only to find the game is still loading :p

 

Thanks, will try these out tonight.


Sticky?

 

I don't think these two are going to improve FPS. Sure, the ragdoll collide is worth it just to see the bodies pile up, but that has got to use more CPU cycles than ragdolls that fall through each other.
And the r_lod bit. I'm not 100% on this (and too lazy to check), but isn't that just going to make the higher quality models show up at longer distances (when they usually would be substituted with lower-poly ones)? That's not going to improve fps, but it will boost model clarity.

 

cool , thanx for the boosts , but *stuped question* but how the flip do you check your fps , i presume its a command in the console , mind telling me what it is.

thanx

 

And for some people, the blooming (mainly in the skybox) can rather be expensive by around 10 fps or so. To turn off blooming, freely have the command pp_bloom be set to 0.

Besides that, my comments on the heapsize; I've put this into my shortcut and it works (for anybody that wants to follow this).
D:\Games\Steam\Steam.exe -applaunch 220 -heapsize 524288 -game "d:\games\steam\SteamApps\SourceMods\empires" -novideo +sv_forcepreload "1" +cl_forcepreload "1" +cl_smooth "0" +cl_ragdoll_collide "1" +r_lod "-2" +pp_bloom "0"

Now I did notice a slight FPS boost. I have an ATI PowerColor Radeon X700 256mb GDDR2/DX9C/OGL2/SM2/AGP8x. The default Valve recommendations are..

Default
Model Detail: High
Texture Detail: High
Shader Detail: High
Water Detail: Reflect World
Shadow Detail: High
Color Correction: Disabled
Wait for VSync: Disabled
Antialiasing Mode: None
Filtering Mode: Trillinear
High Dynamic Range: Full (if available)

New Settings
Model Detail: High
Texture Detail: High
Shader Detail: High
Water Detail: Reflect All
Shadow Detail: High
Color Correction: Disabled
Wait for VSync: Disabled
Antialiasing Mode: 6X
Filtering Mode: Anisotropic 16X
High Dynamic Range: Full (if available)

Actually, now even with my settings slightly punched up, I experience rather decent FPS for the most part. It likes to stick near and around the high 30s and low 40s for average gameplay, and often attempts to go up to the 60s and 70s as soon as it can. Gameplay is also much smoother in general, despite the FPS getting as low as 20 in hard combat/structure farms. I rather prefer these optimizations than without.

EDIT :: Two ways to check your FPS. Some prefer B because its color coded. Red means bad, yellow means ok, green means good.
a) net_graph "3"
b) cl_showfps "1"

 

Thanks for the tips guys. I've got a ~3 year old PC and my FPS takes some serious hits way more than I'd like :^)

-Matt

 

Heh, no problem, Thanks for the extra input Qwerty.

 

I tried what qwerty says and it doesnt look like my empires is even launching. It gets stuck on the loading screen and I changed the configs to where my empires is.

 

Two console commands that helped out a lot for me are:

mat_bumpmap "0"
mat_specular "0"
they are related to lighting effects on textures.

After turning them off, my game became so smooth that I could turn up my video detail and still be smooth enough to drive a tank.

 

r_lod "-2" does not increase the image quality, it influences the image quality of object far away, where -1 is best quality and -5 worse

 

For me, "-2" in my shortcut was automatically changed to -1. Just something I noticed.

 

If I'm gonna have a box for a VF (At a distance) then better damn well look good.

 

lol.

I think what it does is forces the LOD to change earlier, so the models generally look better from a distance. Either that, or it turns off LOD alltogether.

 

Can the line code given eairly be up in the empires game profiles prelanch? I already have things in my steam shortcut for hl1.

 

Is there any difference from putting these commands in the shortcut/launch options than in console or autoexec.cfg?

 

launch and autoexec will be applied automatically at the start of the game.