UT3 Tweaks...

[{DvT}dagger]

This is for anyone having issues with the game crashing or frame rate problems with the UT3 game.

Edit the UTEngine.ini file. Edit the following options like so:

[Engine.GameEngine]
bSmoothFrameRate=TRUE
MinSmoothedFrameRate=0
MaxSmoothedFrameRate=0

This ensures smooth framerates regardless of your resolution. This also works with the UseVsync line below to prevent screen-tearing, something that can significantly reduce accuracy in gameplay. If you want to disable Vsync for any reason I recommend you set the bSmoothFrameRate option to FALSE instead. But if you are using a LCD it will most likely have a refresh rate of 60Hz anyways, so it's not really neccessary to do that in that case.

[Engine.Client]
MinDesiredFrameRate=60.000000

This ensures that dynamic lighting, decals, and possibly other visuals are not used if your framerates drop below a certain speed. In this case, 60FPS. If you choose at a later time to enable such graphical tricks, I recommend you set this to 0.000000 in order to guarantee that you see them at all framerate levels.

[SystemSettings]
StaticDecals=False
DynamicDecals=False
DynamicLights=False
DynamicShadows=False
LightEnvironmentShadows=False
CompositeDynamicLights=True
DirectionalLightmaps=False
MotionBlur=False
DepthOfField=False
Bloom=False
QualityBloom=False
Distortion=False
DropParticleDistortion=True
SpeedTreeLeaves=False
SpeedTreeFronds=False
OnlyStreamInTextures=False
LensFlares=False
FogVolumes=False
FloatingPointRenderTargets=True
Trilinear=False
OneFrameThreadLag=False
UseVsync=True
UpscaleScreenPercentage=True
Fullscreen=True
AllowD3D10=True
EnableHighPolyChars=False
SkeletalMeshLODBias=0
ParticleLODBias=0
DetailMode=0
ShadowFilterQualityBias=1
MaxAnisotropy=0
MaxMultisamples=1
MinShadowResolution=32
MaxShadowResolution=512
ResX=1280
ResY=1024
ScreenPercentage=100.000000

These settings pretty much strip all the high quality visual effects from the game, but it should be much clearer. The only graphical tweak I leave in there is the FloatingPointRenderTargets line, which is set to True. And that is because it allows you to see the Sniper Rifle tracer, and the smoke effects from behind the Flak ball, making it appear more like the Flak ball, instead of a glowing orange.

[FullScreenMovie]
;StartupMovies=Copyright_PC
;StartupMovies=EpicLogo
;StartupMovies=MidwayLogo
;StartupMovies=UE3_logo
;StartupMovies=Nvidia_PC
;StartupMovies=Intel_Duo_Logo
;StartupMovies=UT_loadmovie1

This last section eliminates the startup movies from the game. This eliminates about 10 seconds of movies that play in the beginning.

---

In the UTGame.ini

[UTGame.UTPlayerController]
bCenteredWeaponFire=True

The game default is to slightly offset where you aim, compared to where the crosshairs of your HUD are, to either the left or to the right of it, depending on what hand you use. If you set WeaponHandPreference to HAND_Right then you will aim to the right of the crosshair, for example. So I set the bCenteredWeaponFire to True to fire at the center of your crosshair by default, regardless of which hand you choose, or if you use Hidden.

The rest you can largely change in-game. But this should resolve any technical issues you have with the game, and prevent crashing.

This also has the benefit of doubling your framerates. I have a similar system, an AMD 64 3000+, X1800GTO, 2GB RAM and I went from 22FPS in some places to 49FPS in the same places, in areas of medium levels of world geometry and objects.

Doing these fixes will also serve the purpose of troubleshooting whether or not you have a driver issue, or perhaps some other issue with the game.

This was posted from Ultron at this site.
this game is totally unplayable.. - Page 3 - Epic Games Forums

[{OF}MillerTime]

sounds like he needs an upgrade more than me. mine played the demo decent, not at rez and setting i'm hoping for though.

if i had to strip all the HQ settings i might as well just stick with UT2k4.

but some of the other tweakies are nice to know.

try here too...

TweakGuides.com - Unreal Tournament 3 Tweak Guide