BATTLEFIELD 1942 TWEAKING GUIDE
- How to get the best performance from your PC -
Written by Dominic Cavey

VI. ADVANCED TWEAKS

***Use these settings at your own risk! I claim no responsibility for any damage done to your system***


First off, make back-ups of all the files we are about to go over. These are just some .con changes, I have found very useful. I use them all myself. You can find these all by following this path: by default C:\Program Files\ EA GAMES\Battlefield 1942\Mods\bf42\settings.

This trick only works if you turn VERTICAL SYNC off. There are different ways of turn this off, depending on your video card. Check the help guides on your system for more information.

Open up the VideoDefault.con file with NOTEPAD. By default it looks like this:

rem * TEMP *
renderer.setFullScreen 1
renderer.fieldOfView 1
renderer.globalLodRadius 1
renderer.globalLodRadiusScaleFactor 5
console.showStats 0

Make it look like this:

renderer.setFullScreen 1
renderer.fieldOfView 1
renderer.globalLodRadius 1
renderer.globalLodRadiusScaleFactor 5
console.showStats 0
renderer.allowAllRefreshRates 1
renderer.lockfps 250

Notice I've added the line, renderer.allowAllRefreshRates 1 and I added the line, renderer.lockfps 250. You don't have to put in 250, but I've found this is the best and most stable number to use. Make sure you hit save, not save as, and close the file.

If that doesn't help any, you can make the VideoDefault.con look like this:

renderer.setFullScreen 1
renderer.fieldOfView 1
renderer.globalLodRadius 1
renderer.globalLodRadiusScaleFactor 6
console.showStats 0
renderer.allowAllRefreshRates 1
renderer.useTrilinearFiltering 0
renderer.mipmapbias -3
renderer.lockfps 250

Sometimes this can lower image quality, but in cases where you can't get the game to run well at all, try the above settings.

BF42 doesn't officially support higher resolutions like 1280x1024. There is a way to force it though.

First go to:

C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\Battlefield 1942\Mods\bf1942\
Settings\videodefault.con

Change the line:

renderer.allowAllRefreshRates 0

To this:

renderer.allowAllRefreshRates 1

Then go to:

C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\Battlefield 1942\Mods\bf1942\Settings

Edit the following files:

video.con
videocustom.con

every time you see:

game.setDisplayMode 1024 768 32 85

edit it to whatever you like in this format:

game.setDisplayMode x=res, y=res, colordepth, refreshrate

e.g. game.setDisplayMode 1280 1024 32 75

Then set both files to read-only, (if you don't want the settings getting changed).

If you are still using the default profile, instead of custom, then go to:

C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\Battlefield 1942\Mods\bf1942
\Settings\Profiles\Default

and follow the same steps as stated above.

Sometimes fooling with that good old PAGEFILE can solve a lot of problems. If you're running a dual-boot system, delete it on the side of WINDOWS that is not running. For instance, if you're running WINDOWS on your C drive,
delete the one on your D drive, and vice-versa. Make sure you have show hidden files and folders checked in your folder options, so you can see the PAGEFILE. Again, if you have a GB or more of RAM, I suggest having no PAGEFILE at all.

If you don't like deleting things, here's another trick for clearing the PAGEFILE. Make sure you back up the REGISTRY before you do this. Type REGEDIT in the RUN box. Navigate to this point:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\ Memory Management

Look for the registry string:

ClearPagefileAtShutdown

Double click it and change the value to 1. Hit OK. Restart your machine.
Now the PAGEFILE will be cleared every time you shutdown or restart. Now it
acts like RAM does, clearing itself, erasing any bad happenings. I must warn,
that this does increase shutdown and restart times to about 40 seconds on
average.

Table of contents

I:   Introduction
II:  System Requirements
III: The Basics
IV:  Video Settings
V:   Sound Settings
VI:  Advanced Tweaks
VII: Conclusion