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

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dominic Cavey created this guide so that players can get the best possible playing experience from their PC. This game demands a lot from your system so this guide is a must read.

Table of contents

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

I. INTRODUCTION

Hi, and welcome to my Battlefield Vietnam tweaking guide. The goal of this guide is to help people have the best expierience they can while playing Battlefield Vietnam. I've found that many people have quit this game already due to poor system performance. A new patch isn't always a safe bet either. It can make things worse. So I've come up with some things that can help run this game smoothly and lag free. They might not work for everybody, but for the most part, if applied correctly, you'll be able to enjoy this game to the fullest.

II. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

***Straight from the box***

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS

Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
933Mhz PIII or Athlon Processor
256 MB RAM
64mb DirectX9 video card
Directx9 Sound card
2gb hard drive space
16X CD Rom Drive
Cable, DSL or faster

My suggestions to run this game decently are as follows:

Windows XP
2 Ghz Processor
1 gig DDR RAM
128 MB Video Card

They're pretty much the main players in perfomance, and the main things you need to pay attention to.

III. THE BASICS

***All settings are based on WINDOWS XP***

Many factors contribute to slow down and lag. As the game stands right now, most of you are not having system problems, you're having server lag problems. The net code for this game at the momentis horrible. I get pings of 10 and it still lags. I know its not my computer, because I'm getting 80-90 FPS while its lagging. This is a server side issue, so make sure you know if you're lagging or slowing down. You can check your FPS(Frames Per Second), by opening the CONSOLE. This is achieved by pressing the TILDE KEY(~`). Its usually next to the 1 key. Once open, type in FPS 1. Hit enter, then the console key again. You should see your FPS in the upper left of the screen. To turn it off, repeat the steps above, but use FPS 0.

Make sure you don't have a lot of programs running in the background. The most I suggest to be running would be 15. You can check to see how many you have running by opening up the TASK MANAGER. Press CTRL-ALT-DEL at the same time to bring this up. Don't just start shutting down things, as they may be vital to your system stability. I suggest going to Black Viper's(www.blackviper.com) website. This guy has taken the time to go thru WIN XP and WIN 2000, to find out what you can safely turn off in the WINDOWS SERVICES. Follow his directions, and you'll see a huge improvement in performance.

Don't try to play this game on a 56K. It slows down everything. Not just for you, but the whole server. I know some people can not get cable or dsl in their town. Move to somewhere you can get it. Just kidding.

If you can, I suggest getting a second hard drive, and running a
dual-boot system. Install the bare minimum on it. Make it your gaming system side. Its not very hard to do and it gets the most perfomance out of your hardware. The OS isn't bogged down by extra, un-needed programs.

Go to www.microsoft.com for tips on running a dual-boot system. Also, if you can afford it get more RAM. That always helps performance.

Defragment! This is a very important thing to do. Files get spread all over your hard drive and in turn, degrade the performance of your machine. Run the windows defragmenting program at least once a week or after you've installed or un-installed 2 or more programs.

Spy-ware can cripple a system, too. I suggest you get Ad-aware and Spy-bot. Both have free versions for download. They can remove all adware and malware from your system. Google for them!

Make sure you have the latest drivers for all your hardware. They can really be a factor in performance sometimes. Drivers usually fix performance related issues. I highly recommend this step.

Increasing VIRTUAL MEMORY, or the PAGEFILE size, can sometimes help out systems with lower amounts of RAM. I've read numerous articles on the subject, and found that size really does matter. LOL! I suggest making the size 3 times the amount of RAM that you have installed. So, if you have
256MB of RAM in your system, make your PAGEFILE size 768MB. If you have at least 1GB of RAM, I wouldn't even worry about this at all, since its never really a factor. Let Windows manage this or have no PAGEFILE at all. To access the PAGEFILE, go into the CONTROL PANEL and click on SYSTEM.
Click the ADVANCED tab. Select the PERFORMANCE SETTINGS. Click ADVANCED.Click CHANGE under VIRTUAL MEMORY. Select CUSTOM SIZE. Plug in the numbers and click SET. I have another tweak for the PAGEFILE you can find under the ADVANCED TWEAKS of this guide.

While we're there, CONTROL PANEL, SYSTEM, ADVANCED, PERFORMANCE SETTINGS, VISUAL EFFECTS. Select ADJUST FOR BEST PERFORMANCE. This can help some slow moving systems, also.

IV. VIDEO SETTINGS

*Make sure you have the latest patch for the game which is 1.2*

If you're at or slightly above the system requiements, run the game at low settings. Don't try to run it medium or high. Its going to suck for you if you do. I run the game at medium and I have a fairly decent video card. If you have a Radeon 9800 or a GeForce 5950, then you can run this game at high. Everyone's system is different, so try out different settings to see what your system can do.

Its not worth it to run this game at 800X600. You miss out on so
many beautiful things. I wouldn't go any lower than 1024X768. You'll lose maybe 2 FPS. No big deal. Sometimes, it helps to run this game at a 60Hz refresh rate. I haven't tried it, but some people say it does wonders. Turn off AA(Antialiasing) and AF(Anisotropic Filtering) if you don't have a high end system. Especially if you have an ATI card. EA has stated this themselves.

Sometimes it helps to run in 16 bit mode. Less colors, more
perfomance.

In the video settings uncheck shadows and lightmaps.
You'll get a few more FPS without noticing any degredation in quailty.

By pressing the F8 button in game, you can keep the radio commands from displaying at the top of the screen. This can increase performance, also. Especially on low end systems.

V. SOUND SETTINGS

I usually turn the menu music and map loading music off. This is especially important if you do not have a lot of RAM. It seems to take up a lot of memory to produce the menu music and map loading screen music. It definetly helps perfomance to eliminate menu music. Turn your sound settings to low or medium for a perfomance increase. Use the least amount of channels that you're comfortable with. I know I need sound to play this game, so do some expirementing with sound channels. OCCLUSION is when a tree or an object blocks sound. You might want to turn this off. I really don't hear any difference whether its on or off. But, I bet it takes up memory and cpu cycles. Get the latest drivers for your sound card.

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 Vietnam\Mods\
BfVietnam\settings.

This tweak is courtesy of GameFaqs user, APPLE PIE. I give him
all the credit. Open up the DEFAULT.con file with NOTEPAD. By
default it looks like this:

rem *** for BC
Game.GameLevelPath BFVietnam/Levels/Operation_Irving/
Game.useMenu 1
Game.useHud 1
Game.menuMain BattlefieldMenu
Game.menuInGame InGame
Game.menuMap Map
Game.DebugCallbackDisabled 0

run AliasedCommands.con

softRun ../../../Tools/Editors/Editors.con

Make it look like this:

rem *** for BC
Game.GameLevelPath BFVietnam/Levels/Operation_Irving/
Game.useMenu 1
Game.useHud 1
Game.menuMain BattlefieldMenu
Game.menuInGame InGame
Game.menuMap Map
Game.DebugCallbackDisabled 0
Game.SoundBufferSize 400

run AliasedCommands.con

softRun ../../../Tools/Editors/Editors.con

As you can see, I've added the line, Game.SoundBufferSize 400.
This is susposed to make the game not lag. It is said to work,
but I'm not totally convinced. It may or may not work for you. It
doesn't hurt to try it. When you are thru, hit save, not save as.
Open it up again to make sure it saved correctly.

The next 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.FullScreen 1
renderer.fieldOfView 1
renderer.globalLodRadius 1
renderer.globalLodRadiusScaleFactor 5
console.showStats 0
renderer.allowAllRefreshRates 0

Make it look like this:

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

Notice I've changed the allowAllRefreshRates to 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.FullScreen 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.

Battlefield Vietnam 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 Vietnam\Mods\BfVietnam\
settings\videodefault.con

Change the line:
renderer.allowAllRefreshRates 0

To this:
renderer.allowAllRefreshRates 1

Then go to:
C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\Battlefield Vietnam\Mods\BfVietnam\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 Vietnam\Mods\BfVietnam\
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.

VII. CONCLUSION

Battlefield Vietnam is a stellar game that should be enjoyed by everyone who plays it. EA makes it hard sometimes for us gamers, but maybe these tweaks will help you out a bit. Thank you for
taking the time to read this guide. If you're in dire need of
help, I'm always availiable at DTAFamily@hotmail.com or
AIM:DTAFamily. Once again, if you do have a comment, question, or suggestion, please feel free to contact me. If you have a tweak you would like me to add, email it to me and I'll give you credit for it. Thanks to APPLE PIE for his Sound Buffer
tweak. Thank you EA for an awesome game!!!!! See you on the
battlefield.

©2004 Dominic Cavey/DTA Productions. All rights reserved.
You may not duplicate this document for redistribution without
written consent from Dominic Cavey(MeGaBigD). If you would like to use this document on your website, please contact
dcavey@comcast.net for permission.

Exclusive Official German translation by:
BF-News.de ©2004 All Rights Reserved
Liscensed by: Dominic Cavey/DTA Productions ©2004

Battlefield Vietnam is a registered trademark of
EA GAMES ©2004. All Rights Reserved.