BATTLEFIELD VIETNAM 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 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.

BFV 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.

Table of contents

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