Shadow Warrior Optimization Guide

Shadow Warrior Optimization Guide

Introduction

What is this?

I recently bought Shadow Warrior during the summer sale. I've been enjoying it very much, but I noticed that I couldn't find a proper optimization guide for the game. Well, this was a disappointment for me, since I do most of my PC gaming on a poor laptop, and could use some guidance on what settings affected the game most and least. I thought this was a huge injustice, and decided to make one myself!

So what will this guide contain?

Just what you'd expect. I've tried to make the best guide I could, and included all the stuff I'd expect such a guide to have. First, I'll tell you the setting, describe what it does, and include images of the setting at different levels, along with the performance hit it carries.

What are your specs?

Processor: AMD A10-5745 APU with Radeon HD Graphics

Video Card: AMD Radeon HD 8610G

Memory: 5.3 GB

OS: Windows 8 64-bitLike I said, I'm running this game on a laptop with a pretty low amount of processing power.

Settings


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Preset

This changes all the graphical options in the game.

Field of View

I'm sure you all know what this is. Simply increases the field of view when you turn it up. It is important to note that this is vertical field of view, not horizontal.

Performance-wise, this setting doesn't really matter a whole lot. It does raise your fps a little bit if you lower it, though, since there's less on the screen. Turn it to your personal preference unless you're really struggling for fps.

Anisotropic Filtering

Another common setting, this filters textures to be more clear, especially from a distance.

I don't know if it's just my computer, but this actually had a pretty hefty performance hit for me, and there's usually none when I play other games. Test it out for yourself and see how your machine handles it.

Anti Aliasing

I was a bit disappointed with this option, since the only two anti aliasing options are "none" and "FXAA", since there were more options in the demo. But oh well, less work for me!

I'd personally recommend using none, since FXAA blurs the image a bit. But it's really up to your preference, since the performance hit is negligible.

Foliage and Debris

This setting, simply put, decides the amount of grass on the ground.

Considerable difference in framerate when changing this setting, you might want to keep this at a lower option to get more performance.

Mirrors

Decides the complexity of reflections.

Small performance hit, I recommend you enable this.

Post Processing

This is effects like Depth of Field, Bloom, and Lens Effects wrapped into one. It's pretty hard to tell here, though.

Low performance hit, I like to keep it at high but some might not like the effects.

SSAO

Effect that adds soft ambient shadows to objects where less light should reach.

Pretty big fps hit on this one, might want to consider keeping it off if you're looking for performance.

Textures

Decides the resolution of the game's textures.

The fps counter in these screenshots are not a good representation of the performance change, you can expect it to stay the same if you have a relatively modern CPU.

Conclusion

Thank you so much for reading my guide, I hope to do more in the future, seeing as I enjoyed making this one. Please leave constructive criticism in the comments, and feel free to voice both your complaints and things you liked, as well as how I can improve!

Sadly there were a few graphical options I found too difficult to explain, let alone capture in screenshots. Those were "physics", "particles" and "remains". Basically, I couldn't find out what physics or particles did, and I just couldn't adequately demonstrate remains.

And yes, I know the formatting on the guide is wonky, but it's past midnight and I really don't have enough ♥♥♥♥♥ left to fix it.

I hope you enjoyed!

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=465689654					

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