How to Improve Graphics in Tremulous

The game "Tremulous," built under the ioquake3 engine, uses the Quake 3 source code. Graphically, the settings in "Tremulous" are almost identical to those in Quake 3. Most computers can run this game at or near maximum settings. By default, most of the advanced settings in "Tremulous" are set to the higher levels. However, you can still improve the graphical quality from within the game's Options menu, by changing the "quality" preset to the highest setting and adjusting to the proper screen resolution. You can further improve the graphics by increasing the texture quality in the "Tremulous" configuration file and your graphics card settings.

Instructions

Options Menu

1. Load the game. Press the "ESC" key while in game, and click "Options." This displays a small Options menu.

2. Click "System," and then click the "Quality" setting to cycle through the different quality presets. Select the "High Quality" preset.

3. Click "Video Mode." This action cycles through the supported screen resolutions. Select your monitors maximum resolution, and then click the "Apply" button. The game will restart and apply the high quality preset and resolution settings.

4. Press "Esc" again to load the Options menu. Click the "GFX Software" option located on the left side. Click and drag the brightness setting, and adjust it until the brightness of the image in the background is what you want.

Configuration File

1. Navigate to the Tremulous game directory by right-clicking the shortcut icon and selecting "Open file location."

2. Open the "Base" folder. Right-click the "Autogen" file, and click "Open with." On the "Open with" dialog, double-click "WordPad." This opens your configuration file.

3. Press the "Ctrl" and "F" keys consecutively to open the Find dialog. Type "r_lodbias" and press "Enter." This takes you to the searched line in WordPad.

4. Press the "Ctrl" and "F" keys consecutively to open the Find dialog. Type "r_lodbias" and press "Enter." This takes you to the searched line in WordPad. This setting controls the texture level of detail. Higher values lower texture detail, and negative values increase texture sharpness.

NVidia Graphics Card

1. Right-click your desktop, and click "NVidia Control Panel."

2. Click "Manage 3D Settings," and then click the "Program Settings" tab.

3. Click the "Add" button. This opens a File browser. Select the Tremulous executable, and click the "Open" button. This takes you back to the "Program Settings" tab with "Tremulous" selected.

4. Click the "Anisotropic filtering" option and select "16x." Click the "Texture filtering Quality" option and select "High quality."

5. Click the "Apply" button at the bottom to save.

ATI Graphics Card

1. Right-click the desktop and click the "Catalyst Control" or "AMD Vision Control" option.

2. Click "Gaming," and then "3D Application Settings." Locate the "Anisotropic Filtering" setting, deselect the "Use Application Settings" option, and then drag to the "16x" position.

3. Locate the "Mipmap detail level" section, and drag the slider to the "High Quality" position.

4. Click the "Apply" button to save.

References

• Tremulous: User Manual
• NVIDIA: Control Panel User Guide
• AMD: Catalyst Control Center User Guide