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I have been playing on Low settings in SC2 multiplayer for a while now, I have found I like the cartoony look and the less cluttered graphics due to the lack of shadows and various other textures. I can play on Ultra and do so in the Campaign so playing on Low is just personal choice.
Anyway, there are a few things I'm not a huge fan of about Low settings. The main thing is that Force Fields are quite transparent and hard to see. I also don't like how the Power Field around Pylons is depicted on Low settings since I play Protoss as my main race.
So I spent some time tweaking my setting to see if I could fix my few problems with mixed results. Here are the settings I changed and how it affected what I saw on screen. I will let you look at the pictures and decide what you like the best.
All settings on Low with Textures turned to high.
I really like the change that this made, it retained the Low look but made edges look sharper and clearer. (If you are having trouble seeing the difference on the forum, try clicking on each of the pictures and blowing them up in their own window. Then look back and fourth at different features such as the blue lights on the Warpgates.)
+ Show Spoiler +Before ![[image loading]](http://i593.photobucket.com/albums/tt20/DylanImagoDei/Low.jpg) After ![[image loading]](http://i593.photobucket.com/albums/tt20/DylanImagoDei/LowandMTexture.jpg)
All settings on Low with Textures turned to high and Models turned to high.
Turing the Models to High made the Power Grids look good and also adds some other cool effects but doesn't drastically alter the overall look of low settings.
+ Show Spoiler +Before After ![[image loading]](http://i593.photobucket.com/albums/tt20/DylanImagoDei/LowandMTexutreandHModel.jpg)
All settings on Low with Textures turned to high, Models turned to high, and Shaders turned to Medium.
This did make the Force Fields much more visible however it drastically changes the look of low settings.
+ Show Spoiler +Before After ![[image loading]](http://i593.photobucket.com/albums/tt20/DylanImagoDei/LowandMTextureShadersandHModel.jpg)
In the end I decided that it I can live without Force Fields being far more visible to retain the look of Low settings but I will definatly keep the crisper Textures and sexy Power Fields. In my opinion if you decide to turn Shaders up to see Force Fields you might as well just run it on the highest setting your computer allows.
Let me know if you have found any other cool changes for Low settings. Hopefully Blizzard will fix Force Fields, until then have a swell time playing StarCraft 2. <3 <3  (Double Heart and Smiley, thats right I went there.)
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I don't see any difference between the before and after in the first pair of pictures, lol.
Cool though, I might try out your last combo.
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@Bluetea
Ya it is a bit hard to see especially when resized for the forum, you can click on both of the pictures to open them in their full size and put them side by side. When blown up, look back and forth at the blue lights on the Warp gates, the lines on the ground to the right of the Guardian Shield, and the dials on the Cybernetics Core. It just gives everything a more crisp look, almost like putting on glasses.
You should check it out in game, after having Textures turned up to High the Low setting feels almost blurry.
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Wow I didn't even realize there were forcefields in the first couple pics! I don't know how you live with that. Have you tried just adding in shadows? I get that you're going for the cartoony look but it seems like everything's just kind of floating.
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1001 YEARS KESPAJAIL22272 Posts
I am so glad I bought a beast of a laptop just for SC2... >.>
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Has anyone fooled around with the settings affecting the visibility of cloaked units? Without detection I mean. It's really hard for me to see them with everything on low. 
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@Jtn
Lol ya that is my one real complaint about the Low settings, the darn Force Fields are soooo translucent. Unfortunately adding shadows adds to a lot of the visual clutter.
@lichter
You should give Low settings a try for a few games. It's not for everyone but the simple graphics have their own charm. I wasn't a fan of it immediately after playing through the campaign on Ultra but they have grown on me.
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@Alsn
I did play around with trying to see cloaked units, unfortunately the "work around" that Day9 talked about on a daily no longer makes cloaked units look uncloaked. I do think it is a tad easier to see them on higher settings but either way they are technically invisible
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On December 01 2010 16:48 Influx wrote:
@Bluetea
Ya it is a bit hard to see especially when resized for the forum, you can click on both of the pictures to open them in their full size and put them side by side. When blown up, look back and forth at the blue lights on the Warp gates, the lines on the ground to the right of the Guardian Shield, and the dials on the Cybernetics Core. It just gives everything a more crisp look, almost like putting on glasses.
You should check it out in game, after having Textures turned up to Medium the Low setting feels almost blurry.
Okay I opened them up to their full size and had them side by side, and you're right, it feels like putting glasses on lol.
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Very interesting.
I think you've officially inspired me to tweak with my already perfect settings. Thanks a lot!
*NOT SARCASM*
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@Seim1010
Awesome, that is what I was hoping to accomplish. With a few tweaks you can get a lot more out of the game while still retaining the basic look you are going for. Hope your setting get even more perfect.
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Shader settings also greatly effect the visibility of cloaked and burrowed units, higher makes them more visible.
You really want to have models and shaders on high.
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1001 YEARS KESPAJAIL22272 Posts
My brother plays on low-everything. It looks like a claymation sci fi movie. :p
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All settings low and shaders medium is in my opinion the best graphic setting. Low graphic but without this cartoon look and the force fileds are perfektly visible.
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@Kazang
I agree that the Shaders setting is what effects all translucent things such as FF and Cloaked units however it is also the setting that takes away the look of the game when set to Low. I am still torn but I think that for me it is worth having Shaders turned to Low.
@lichter
Indoubitably
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@XequR
Have you tried turning Models up to High? Give it a go and see how you like it, especially as Protoss it's just so dang nice for Power Fields.
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What is "Post-processing" in the video option does?
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On December 01 2010 17:02 Alsn wrote:Has anyone fooled around with the settings affecting the visibility of cloaked units? Without detection I mean. It's really hard for me to see them with everything on low.
Models and Textures on Ultra, everything else on low. You still can't see stuff but the heat haze while moving is much more visible and if a banshee is right over a building you can see it quite clearly even while not moving.
Really though the trick is to just be vigilant, obs are easy to spot if you move your army alot near your ramp, if you move the army far enough the obs will be forced to follow and then you will see it.
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@ddhh
Post Processing
Determines the quality of selection halos and depth-of-field.
Low: Displacement enabled
Medium: Halos enabled
Ultra: Depth-of-field enabled
So I did a bit of playing with this while having all the other settings at both Low and Ultra. The only difference I could find was the 3D Unit Portrait was more "glowy" on Ultra vs on Medium and Low.
Besides that I don't have much else for you. The Unit Selection Halos looked the same no matter what I did with the graphics. Maybe somebody much smarter then me can answer this one for you.
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@emythrel
On any graphic setting I find the best way to spot cloaked units that are sitting still is to scroll your mouse wheel up and down so that the screen zooms in and out. It makes the terrain behind the unit move which helps your eyes see the distorted texture. This works really good for cloaked flying units and decent for cloaked ground units.
Make a custom game against an AI player and just pump out a quick Ob and fly it around their base, then watch the replay from the AIs point of view and try the scrolling technique.
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Alright, you guys gotta get where the real action is. Go to your documents and starcraft, then open up the variables.txt. That's where you lots of options for modifying your settings for fps without sacrificing too much visual appeal. Mine is set to have no shadows, non-moving creep that still looks good, low shaders with shading (idk how I managed that). I couldn't get the toss pylon field to go low settings without making all the models low though.
If you're having some MINOR fps troubles and wanna have settings that look better than the low settings, copy and paste mine (back up yours first!!!) EDIT: oh, you guys can make your forcefields more visible by changing simplifiedCloaking and simplifiedShading to 0. And I don't know how I did it, but the creep crawling looks sick!
+ Show Spoiler +
alphadepthWrite=0
aolight=0
camerasmartpan=1
creepnormalmap=0
creepQuality=0
creepselfshadow=0
creeptrans=0
deff=0
deffspec=0
depthDisp=0
displayflyerhelper=All
displaymode=2
displayunitstatus=All
dof=0
fogvolume=0
foliagedensity=0.000000
foliagequality=1
frameratecap=60
frameratecapGlue=30
gamehdr8bit=0
gamma=1.034513
GraphicsOptionEffectsDetail=1
GraphicsOptionLightingQuality=0
GraphicsOptionModelQuality=1
GraphicsOptionMovies=3
GraphicsOptionOverallQualityVer7[5]=4
GraphicsOptionPhysicsQuality=0
GraphicsOptionPortraits=2
GraphicsOptionPostProcessing=0
GraphicsOptionReflections=0
GraphicsOptionShaderDetail=0
GraphicsOptionShadowQuality=1
GraphicsOptionTerrainQuality=0
GraphicsOptionTextureQuality[2]=0
halo=0
hdr=1
hdr8bit=0
height=800
LastChallengeId=TerranCombat
lastDeviceId=1609
lightingLevel=0
lightmap=1
lightmapcastshadows=0
localao=0
localeidassets=enUS
localeiddata=enUS
localight=0
localShadows=0
lowqualitymodels=0
lowQualityMovies=0
mastervolume=0.144105
menubarclickable=0
mousesensitivity=0.591603
MoviesSeen=1
MusicHeard=1
musicvolume=0.283843
normalmap=0
parallax=0
parallaxshadow=1
particlelod=1
particleobjects=0.250000
particleterrain=0.250000
physicsdensity=0
pixellight=0
portraits3d=1
preBlendedCreep=0
profanityfilter=0
refreshrate=60
ribbonlod=1
sampleFOW=0
shadowmapsize=512
shadows=0
showmissiontime=1
simplifiedCloaking=0
simplifiedShaders=0
soft=0
softshadows=0
softshadowTaps=12
SoundAutoDetectCPUCoreCount=2
soundchannels=16
soundoutput=Default
SoundQuality=0
SoundResampler=NOINTERP
SoundSampleRate=22050
speakermode=Mono
spec=0
splatlod=1
subtitles=1
targettexeldensity=0.150000
TerrainTextureHiResCacheSize=8
TerrainTextureLowResCacheSize=40
TerrainTextureSize=480
texQualityLevel=0
texSpace[2]=1024
textureBasedFOW=0
transparentshadows=0
treadlod=1
unitcolorstyle=0
useLowqualitymodels=0
voicechat=0
voicechatfadesound=0.128713
voicechatptthotkey=Grave
voicechatsoftwaremute=1
vsync=0
watercaustics=0
waterflipbook=1
waterrendertargetformat=1
waterrendertargetsize=256
watershadow=0
width=1280
winkeydisabled=1
worldobjecttooltips=1
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@eLiE
I'm pretty certain modifying the game files is against ToS. I would hate for somebody to get ban for messing with them. I also know a lot of people are interested in playing in a LAN at some point and it is definitely against tournament rules to change the game files. Only thing you are allowed to mess with is in game settings. I think it is best to get used to the look of what you can achieve in game with tweaking.
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You aren't modifying the game files (MPQ), it's just a text file. It's just a more useful graphics setting option for advanced users. And unless you're going to GSL, no one's gonna care about your custom visual settings, especially since most (all?) lans big enough to give prize money supply their own computers, in which case squeezing a few fps isn't an issue.
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I remember blizzard suggesting to add some lines in there when the menu screen fps issue was discovered. So it is not modifying game files.
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On December 02 2010 11:34 Influx wrote:
@eLiE
I'm pretty certain modifying the game files is against ToS. I would hate for somebody to get ban for messing with them. I also know a lot of people are interested in playing in a LAN at some point and it is definitely against tournament rules to change the game files. Only thing you are allowed to mess with is in game settings. I think it is best to get used to the look of what you can achieve in game with tweaking.
The file he's talking about is a txt file that gets edited when you change graphics settings in-game via the options menu. Doing it directly is no different than the menus except you get a few new options/combinations that are already in the game, they're just not as obvious to get to.
People are really paranoid about all-seeing aye of blizzard if they're afraid to change ini files that are made to be edited ><
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I just built this computer: i5-760 2.8ghz quad, 4gb ddr3 ram, gtx 460 1gb
I open sc2 and it recommends Ultra settings which made me so happy!
I noticed though that if I hover over each particular setting, 3 of the settings it recommends non-ultra settings:
lighting low, shadows low, and post-processing on medium
I wonder why, with this build, does it suggest those on lower settings? and it's funny, because low shadows is not even an option. Only medium and higher, when overall graphics are on ultra.
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The OP can run ultra he just doesn't choose to. The point of this thread is that the OP is showing how to keep the clean look of low shaders without losing some of the graphics effects that make the game easier to play.
OP, I play the same way you do -- textures and models maxed with pretty much everything else on low. I find I can keep track of battles much more easily than when I'm on ultra and the extra detail makes things confusing.
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I'm on a very bad comp, and I only get about 20 fps when I have medium shaders on. I never knew this until I decided to tweak with it recently, and, wow, was I surprised, the different between low and med. Low is ugly, but I have to deal with it - 60 fps on low.
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EPT
