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I do not take credit for this fix as it was originally posted long ago on teamliquid; however, very few players know about it and I felt it should be something everyone should adjust.
Recently many players I have run across are having issues with creep rendering as well as just bad frame rates from their Graphics Cards.
These changes will double your current FPS.
Step 1. Open the File Variables.txt
(This file should be located in C: -> Users -> Your Account Name -> My Documents -> Starcraft II)
For Mac Users: HD -> Users -> Your Account Name -> Library -> Application Support -> Blizzard -> Starcraft II -> Accounts -> (there should only be one file here with a string of numbers as the name)
Step 2. Make these changes
Set SimplifiedShaders=0
Set SimplifiedCloaking=0
Set Shadows=0
Set Softshadows=0
Step 3. Save the file and that is it
This change takes a huge load off your Graphics Card and should help a lot.
- The SimplifiedShaders is the fix to your graphics.
- The SimplifiedCloaking actually makes cloaked units slightly more visible
(The same as Medium Settings on Shaders)
- Turning off shadows will make your Graphics Card Happy especially since thanks to Direct X your graphics card will process the shadows first above all else
If you adjust your graphics settings in-game after you make these changes you will need to reopen the variables.txt file and make the changes again.
Make sure the file is not set to "Read Only"
For a list of what the other variables do :
http://segmentnext.com/2010/08/07/starcraft-2-graphics-performance-tweak-guide/
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/375107634
Due to continuing concerns about the EULA I will post the following:
During the Beta, and month of release, many players had over heating issues that blizzard later confirmed. There was a quick fix to the over heating issues by adding 2 lines of text in the variables.txt file. To my knowledge not a single player has ever had a issue from blizzards EULA policy in regards to making adjustments to the variable.txt file.
The edits to the variables.txt file correspond to adjustments in Graphics Settings. This file allows you reduce the settings below the menu options. This should not be an issue on blizzards part as you are not gaining any sort of "Unfair advantage".
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i dont know, but someone told me that this kind of editing is "illegal" ? they said blizzard considers this as something bad or something, dunno
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What exactly does this do to the game? Will it affect being able to see burrowed, and cloaked units is my worry.
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On April 19 2011 06:11 ZeraToss wrote:
i dont know, but someone told me that this kind of editing is "illegal" ? they said blizzard considers this as something bad or something, dunno
As far as I am aware this does not violate the EULA. I can vouch that my account is perfect fine and I did it months ago.
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Awesome. I'm always looking for ways to squeeze out a little more fps.
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Ya I'd like some verification on what this actually does before I start changing files in my SC2 folder.
edit: you answered my question.
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Okay I did it. Does anything look different in actual game play?
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On April 19 2011 06:16 Nizzy wrote:
Okay I did it. Does anything look different in actual game play?
Nothing that is noticeable minus the improved visibility of cloaked units.
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Does this help your fps related to anything besides the graphics card? For instance, if it was your RAM or CPU that was bottlenecking the game.
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editing your variables.txt isn't an issue with blizzard, editing your .mpg files is.
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On April 19 2011 06:33 bloodorc44 wrote:
Does this help your fps related to anything besides the graphics card? For instance, if it was your RAM or CPU that was bottlenecking the game.
I am not 100% sure on that so I do not want to answer wrong. However I can tell you that you will see an increase even if you use a top of the line card.
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If you adjust your graphics settings in-game after you make these changes you will need to reopen the variables.txt file and make the changes again.
If you set it to read-only it will default to the settings you chose, including the edited ones.
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On April 19 2011 06:38 tok wrote:Show nested quote +
If you adjust your graphics settings in-game after you make these changes you will need to reopen the variables.txt file and make the changes again.
If you set it to read-only it will default to the settings you chose, including the edited ones.
Added it to text. Thanks for the tip
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This is what I needed since I'm running on my Intel HD laptop, but I have to wait for more confirmation that it's legal and working.
thanks.
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On April 19 2011 06:46 Sanasante wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2011 06:38 tok wrote:
If you adjust your graphics settings in-game after you make these changes you will need to reopen the variables.txt file and make the changes again.
If you set it to read-only it will default to the settings you chose, including the edited ones. Added it to text. Thanks for the tip
No you misread, after you save the txt file with the new modified settings set it as read only. If the file is read only before you try saving it won't work.
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lighting=0 will boost your FPS even more.
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i have a bad pc so i will be trying this tip
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I love you. Maybe Sc2 will actually be playable on this pc oO.
This also reminds me of when you would load some CSS Script to increase frame rate lol  .
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I went from 60 frames on Medium to 120 frames from these changes. They do work ^_^
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I've been getting lag spikes at the start of games recently, hopefully this helps, thanks! ^_^
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sanasante I'm a bit confused sorry, I'm looking for those options and the only one I can find is soft shadows which is already 0, am I meant to paste the other options in?
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On April 19 2011 09:01 curreh wrote:
sanasante I'm a bit confused sorry, I'm looking for those options and the only one I can find is soft shadows which is already 0, am I meant to paste the other options in?
I wonder the same!
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On April 19 2011 09:01 curreh wrote:
sanasante I'm a bit confused sorry, I'm looking for those options and the only one I can find is soft shadows which is already 0, am I meant to paste the other options in?
This should work if they're not there already. If the variable no longer exists in the current patch then it should have no effect, and if it does exist then it may have the effect you want depending on what the default value is. Just make sure to save a backup copy of the file before you experiment with it.
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I read it as "A quick tip to increasing your fame..."
lol. Thanks for the tip 
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thanks for the find on bnet forums! seems like blizz doesn't mind this at all. BRB :D
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tip for mac users:
the file variables.txt is under
HD -> Users -> Your Account Name -> Library -> Application Support -> Blizzard -> Starcraft II -> Accounts -> (there should only be one file here with a string of numbers as the name)
bonus tip: if you go down one more folder you will find the folder where your replays are stored
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My fps just doubled. Thanks a lot!
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Sounds cool, I'll give it a try. I run Starcraft on a laptop (even though it runs very well on medium), taking any load off my GPU would be a plus since it can get very warm after a long gaming session. Thanks for the find!
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On April 19 2011 09:11 sereniity wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2011 09:01 curreh wrote:
sanasante I'm a bit confused sorry, I'm looking for those options and the only one I can find is soft shadows which is already 0, am I meant to paste the other options in? I wonder the same!
i wonder the same
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On April 19 2011 06:11 ZeraToss wrote:
i dont know, but someone told me that this kind of editing is "illegal" ? they said blizzard considers this as something bad or something, dunno
This doesn't qualify as something bannable since Blizzard support gives these kinds of answers to help people on their forums.
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My stuff was already set to 0, but I couldn't find "set shadows." Should I add it in?
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On April 19 2011 10:39 SuperNothing wrote:
My stuff was already set to 0, but I couldn't find "set shadows." Should I add it in?
Should be just Shadows=0 not Set Shadows
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This change had a negative effect on my game stability. I personally would not recommend this.
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On April 19 2011 06:16 Nizzy wrote:
Okay I did it. Does anything look different in actual game play?
Shadows if you have them on low will no longer have a giantblob below them, they'll be completely gone, this alone gives a big boost, trees and the like wont have shadows anymore nor will buildings
I use all these changes and they up fps(specifically the shadow ones) by ALOT
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Thanks for sharing this, I'm also seeing an increase in fps!
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When I opened the variable.txt
I have nothing but
displayunitstatus=All
hotkeyprofile=My Keys
mastervolume=0.275410
mousewheelzoomenabled=0
musicvolume=0.000000
profanityfilter=0
showmissiontime=1
sound=1
worldobjecttooltips=0
do I just add them in?
Edit: Found it. xd
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Does anyone know what the "fogvolume=0" setting is in variables.txt?
I love playing on low settings but it's just way too dark in comparison to medium (with monitor brightness levels the same - especially on metalopolis).
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no noticeable difference in FPS. then again everything is already on low so maybe thats y
on further inspection, seems to have some increase in performance, hard to really say where but its noticeable enough to mention
thx
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On April 19 2011 10:53 Joedaddy wrote:
This change had a negative effect on my game stability. I personally would not recommend this.
You should have a copy of the original variable.txt as backup. Then try doing it again. There is no reason you should have a negative effect.
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Can anyone say for certain what this does to the in game graphics?
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I, like others here, only have "softshadows" in our variables.
The others do not exist. Running Ultra settings that brush against 60fps. Would like to keep it 60fps lock.
What do?
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im not sure about doubling your FPS but taking off shadows does drastically increase it
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Game is running noticeably smoother, and I can't see a change in graphic quality which is nice. Going to test some of the ones mentioned in the battle.net sticky and see if they're note worthy.
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Playing off a macbook so thank you again for the advice.
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is setting shadows to 0 supposed to remove shadows completeley? because for me i still have them ingame : ((
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I just changed two of those four since two of them were already set to 0. Are there any other safe recommendations? I would like to change my graphics to the lowest of lowest possible and still playable, since my laptop is running on Intel HD, which is not recommended for gaming. I noticed dark templars are more visible.
thanks.
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Thanks for this! lol, I only switched long after the beta was over and thought I was retarded cuz I'd always lag up versus zerg :D
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Worked perfectly for me, playing on a mix of ultra/medium settings, and went from 80 to 130 fps at the start of a game <3
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nice, this is great for me thanks
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This is really strange, because recently I found a similar advice in the Tech support forum and it says to set
simplifiedCloaking=1
simplifiedShaders=1
instead. So now what?
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On April 19 2011 17:22 opisska wrote:
This is really strange, because recently I found a similar advice in the Tech support forum and it says to set
simplifiedCloaking=1
simplifiedShaders=1
instead. So now what?
What you have there is the correct setting if you want to lower the quality. I think the guy got confused.
As we know 0 means no and 1 means yes so are you running simplifiedCloaking= ?
I should be 1
Also if you are on low shaders and set these to 0 you won't see any visual difference except sc2 might use ressources for no good. It's not completely "safe" to change the variable.txt settings (it is, dont worry you can always delete it and let sc2 recreate it) but what im saying is that if you change stuff that does not make sense you can mess up your starcraft performance more than helping it.
the settings applied in this thread is all great though! specially for people running on medium shaders and higer.
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Wow thanks I did do this and noticed considerable performance gain! Sc2 is actually playable on this pc now :D! Thank you!
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Just wanna say that the 4 mentioned here wasn't in my file, but in the "EditorVariables" (same folder, because i edited the settings)
tried this with cloaking and shaders(others were already 0) hoping it will help thanks OP
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SimplifiedCloaking=0 makes cloaked units a lot more visible. Highly recommended to change because of annoying dt's.
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I actually found this to lower my frame rate by 5-10. After setting the variables to 0, I loaded up the game and began to play. Minutes within the game i realized the decals became more apperant and I think this might have caused a decrease in frame rates for me. Every building had the decal brightly lit and clearly visible and also it was attached to every marine I had whereas before the decals werent so apperant
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EPT
