The lowest of low: playing Chivalry on any computer

Have you ever heard of the Runescape mode for Chivalry? Yeah?

Well, welcome to Tibia mode. Punching the settings so low you won't even recognize the game.

Introduction

Do you have a low-end PC or notebook and want to chop some heads off in Chivalry: Medieval Warfare? Then I'll try to give you a little help.

First of all, keep in your head that keeping all the settings to the lowest possible doesn't mean you FPS won't drop. Full 32-player servers might still be difficult if not unplayable. After all the game still has to process what's going on, which weights heavily on your computer. However, duels will improve vastly in their quality.

Stonehill has seen better days

Also, remember that it won't look pretty. Both the graphics and the animations look way worse than your normal chivalry. Attack animatins don't change, so combat is kept as it is.

Lastly, I want to give a big thanks to the guys who helped me put this together:
-Indivíduo Enlatado, who uses this settings on his everyday head chopping and gave me most of this information;
-Dreadlindo, for sending me the link of the original "runescape mode" and for encouraging me to not play the game until I made this guide.

Yes, this is Forest

Starting up

Since we're going lower than the lowest, we'll need to edit some of the game files for this. Just some graphics stuff, so don't worry about getting a VAC ban. So let's locate said files.

That's fire on the ground

These are the directories of the files you need:

For Windows: %USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games\Chivalry Medieval Warfare\UDKGame\Config\
For Linux: $XDG_DATA_HOME/TornBanner/Chivalry/UDKGame/Config/
For Mac: Not sure yet, will update once I find out.

Ok, now you should be inside a directory full of .ini files. Good, let's locate the first one and start the dirty work.

Buuut before changing any file, copy it and save it on another safe location, in case you want to reset everything later.

On fire. This picture was not photoshopped. Seriously, that's how being on fire looks.

UDKSystemSettings.ini

This file is divided into many [SystemSettings] categories. You will be changing only the first one.

First of all find the settings that begin with TEXTUREGROUP_. See all those variables after each setting? The only ones you will change are MaxLODSize and MinLODSize. Put it on 1, which is the minimum. Do that for all settings
EXCEPT for:
TEXTUREGROUP_Terrain_Heightmap=
TEXTUREGROUP_MobileFlattened=
TEXTUREGROUP_Terrain_Weightmap=

Changing these will make the game crash after the map changes.

HEY If you don't want your game to look like complete garbage, you can keep those values at 8, which is the second lowest. At least you'll be able to distinguish between agatha and mason.
This is an agatha Knight almost dead:
See how that can be confusing?

IF you don't feel like making everything better just to see who's the good, the bad and the ugly (just kidding, they're all ugly), there are the settings that should be changed to AT LEAST 8:
TEXTUREGROUP_Character
TEXTUREGROUP_CharacterNormalMap
TEXTUREGROUP_CharacterSpecular
Won't make much difference in the FPS.

All right, not for the rest of this file. Those lines above TEXTUREGROUP? They should look something like this:

[SystemSettings]
StaticDecals=False
DynamicDecals=False
UnbatchedDecals=True
DecalCullDistanceScale=0.500000
DynamicLights=False
DynamicShadows=False
LightEnvironmentShadows=False
CompositeDynamicLights=False
SHSecondaryLighting=False
DirectionalLightmaps=True
MotionBlur=False
MotionBlurPause=True
MotionBlurSkinning=1
DepthOfField=False
AmbientOcclusion=False
Bloom=False
bAllowLightShafts=False
Distortion=False
FilteredDistortion=False
DropParticleDistortion=False
bAllowDownsampledTranslucency=False
SpeedTreeLeaves=False
SpeedTreeFronds=False
OnlyStreamInTextures=False
LensFlares=False
FogVolumes=False
FloatingPointRenderTargets=True
OneFrameThreadLag=True
UseVsync=False
UpscaleScreenPercentage=True
Fullscreen=True
Borderless=False
AllowOpenGL=False
AllowRadialBlur=True
AllowSubsurfaceScattering=False
AllowImageReflections=False
AllowImageReflectionShadowing=False
bAllowSeparateTranslucency=False
bAllowPostprocessMLAA=False
PostProcessAAType=6
bAllowHighQualityMaterials=True
MaxFilterBlurSampleCount=16
SkeletalMeshLODBias=2
ParticleLODBias=0
FoliageLODBias=0
SSAOQuality=2
DetailMode=2
MaxDrawDistanceScale=1.200000
ShadowFilterQualityBias=0
MaxAnisotropy=1
MaxMultiSamples=1
bAllowD3D9MSAA=False
bAllowTemporalAA=False
TemporalAA_MinDepth=500.000000
TemporalAA_StartDepthVelocityScale=100.000000
MinShadowResolution=64
MinPreShadowResolution=8
MaxShadowResolution=256
MobileShadowTextureResolution=1120
MaxWholeSceneDominantShadowResolution=1280
ShadowFadeResolution=128
PreShadowFadeResolution=16
ShadowFadeExponent=0.250000
ResX=640
ResY=480
ScreenPercentage=100.000000
SceneCaptureStreamingMultiplier=1.000000
ShadowTexelsPerPixel=1.300000
PreShadowResolutionFactor=0.500000
bEnableBranchingPCFShadows=False
bAllowHardwareShadowFiltering=False
TessellationAdaptivePixelsPerTriangle=48.000000
bEnableForegroundShadowsOnWorld=False
bEnableForegroundSelfShadowing=False
bAllowWholeSceneDominantShadows=False
bUseConservativeShadowBounds=False
ShadowFilterRadius=2.000000
ShadowDepthBias=0.012000
PerObjectShadowTransition=60.000000
PerSceneShadowTransition=600.000000
CSMSplitPenumbraScale=0.500000
CSMSplitSoftTransitionDistanceScale=4.000000
CSMSplitDepthBiasScale=0.500000
CSMMinimumFOV=40.000000
CSMFOVRoundFactor=4.000000
UnbuiltWholeSceneDynamicShadowRadius=20000.000000
UnbuiltNumWholeSceneDynamicShadowCascades=3
WholeSceneShadowUnbuiltInteractionThreshold=50
bAllowFracturedDamage=True
NumFracturedPartsScale=1.000000
FractureDirectSpawnChanceScale=1.000000
FractureRadialSpawnChanceScale=1.000000
FractureCullDistanceScale=2.000000
bForceCPUAccessToGPUSkinVerts=false
bDisableSkeletalInstanceWeights=false
HighPrecisionGBuffers=False
AllowSecondaryDisplays=False
SecondaryDisplayMaximumWidth=1280
SecondaryDisplayMaximumHeight=720
MaxSoundNodeRandomChildren=1
MobileFeatureLevel=0
MobileFog=False
MobileHeightFog=False
MobileSpecular=True
MobileBumpOffset=True
MobileNormalMapping=True
MobileEnvMapping=True
MobileRimLighting=True
MobileColorBlending=True
MobileColorGrading=False
MobileVertexMovement=True
MobileOcclusionQueries=False
MobileGlobalGammaCorrection=False
MobileAllowGammaCorrectionWorldOverride=True
MobileLODBias=-0.5
MobileBoneCount=75
MobileBoneWeightCount=2
MobileUsePreprocessedShaders=True
MobileFlashRedForUncachedShaders=False
MobileWarmUpPreprocessedShaders=True
MobileCachePreprocessedShaders=False
MobileProfilePreprocessedShaders=False
MobileUseCPreprocessorOnShaders=True
MobileLoadCPreprocessedShaders=True
MobileSharePixelShaders=True
MobileShareVertexShaders=True
MobileShareShaderPrograms=True
MobileEnableMSAA=False
MobileContentScaleFactor=1.0
MobileVertexScratchBufferSize=150
MobileIndexScratchBufferSize=10
MobileLightShaftScale=2.0
MobileLightShaftFirstPass=0.5
MobileLightShaftSecondPass=1.0
MobileModShadows=True
MobileTiltShift=False
MobileMaxMemory=300
MobilePostProcessBlurAmount=32.0
MobileTiltShiftPosition=0.5
MobileTiltShiftFocusWidth=0.3
MobileTiltShiftTransitionWidth=0.5
MobileMaxShadowRange=500.0
MobileBloomTint=(R=1.0,G=0.75,B=0.0,A=1.0)
MobileClearDepthBetweenDPG=False
MobileSceneDepthResolveForShadows=TRUE
ApexLODResourceBudget=1000000020040877300000.000000
ApexDestructionMaxChunkIslandCount=2500
ApexDestructionMaxShapeCount=0
ApexDestructionMaxChunkSeparationLOD=1.000000
ApexDestructionMaxActorCreatesPerFrame=-1
ApexDestructionMaxFracturesProcessedPerFrame=-1
ApexDestructionSortByBenefit=True
ApexGRBEnable=false
ApexGRBGPUMemSceneSize=128
ApexGRBGPUMemTempDataSize=128
ApexGRBMeshCellSize=7.500000
ApexGRBNonPenSolverPosIterCount=9
ApexGRBFrictionSolverPosIterCount=3
ApexGRBFrictionSolverVelIterCount=3
ApexGRBSkinWidth=0.025000
ApexGRBMaxLinearAcceleration=1000000.000000
bEnableParallelAPEXClothingFetch=True
ApexClothingAvgSimFrequencyWindow=60
ApexClothingAllowAsyncCooking=True
ApexClothingAllowApexWorkBetweenSubsteps=FALSE 

2 things I want to give special attention to:

• ~Resolution has a big impact on FPS
  
• ~MaxSoundNodeRandomChildren changes the game sounds. It will sound terrible, but you only care about your performance right? In that case, keep it at 1, if not, 6 should be good enough for a sissie like you.
  
  After you've done all this, save the document, then right click it, go to Properties and mark it as READ-ONLY; If you don't do this, the configurations will be reset when you run the game!
  
  
  All cool? Ok, to the next file, which is...

UDKEngine.ini

Find "MaxSmoothedFrameRate". There are 2, but you want the first one.

Now set it to 120 and see the magic of having no FPS restrictions on your game. If you have a 120Hz monitor, you are one lucky ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and I envy you, and also you can play Chiv with that FPS happily. Won't make much difference in 60Hz monitors, but the FPS cap will still be higher.

Setting "bSmoothFrameRate" to false will also remove FPS restrictions, but the game might have FPS spikes at certain moments, which can cause some jerkiness. And we want good gameplay, only with bad graphics. This can change in different computer. I had different experiences with this setting on a gaming PC and a not-made-for-gaming-at-all notebook. Play with it and see what's better for you

Again, save it and set the file for Read-Only.

Dat FPS

Final Considerations

Last thing I want to highlitght: if you change any config ingame, everything will be reset, whether the files are Read-Only or not. So save the files before lauching the game.

Wouldn't be a bad idea to save the original ones too you know..

That's it! You're ready to take some screenshots and show everybody how terrible your game looks. Maybe somebody will feel bad enough that they'll buy a better computer for you.

If you refuse, tell them I want it.

Help us


--

This guide was created with the intention of helping people with low-end computers. You are responsible for any changes you make in the game files. I take no responsability in your computer exploding or the FBI invading your house to arrest you.

[Lgd | Insomniac]

I don't use laptops to play, so I can't say if this is a normal issue, but I can't see how this would make the hardware heat more and require more from the cooling system. Try testing this on another laptop or asking people who use them. It might be from your end.

The laptop I teted these configs always had the loud-fan noise when chiv was running, because it still has the same processing requirements.

[Thanh]

Do u experience the-noisy-laptop-fan issue after this modification? After changing my local file setting, I play the game for couple minutes, and my laptop making really loud noise. P/s: i have constant 60fps on small maps with low-setting( without the modification).

[¥sÅ Ψ aquela mina do gelo]

dsjaiodhasjd

[Filthy Rodent]

Alright. Cool

[Lgd | Insomniac]

Yes, the game will download the default configurations :)

[Filthy Rodent]

If i delete and download the game again, will these.. Slight changes undo themselves?

[[-LC-] White]

AEEEEEE VALEU PIROOOO

[ImOnlyOneMan]

+1 for guide title

[Mr. Pool]

Oh my god how are we supposed to play?
Potatoe always win

[ram]

Potato mode engaged. Good job with t his dude!