Editing the GameConfig.ini file

How to find and edit the games config file to improve performance, activate dev tools, and other options.

GameConfig.ini

What is the GameConfig.ini file?

This file stores all of your video, audio, and game setting preferences.

The vast majority of these preferences can be altered in-game but there are a few hidden settings that can only be activated by editing the file manually.

Editing the GameConfig.ini file is not supported. This guide is a reference for those that feel confident to make changes. The average user will have no use for this guide and shouldn't try altering the config file.

Where is this file?

The file is in a different place for each different OS.
To find it:

* Start the game
* Continue your saved game
* Immediately go to the message log - Click the message icon in the lower left corner of the screen while the menu interface is visible.
* The first message will read "(Log) Save Folder determined as: ..." followed by a directory listing. This directory is where your saved games, config file, and ship color settings presets can be found.

General guidelines for editing GameConfig.ini

* The file is a typical .txt file.
* You can edit it with any text editor
* Make a backup of the file before editing it.
* After making changes, save the file and be sure that the file still has the .ini extention. Don't save it with a .txt extension or the game will not find it and will create a default version.
* The structure of this file is very specific.
* Changing many of the values will have no effect in game because the game will overwrite the changes. Eg. Setting allWeaponsUnlocked = True, will not unlock all the weapons. This setting is for debugging purposes only and can not be altered in released versions of the game.
* If you make a mistake and the game fails to start, replace the file with your backup.
* You can also simply delete the file and the game will automatically generate a new default version but you will lose all of your previous personal preferences.

_____________

Improving Performance

All video options can be configured from inside the game: Go to Options/Video and then choose 'Manual Setup' from the 'Quality' drop down box. There is no need to edit the config file.

There is however a few settings that can help performance on the very slowest of machines.
The following lines in the GameConfig.ini file alter how many ships are created in the game world.

civilianPercentage = 15
militaryPercentage = 35
armedCivilianPercentage = 25

The numbers listed above are the default settings. Changing the values will spawn more or less of the specific types of ship.

* Civilians are level 1 data transporters that are seen throughout the entire game.
* Military are the more aggressive ships that patrol and guard the various bases throughout the world.
* ArmedCivilians fly all around the game world and are usually found on the highways.


On very low powered machines you can increase performance by lowering these values. It's recommended to start by lowering the civilianPercentage value as these ships have very little impact on overall gameplay and are mostly there for additional traffic.

These options are not available in-game because they significantly alter the game. Feel free to increase the numbers for fun if you have a modern computer, but the default values above are recommended for the intended gameplay experience.

_____________

Activating the Developer Camera Tools

These tools are totally unsupported and rough around the edges. They are used to create 3rd person gameplay video footage. Don't expect them to be intuitive or obvious to use. Don't expect the game to be playable while using these tools. They are not meant to be an optional 3rd person game mode, and are entirely for creating interesting video footage.

However, if you are interested in activating them add the following line to GameConfig.ini:

devCameraControls = True

Save the file and start the game. Now a new window will appear when you are at the ship configuration screen.

Click 'Activate Dev Cam' and you will find that the camera is now no longer attached to the player ship and can be flown around the game world using the normal ship flight controls. If you move the camera and then return to normal play the camera will stay at that position relative to the player ship.

Click 'Detach Camera' to leave the camera stationary in space during gameplay. New options then appear that cause the camera to 'Look at player' (useful for fly-by style video capture) or 'Look at Target' which will keep the camera focussed on the players current target. While either of these options are checked, you can also set the max distance between the camera and whatever it is set to look at. This is great for doing 3rd person action sequences.

Be aware that the game becomes very difficulty to play while the camera is detached like this and these options are only meant to be used for video capture. However, there is an 'auto target' option in the dev camera controls that will automatically aim the player ship so that combat sequences can be captured while the camera is detached.

PageUp and PageDown keys can be used to turn the devCamera window on and off. The Home key will do an automated 360 degree rotation around the player ship. Useful for making gifs of your super duper cool ship color preset.

These tools can be combined to create various different camera shots with a little experimentation.

Saved games and ship color preset files

In the same location as the config file you can find your saved games and ship color preset files.

These are transferabe between players if you so choose. Saved games must come from the same or earlier version of the game to work if transferred.

The ship color preset files have the extention .cpr but are simple text files just like the config file. There isn't much point editing them manually because this is more easily done in-game using the Customize options window, but if you have a cool preset you would like to share you can do so by giving someone else the file. They would obviously need to place it back in the correct folder for it to appear in game.

REMEMBER: Everything described in this guide is not officially supported.

[paulschaos75]

Okay, but what do you do if you mistakenly clicked on a video setting that seems to be unsupported, and now every time you try to open the game, it opens in full screen, has a message saying it's unsupported, and you have to hard reset your PC to get it to close down?

[Blindlight]

sweet