Performance Tweaks

Hello!

In this guide you can find some useful info about adjustments, which let you smooth the gameplay, boost some FPS and make the playing more enjoyable.

I will focus mainly on game - its config, settings. Please, keep in mind this is not the guide how to speed up your PC!
For this subject please look for more technical resources in web.

Getting Started

The main config file responsible for your game settings is KillingFloor.ini. When you launch the game for the first time, this .ini file should be created.

It's located in System folder in the game directory.

[..]\Steam\steamapps\common\KillingFloor\System

For me it's:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\KillingFloor\System

Game Options

My current settings are as follows:


I disabled Hints and set Minimal Messages.


I set everything to low except Resolution, although the lower you have, the more FPS you get, but everything is smaller. Textured Scope is better visually, so I also left this option.

Brightness, Contrast and Gamma should be set quite high enough to make your vision better. It really helps on dark maps like Farm or Bedlam.


If you don't use Custom Music, having Music enabled is unecessary, because it's getting repetitive after a while.

I also turned off Voice Chat, because it has poor quality and I'm not really into listening trolls or kid screams. In addition, people mostly don't talk, so this option isn't really needed.


Mouse Smoothing doesn't help in FPS games at all. Mouse Lag Reduction uses some CPU usage, so I also disabled this option.

I found 1.00 Sensitivity much more accurate than something higher (although it really depends of personal preference).


Light HUD looks better in my opinion. It doesn't have borderlines.

Kill Counter shows ZED kills and that's all about it.

If you hate thrash-talking in chat you can disable it by changing numbers on the bottom (and in case you wanted to see what somebody wrote, you can always open the console with ~ and see the game log).

Cache Size

We'll start our tweaking with adjusting value of CacheSizeMegs parameter in [Engine.GameEngine] section. It represents the amount of RAM for holding KF game information. The more game info is held in RAM, the smoother FPS are due to less freezes while playing. It can be set as high as 512, but it's recommended to set it at most to 256.

To do so, you need to open KillingFloor.ini, press CTRL+F and look for the first CacheSizeMegs parameter. When you find it just set the preferred value.

By default:

CacheSizeMegs=32

After:

CacheSizeMegs=256

Precaching

Precaching implies storing files that are expected to be used - textures, sounds etc. It's said to disable all precaching functions, but according to the guy from TWI forums who did some tests[forums.tripwireinteractive.com], he concluded that is not neccesarily needed to disable them all.

With that said, open KillingFloor.ini file, press CTRL+H and replace:

UsePrecaching=True with UsePrecaching=False

bNeverPrecache=false with bNeverPrecache=True

Additional commands

Guided by Steam thread there are also extra 3 useful commands to smooth the gameplay. Set all of them to True value. First line in following part of the config file states that any changes will be applied Direct3D 9.0 section, which is default rendering device of the game.

AvoidHitches parameter needs to be added manually.

[D3D9Drv.D3D9RenderDevice]
UseTripleBuffering=True
CheckForOverflow=True
AvoidHitches=True

Disabling FPS lock

Game by default locks FPS (frames per second) in multiplayer game to 90, but there is a way to disable this lock.

Open your KillingFloor.ini file and look for MaxClientFrameRate parameter and change it for something bigger, for example:

From MaxClientFrameRate=90.000000 to MaxClientFrameRate=300

Then join any game, open console with ~ key and type:

netspeed 30000

This command might resets everytime when you close the game, so it's better to just make a bind and it's easy.

Open console and type:

set input <key> netspeed 30000

where <key> needs to be replaced, so in my case it's:

set input F6 netspeed 30000

From now on, everytime I join the server I just click F6 and my FPS unlock.

Also I found quite useful commands, which display network and FPS statistics. You can bind it too if you like:

set input F5 stat fps | stat net

More: https://www.utzone.de/forum/showthread.php?t=4326

Removing overloud lobby videos

Lobby videos are stored in Movies folder:

(...)\Steam\steamapps\common\KillingFloor\Movies

I found them pretty outdated and I guess there are no plans for any "new works" in this aspect.

Replacing spectator grain texture with transparent, clean one

All what you need to do is downloading the texture from following workshop item (instructions are included in its description):
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=98000280

Final words

Thank you for reading my guide. I hope you found some useful information regarding performance improvement in Killing Floor.

When I got to know with these tweaks and implemented them to my config I saw a big difference in gameplay and I'm sure that it'll work for you the same way.

Have fun!

Used resources:
How to optimize Killing Floor[twistedserverkf.proboards.com]
To decrease loadtimes, turn off precaching and change game cache size[forums.tripwireinteractive.com]
Useful tweaks for Killing Floor

[k@sh]

[D3DDrv.D3DRenderDevice] is a section for your rendering device. If you use Direct3D you should change lines there. If you use OpeNGL you should change lines for OpenGL section etc.

Nonused rendering device sections are skipped.

[JayTuut]

Cheers. I accidently changed the wrong line in additional commands, changed the triplebuffering of [D3DDrv.D3DRenderDevice] instead, but I don't think thats an issue if i keep it true?

[TheGamingVoid]

imao!

I've been playing l4d2 for years, and kf1 hasn't given me any problems, except for the controls, the interactive keys are a bunch of messes and I don't find many options when playing.

by any chance someone who knows about l4d2 and if you know if by chance the keys can be adjusted more similarly to l4d2 so as not to get so entangled with the use of the keys?

[^NegaTiV^]

заходите на сервер Killing Floor IP: 194.61.3.105:7707
все настроено для баланса перков и командной игры
хостинг сервера оплачен до 2032 года
======================================
go to Killing Floor server IP: 194.61.3.105:7707
everything is set to balance perks and team play
server hosting paid until 2032

[IMMORTXLZ]

Waifu,
Brightness=0.800000
Contrast=0.700000
Gamma=0.800000

[pupluv]

What are the exact number values for the brightness, gamma, and contrast settings? Please and thank you.

[LeftoverAtoms]

What about the teleporting zed problem

[Murphy]

lmao disable mouse lag gives me about 20+ fps

[AyleidRuin]

Thank you for the guide, Łuczi

[X4N]

some options do not stay in low help