Configuration

All of the game configuration you will need to do can be reached via the "Options" menu. This menu can be reached from the login menu by clicking on "options", or from within the game by pressing the "escape" key.

There are five sub-menus, each of which gives you a variety of configuration options. These menus are: Controls, Game, Audio, Graphics, and Video. You may also click on Close to return to the previous menu, or Quit to disconnect.

Controls

The controls menu allows you to configure which keys perform which actions. There are also sub-menus for mouse and joysick specific options (including the ability to turn them on or off.) A comprehensive list of commands and their default key bindings can be found by pressing "F1" within the game.

Game

The game menu allows you to change a number of gameplay settings and message options.

Audio

The audio menu allows you to change audio drivers, adjust volume, and turn on and off other sound-related features such as environmental audio.

Graphics

The graphics menu contains a basic set of toggleable video options. These have a significant impact on your game's speed, so be careful when adjusting them. See below for more information.

Video

The video menu contains additional video options. The topmost option allows easy configuration of visual quality based on your video card. Select presets from Low, Medium, High, or Very High. Other options are toggleable on this menu if you're more familiar with your video card's features. See below for more information.

Graphics Options

You can change the following options in the Graphics menu:

Background Detail

This allows you to decrease the detail in sector backgrounds (containing the planets, starfields, etc), or turn off the background entirely. Decreasing the detail will conserve texture memory and increase framerates, but will look considerably worse.

Effects Detail

This determines how detailed you want special effects (such as explosions and rocket exhaust) to be. Turn this option down if you are experiencing slow frame rates.

Space Junk Detail

The amount of debris floating around in space. Has a small effect on frame rate.

Scene Level of Detail and Distance Level of Detail

These settings allow you to change the amount of detail displayed in solid objects like ships, asteroids, and stations. 20 is the highest level of detail, 1 is the lowest. This has a significant impact on the number of polygons displayed on your screen, so adjust these settings if you're experiencing slow framerates.

Full Scene Glow Effect

Turning this off will disable the full-scene glow effect, greatly increasing frame rates.

Show Station In Menu

Determines whether or not the local space station is shown behind the in-game station menu, and in the loading screen.

Video Options

The following options may be available in the Video menu. Please note that the availability of various options is dependent on your hardware, as well as your 3D API (DirectX or OpenGL):

Change Driver

This allows the use of either DirectX or OpenGL 3D APIs. This option is currently only available in Windows, as Linux and MacOS only support OpenGL. In Windows we recommend using DirectX (the default). There is no performance advantage to OpenGL in our engine, and a number of features are not supported in that API.

Visual Quality

This is a set of presets which alter most of the performance-affecting Video and Graphics options. The first time you run Vendetta, a preset is selected for you depending on your available video memory (8mb, 16mb, 32mb, or 64mb). This preset should allow Vendetta to function adequately, but may not be optimally configured for the performance of your system. For instance, the 32mb settings are optimized for use with an Nvidia Geforce. However, a user with an older 32mb Nvidia TNT2 or 32mb Matrox G400 will be auto-configured for the same settings, and may wish to disable trilinear filtering or alter their Level of Detail settings to increase performance.

Resolution

You can change the resolution to get more detail on the screen. Higher resolutions will look better, but run slower. The resolution will be followed by either "16bpp" or "32bpp" - this is the color depth of the video mode. 32bpp looks better, but requires more video memory and may run slower.

Illumination Maps

This setting allows you to turn on and off illumination maps. Unless you are experiencing extremely low frame rates, it is recommended you leave this option on.

Antialiasing

This setting allows you to turn on and off full-screen hardware antialiasing. This slows down frame rates considerably, but will soften the jagged edges around objects. A number of antialiasing methods may be available, usually ranging from worst to best.

Window Mode

Vendetta can be run in either full-screen or window mode. In most cases, window mode should be off.

Texture Resolution

You can specify how detailed you want object textures to be. You should only need to turn this setting down if you are low on video memory, or if you are experiencing low frame rates.

Texture Depth

You can also specify the color depth of the game's texture maps. Once again, you should only need to turn this setting down if you are low on video memory, or if you are experiencing low frame rates.

VSync

This setting allows you to turn on or off VSync. Vendetta will run slightly faster if VSync is off, but you may notice some flickering.

MipMap Filtering

This setting determines how smoothly texture detail fades out as objects get farther away. The default setting is usually fine.

Texture Filtering

This setting determines the texture filtering mode. Generally, anisotropic filtering looks best, but not all video cards support it. Setting this option to linear should work with most computers.

Environment Maps

This setting allows you to turn on and off environment maps. Unless you are experiencing low frame rates, you should leave this option on.

Bump Maps

This setting allows you to turn on and off DOT3 bumpmapping. This feature is supported on some recent cards, such as the Nvidia Geforce and ATI Radeon series. Bumpmapped objects, such as asteroids have much more realistic lighting. However, this graphical enhancement does come at a performance cost.

Multipass rendering

This setting allows your card to use multipass rendering techniques. On some cards, this will have a significant impact on the visual quality of the game, but at a noticable performance cost.

Gamma Correction

Gamma correction allows you to change the brightness of the screen. 9 is the default brightness. If Vendetta appears too dark, turn this up to a higher number. (You must click on "Apply" to see the changes - this option does not update automatically.)

Use Texture Compression

This option enables or disables the use of S3 Texture Compression (S3TC), also known as DirectX Texture Compression, a feature of some recent cards. Turning on S3TC will dramatically reduce the video memory used by textures, but will also noticably decrease their visual quality. This option is off by default, but may prove useful for owners of recent video chipsets with little memory (such as the 16mb Radeon Mobility found on many recent laptops).