Regediting

[Tarage]

So, on the advice of a friend, I decided to do a little regediting. I found a guide on (lol)alla, and modified 0003 and 0004. This improved the crispness of the game, but I was hoping to increase the draw distances to, for example, see all of Dragora's spine.

What should I edit to achieve that, and what else should I edit? I'm running four Intel Core2 Quad Q6600s @ 2.40GHz, GeForce 8600 GT, and 2 gigs of Ram.

Appologies if a thread for this exists... I couldn't find it.

[Shadowhusky]

Have the link to the regedit post?

[Koga]

Have the link to the regedit post?

...google.com > RegEdit FFXI > First Result

This is something I wrote months ago, and never shared it. I figure it might be useful to somebody here. So, here it is.

==========================================
FFXI REGISTRY DETAILS

Registry keys can be changed without exiting PlayOnline Viewer.

Types:
H - DWORD (2 Hexadecimal words, meaning 4 places of hex allowing 0000-FFFF or decimal 0 - 65,536; assuming unsignedness)
B - Binary (1=yes/on, 0=no/off)
S - String


Name Type Default Description
0000 H 0
MIP Mapping (0=disabled, 1=enabled) Further raises blur textures more times - no noticeable differences after 6 or so.


0001 H 640
Display mode width (X)[/pre]
Config queries DirectX for possible modes


0002 H 480
Display mode height (Y)
Config queries DirectX for possible modes



0003 H 512
3D width (X)
Config program gives choice between 256, 512, 1024 and sets equal to key 0004.
Maximum is 2048, minimum is 1


0004 H 512
3D height (Y)
Config program gives choice between 256, 512, 1024 and sets equal to key 0003.
Maximum is 2048, minimum is 1


0007 H 1
Sound: 0=Disabled, 1=Enabled


0011 H 1
Environmental Animation: 0=Off, 1=Normal, 2=Smooth
Further raises do not enhance animation quality.


0017 H 0
Bump mapping: 0=Disabled, 1=Enabled
Further raises do not enhance bump mapping quality.


0018 H 1
Texture compression: 0=High, 1=Low, 2=Uncompressed
Other values are apparently ignored and the engine defaults back to 2.


0019 H 1
Map compression: 0=Compressed, 1=Uncompressed
Other values are apparently ignored and the engine defaults back to 1.


0020 H 1
***FUNCTION UNKNOWN - does not appear to affect main menu screens


0021 H 0
Enable hardware mouse cursor: 1=Yes, 0=No


0022 H 1
Show opening movie: 1=Yes, 0=No


0023 H 0
Simplified character creation visuals: 1=Yes, 0=No


0024 H 0
***FUNCTION UNKNOWN - does not appear to affect main menu screen


0028 H 0
Gamma Base: 0x3f800000 = 1.0, 0 = 0.0, 0xbf800000 = -1.0


0029 H 12
Maximum sounds: Config pgm allows 12-20


0030 H 0
***FUNCTION UNKNOWN - does not appear to affect main menu screen


0031 H 0x3bc49ba6
***FUNCTION UNKNOWN - does not appear to affect main menu screen


bFirst B 00
***FUNCTION UNKNOWN - does not appear to affect main menu screen


padmode000 S 0,0,0,0
Enable Gamepad, Force Feedback, Slider, Hat Switches


padsin000 S ?
Button-function association.
Values are base-0 while button numbers are base-1 in config program, so convert appropriately

padsin000 places/buttons:
1. Toggle Auto-Run
2. Macro Palette A (Ctrl)
3. Change View
4. Macro Palette B (Alt)
5. Heal / Lock Target
6. Cancel
7. Main Menu
8. Select/Confirm
9. Active Window / Window Options
10. Hide Menus
11. Operate menus with movement controls
12. Operate camera with movement controls
13. PlayOnline
14-25. Function unknown ???
26. Screenshot

=========================

Hex Table
Hex-to-Decimal table for display modes:
128 = 80
160 = A0
224 = E0
240 = F0
256 = 100
320 = 140
360 = 168
384 = 180
400 = 190
450 = 1C2
480 = 1E0
512 = 200
524 = 20C
576 = 240
640 = 280
720 = 2D0
768 = 300
800 = 320
864 = 360
960 = 3C0
1024= 400
1080= 438
1152= 480
1200= 4B0
1280= 500
1344= 540
1392= 570
1440= 5A0
1536= 600
1600= 640
1792= 700
1800= 708
1856= 740
1920= 780
2048= 800

Other Hex Conversions
The Windows Calculator does this type of conversion. It always has, since Windows 3.1 to the best of my recollection. Click View-Scientific to put it into Scientific mode, then select "Dec", enter a number, and click "Hex" to see its hexadecimal equivalent.

Inputting Decimal into DWords in Regedit
On XP Pro, and maybe others, you can input decimal values into the Edit dialog by selecting the Decimal radio button.

Common Resolutions
Using those values, you can easily come up with the values for the following common display modes and background resolutions: 256x256, 320x240, 400x300, 512x512, 512x384, 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, 1024x1024, 1152x864, 1280x768, 1280x1024, 1600x1200, 1792x1344, 1800x1440, 1920x1080 (1080i HDTV), 1920x1200, 1920x1440, 2048x1536, and 2048x2048.

Note: Make sure your video card and monitor can handle a display mode before setting it.

Aspect Ratios and You
CRT monitors and regular televisions should use a ratio of 4:3 for the horizontal:vertical display resolution. If you have an HDTV or a wide display, check the specifications of your display to see what works best for it. Don't try something funky if it's not right for your display, because your graphics, text and UI will be skewed. Square intended for squares to be squares, no pun intended.

If you have a 16x9 display, try 640x360, 800x450, 1024x576, or 1280x720. Or, take the desired width, multiply by 9, and divide by 16 to get the height.

Unsupported Mode = Silent Exit
If an improper 3D height or width is set, FFXI will appear to enter full-screen mode briefly and quit back to PlayOnline without an error message.

1x1 Possible!
Yes, it is possible to have a 1x1 background resolution. Why you'd want to do this (or really, anything below 256x256) is beyond me, since you only get a solid block of color.

Graphics Enhancement via MIP Mapping
A lot of people really like the way FFXI looks when MIP mapping (key 0000) is set to 4. Give it a try. Distant textures will be lower resolution and blurred more, reducing the need for anisotropic texture filtering and thus allowing you to speed up your game by tweaking your graphics card's settings. It also (IMO) improves the appearance of distant textures, and eliminates the horrendous flickering. If you like the effect but think it's a bit too strong, downgrade to 3 or even 2. The flickering will be present at 2, and barely noticeable at 3.

Note: You may need more than 64MB of graphics memory to do this.

Bump Mapping: Good or Evil?
I prefer to leave bump mapping off, since I get a nice realistic afterglow after sunset and that nice look before sunrise, and the sunup/sundown lighting change isn't as abrupt and distracting. I haven't really noticed much of a difference otherwise. Your mileage may vary. This supposedly impacts performance somehow, but my system is a bit too fast to measure its impact reliably.

Performance Improvement
Set your background resolution (0003 and 0004) the same as your display resolution (0001 and 0002). The performance improvement might be noticeable.

Also, see the above point on MIP Mapping. Increase the level of MIP Mapping and lower your graphics card's texture filtering quality and amount to get better performance.

Turning off bump mapping may improve performance as well.

Fake Antialiasing
You can set a higher resolution for your background than the display mode. Doing this will force your graphics card to downsample the image, which will do a weighted average on nearby pixels thus blurring pixels whose neighbors are not the same color. In layman's terms: You'll get simple antialiasing by setting your background resolution (0003 and 0004) higher than your display resolution (0001 and 0002).

Differential Resolution
This is the technical term for having a different resolution on your menus and your background. For example, 400x300 background and 800x600 display mode. Don't do this. Your eyes and head will get really irritated.

============================

That's all for now, folks. Like it? Got suggestions? Good! This took a LOT of work to format and update for the forum, since it was all tabbed nicely with set stops and all that.

[Tarage]

I saw that, but to be honest, it confused me...

I'd just like to know which one increases draw distances, and any others that might be good to change.

[cassiraa]

Draw distance plugin affects draw distance.

That's not a user-controllable setting, because SE hates us and thinks that we don't want to tweak graphical options aside from the couple of ones they spoonfeed us in a FFXI-Config window that took them under 2 hours to program.

Install Windower, install DrawDistance, Find Happiness.