Mission Briefing
Welcome! Mass Effect has been out for several years now. Anyone that has played these games can attest to their greatest in both story and gameplay. Although an older game Mass Effect is still visually appealing on modern systems but there is some room for improvement. This guide aims to:
- Setup Mass Effect on modern systems
- Improve the visual appearance of the game
- Improve the stability of the game
This guide will not:
- Fix the Dynamic Shadows
- Use tweaks which provide no measurable benefit
- Be a complete game overhaul such as S.T.E.P., SR:LE, or Fallout New Vegas Guide
Mass Effect was build upon Unreal Engine 3 which provides users with some customization; however, certain things can not be fix (easily). One of these are Dynamic Shadows. BioWare's implementation of dynamic shadows in Mass Effect is horrible. Yes, they may have look okay on the consoles; however, when the game was ported over to the PC, like many before it, no optimization was done specifically for PCs which are typically capable of much more than consoles. Below, in the INI Tweaks, dynamic shadows are address but do not expect gold. Unfortunately, dynamic shadows are simply going to remain terrible even with the tweaks.
Since Mass Effect was build upon Unreal Engine 3, there are a lot of customizations which can be done via INI files; however, Mass Effect does not use a good majority of the parameters in the Unreal Engine. When the game was ported to the PC by Demiurge Studios there were a few changes made to the game to make it easier for keyboard and mouse users but very little was actual optimization for the PC. As such, much of the Unreal Engine was left unused so many "old school" games that have tweaked Unreal Engine to its limits will be left disappointed. This guide will only cover the tweaks which have actual value in the game.
Mass Effect was not build to be an easily modded game such as Skyrim; however, with the right tools anyone can mod games built on the Unreal Engine. There are some texture replacement mods out there as well but at this time this guide will not be covering texture replacements.
Software Installation & Initialization
Install the game as you normally would. I personally recommend installing most of your games to a different drive/partition than your OS is installed on unless you are using a SSD. Once the game is installed download and install the Official 1.02 Patch from BioWare.
The Mass Effect Config
After the patch, you should run the configurator. Navigate to where you installed the game ...\Mass Effect\Binaries\ and launch the MassEffectConfig.exe application. Click on Video in the left pane and choose the settings best for your system. Unfortunately, these settings will vary from system to system so there is no right or wrong instructions here. I do recommend choosing the maximum settings for your personal system. It should be noted that most modern systems will be able to run Mass Effect at 1920x1080 resolution and maxed out settings with no performance issues at all. Keep this in mind and use the recommended settings during the initial setup. You can always adjust later if the game is running at too low a frame rate.
Video Settings
- Resolution
- This is the resolution the game will run at. It is recommended to choose the native resolution of your monitor.
- Aspect Ratio
- This is the orientation of your monitor. The choices are 4:3, 16:9 and 16:10. This defaults to 4:3 on most systems so you'll be required to change this before changing your Resolution if the monitor being used is a widescreen monitor.
- Particle Effects
- Think of this an early version of PhysxX on the NVIDIA graphics cards. The higher the setting the more particles will be rendered during explosions and other effects. The recommended setting for this is High.
- Texture Detail
- This determines the detail at which textures are rendered. The recommended setting for this is Ultra High.
- Filtering Mode
- The determines how the textures are rendered. The recommended setting is Anisotropic.
- Dynamic Shadows
- Dynamic shadows are shadows which are rendered on moving objects in the game, such as the characters. These shadows are determined from the light sources and are rendered by default by the CPU in Mass Effect. The recommended setting is Enabled (checked); however, Mass Effect's implementation of dynamic shadows isn't very good. They are often blocky and feathery. If this bothers you, simply disable them because there is no fix for this. The INI edits below will only improve them slightly. Ambient Occlusion can be forced in Mass Effect which will improve the dynamic shadows a bit more.
- Vsync
- Vertical Sync (vsync) will sync the game's FPS with your monitor's refresh rate which is most commonly 60Hz. This means your FPS will be capped at around 60FPS. This can be changed in the INIs. See below in the INI Tweaks. The recommended option is the enable this (checked).
- Windowed
- If checked, this will run Mass Effect in a window instead of full screen. This is not recommended so leave it unchecked.
Here is a screenshot of my settings: <Insert Screeshot>
Audio Settings
There is only one setting here with two options to choose from; Hardware or Software. This will determine how the audio is handled and could be different for different systems. The recommended option is Hardware which will use your onboard or expansion slot audio hardware for all sound rendering. Users who have anything above a 2.0 channel speaker setup will have to use the Hardware setting in order to take advantage of these setups.
Software Hacking (Easy Dencryption)
Before you can adjust the INI settings, the game has to create them. Do this by launching the game for the first time. Allow the game load up the to the first menu and then exit back to your desktop. This creates the default INI files that you'll need for tweaking. They are local in your \Documents\BioWare\Mass Effect\Config directory. The only files of interest are BIOEngine.ini, BIOGame.ini and BIOInput.ini.
Take the usual precautions for moving forward by backing up the INI files that will be edited. This is more important for those experimenting with the following tweaks and others not covered in this guide. If the INI files because an issue, they can be restored by simply deleting them. When the game is relaunched, a new set of default INI files will be created for the ones that were deleted. There are also a couple things to keep in mind before tweaking on your own:
- Some settings are in multiple locations in the INIs. For this guide, pay special attention and only change the setting in the location shown below or it won't work.
- Many settings of the INI files don't have an effect on the PC version of the game. These are the unused settings of the Unreal Engine mentioned above and sections used for debugging and other things not applicable to this guide.
- Only the settings which appear to have a useful impact on the game are included in this section. Feel free to explore the other settings on your own; however, they didn't have any impact during testing.
BIOEngine.ini
The BIOEngine.ini file hold the main audio and graphic settings for Mass Effect.
[Engine.GameEngine]
- bSmoothFrameRate=True
- This is similar to vsync. It will tell Unreal Engine to keep the game within a minimum and maximum frame rate. It's recommended to leave this set to true or change it to true. If you desire to use Mass Effect in benchmarks, then setting this to false and turning off vsync will enable you to record the maximum FPS the system is capable of.
- MinSmoothedFrameRate=22
- MaxSmoothedFrameRate=60
- These two parameters control the minimum and maximum framerate for the setting above. If bSmoothFrameRate above is set to true then the parameters specified here will be enforced. The framerate will be capped at the minimum and maximum specified in order to prevent framerate spikes and dips. The default for minimum has been left alone; however, the maximum has been edited from 62 to 60. This is to match the most common refresh rate of most monitors. If your monitor has a higher refresh rate, feel free to increase the maximum to match.
- bUsePostProcessEffects=True
- This setting controls the majority of the post processing effects in Mass Effect. This includes the Film Grain, Motion Blur, Bloom and Depth of Field effects. It is recommended to keep the default of true or change it to true to enable these effects. If there is an effect you prefer to disable, you may be so individually either below or in-game.
- bEnableBranchingPCFShadows=True
- This setting enables a rendering of softer shadow edges. It is recommended to keep it enable or some shadows can appear blocky. From testing, this doesn't not affect dynamic shadows which is unfortunate.
BIOGame.ini
The BIOGame.ini file hold various game world settings for Mass Effect.
BIOInput.ini
The BIOInput.ini file holds the key bindings for Mass Effect.
