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SWTOR Tweak Guide - 2016
A guide to tweak Star Wars: The Old Republic for graphic enhancement on modern systems.
Created and maintained by: TechAngel85.
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Template:TOC right Template:Heading Welcome! Mass Effect has been out for many years now. Anyone that has played these games can attest to their greatest in both storyline and gameplay. Although an older game, Mass Effect is still visually appealing on modern systems, however, 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
- Improve the Dynamic Shadows
This guide will not:
- (Completely) Fix the Dynamic Shadows
- Use tweaks which provide no measurable benefit
- Be a complete game overhaul such as S.T.E.P.
Mass Effect was built upon Unreal Engine 3, which provides users some customization; however, certain things can not be fixed (easily). One of these are the Dynamic Shadows. BioWare's implementation of dynamic shadows in Mass Effect is horrible. Yes, they may have looked okay on consoles; however, when the game was ported over to the PC, like many titles before it, Mass Effect had no real upgrades done specifically for PC users. Dynamic Shadows are addressed in the INI Tweaks section below, but do not expect gold. Unfortunately, dynamic shadows are simply going to remain bad when compared to more modern games; even with the tweaks.
Since Mass Effect was built upon Unreal Engine 3, there is a lot of customization which can be done via INI files; however, Mass Effect does not use a good majority of the parameters available 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 of the work was actual optimization for the PC. As such, much of the Unreal Engine was left unused. Many "old school" gamers that have tweaked the Unreal Engine to its limits will be left disappointed. This guide will only cover the tweaks which have an actual effect in Mass Effect and will not cover any tweaks that would allow cheating or easier gameplay.
Finally, Mass Effect was not built to be an easily modded game such as The Elder Scroll series; however, with the right tools anyone can mod games built on the Unreal Engine. There are many texture replacement mods for Mass Effect, but most require the use of a utility called TexMod. This tool is infamous for making the game unstable; therefore, there will not be any mods in this guide which would require the use of this tool.
