28 Sep 12

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Starcraft 2 Settings: How to get an edge before the game starts!

A quick guide on how to setup your computer and starcraft for maximum in game performance!

Starcraft 2 Settings: How to get an edge before the game starts!

Introduction:
Ever notice in the GSL it often takes players 5-10 minutes to get their settings all done? Ever wondered exactly what all the settings do and which ones you should tweak in order to get that edge? Here is a rundown of the important computer, starcraft, mouse, monitor and variables settings.

Windows Settings
First off lets talk about windows settings, in particular the mouse settings:

- Go to Start -> Control Panel -> Mouse -> Pointer Options
- Enhance Pointer Precision -> Off
- Select Pointer Speed -> 6/11 (in the middle)

This will basically turn off mouse acceleration and provide 1:1 movement to pixel ratio. You will be more accurate and you will be able to execute things faster. This will reduce most of the mouse acceleration but not completely eliminate it. In order to completely eliminate mouse acceleration you need to run a regedit. Here is a link for the regedit. If you have never played with mouse acceleration off it will take you a few games to get used to it, however it is well worth it!

Starcraft 2 Settings
Now start up starcraft 2 and lets go through the settings:

Under the Graphics Tab:

- Display Mode: Full Screen provides better FPS than the other two modes.
- Resolution: 16:9 resolution is prefered because you can see more of the playing field than 16:10 or 4:3
- Vertical Sync: Turn this off, it will kill your frame rate if your computer cannot maintain 60 FPS
- Refresh Rate: 60, 75 or 120hz depending on your monitor
- Gamma: Personally I turn it up a bit so I can see things more clearly
- Reduce Mouse lag: On (you can box stuff faster)
- Antialias: On (makes the game clearer, slight performance hit though)
- Textures: Low
- Graphics Quality: Low

The reasoning behind using low textures and graphics quality is you can see things more clearly and your computer will get better fps. In addition there are other benefits such as not being blinded by shiny creep when you step onto it (I’m a terran player :P) Almost every pro plays on the low graphics settings.

Under the Sound Tab

- Speaker Setup: Stereo (although directional audio is not as important in starcraft as lets say counterstrike, it is still an advantage)
- Game Volume during alerts: I found that 60-70% is a nice balance
- Sound Quality: High (personal preference)
- Sound Channels: 64 (This means the game will play up to 64 sounds at the same time)

Under the Voice Tab
I do not use it. If I play 2v2 or something I just use skype.

Under the Controls Tab

- Mouse Sensitivity: Personal preference
- Disable Alt-tab/windows key: Turn it on just incase. You don't want to accidentally tab out during an intense fight!
- Mouse scroll speed: Set this as high as you possibly can handle . I currently use 80%. Slowly increase the mouse scroll speed by 5% until you get to the maximum you can handle. This means you will spend a little less time scrolling around and more time doing stuff that actually influences the game. Having a higher mouse scroll speed can mean minutes of extra actions every game!

Under the Gameplay Tab

- Show unit status bars: Always on (this turns on health bars and production bars, allowing for better micro and smoother macro)
- Team Colored Life Status Bar: Off (this is horrible and should never be used; it makes their life bar the same color no matter what their hp level is)
- Show flyer help: Always on (this shows little circles under the flying units which allows for easier aiming of storm/fungal/emp ect.)
- Reduced Violence: Off (You can tell HOW your units died with this on incase you only catch the last part of a unit's death)
- Display Building Grid: On
- Save all replays: On (might as well)
- Menu Bar: Unclickable (you don't want to accidentally open the f9-f12 menus in the heat of battle)
- Control Groups: Unclickable (you should never be clicking those tiny boxes above the hud anyways to recall your army)
- Show game timer: On (unless you are Nestea lol..)
- Display Command Hotkey Text: On (unless you already know ALL of the hotkeys)

Mouse Driver Settings:

- Polling rate: Set this to the highest possible value (1000hz is 1ms polling rate)
- Mouse acceleration: Make sure it off
- Mouse DPI: Set this to whatever is comfortable for you (1800 and 3500 are common values)

Most mice come with a driver/software which you can use to modfiy those values.

Variables.txt additions:

- frameratecap=60 (In-game FPS limit, set higher if you use a 120hz monitor)
- frameratecapGlue=30 (FPS limit for the battle.net user interface)
- simplifiedCloaking=0 (easier to see cloaked units)
- simplifiedShaders=0 (easier to see forcefields)

This file can be found in the MyDocuments/Starcraft II/ folder.

Conclusion:

Good settings are extremely important and you should make sure you are as comfortable as possible. If you follow the guide above you will find that your in game performance will increase. Good luck! If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment.

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