Advanced Tweaking of the .INI File

Under Windows 8.x you can find the arcanakira.ini file at the following location (adjust for your environment):



C:\Users\YourUsername\Documents\My Games\ArcanaKira\arcanakira.ini





The launcher handles all the .ini tweaking except for the [Advanced] section of arcanakira.ini file. This brief document outlines how to tweak the advanced settings for your desired effect.





Before bothering with these optimizations, please use the launcher to enable HDR, disable Depth of Field, disable FXAA and SMAA. If you're running out VRAM reducing the texture quality by one setting helps a lot and doesn't look that bad. Lowering the shadow distance and lowering the shadow cascade to 2 and shadow_projection to 0 also can help gain FPS.







Restoring the Default .INI File

Getting Extra FPS With Minimal Graphical Downgrades

max_queued_frames = -1

blend_weights = 2

particle_raycast_budget = 2048

terrain_draw = 6001

terrain_basemap_distance = 51

terrain_detail_density = 75

terrain_detail_object_distance = 250

terrain_tree_billboard_distance = 50

terrain_tree_distance = 1750

[Advanced] max_queued_frames = -1 blend_weights = 2 particle_raycast_budget = 2048 terrain_draw = 6001 terrain_basemap_distance = 51 terrain_detail_density = 75 terrain_detail_object_distance = 250 terrain_tree_billboard_distance = 50 terrain_tree_distance = 1750

At some point you may make a mistake with the .ini file and want to revert back to the default settings. For now, if you want to restore your ini file back to it's default state, simply delete it and then relaunch Arcana Kira, and it will be recreated.If you're having trouble getting a decent frame rate, try the following tweaks and see if they help.First, for maximum FPS insure that max_queued_frames is set to unlimited, which is -1. The only time you should mess with this setting is if your controls feel super laggy. In such cases, setting this to 1 to 10 can help, but will also decrease your FPS.Next, by default blend_weights is set to 4, which means that 4 bones affect each vertex during animation. You can reduce this to number to 2 which would mean simpler animations, resulting in a few gained FPS in some animation heavy scenes. This value can further be reduced to 1, but I don't recommend it unless you're really desperate for every frame possible.Next we have particle_raycast_budget which determines the number of raycasts the particular system can send out for collision physics. By default this is set very high at 4096. This can be reduced to 2048 for some FPS in particle heavy scenes (especially rain.) It can further be reduced to 1024, 512, 256, etc, but I wouldn't recommend lower than 512, and in most cases 2048 is fine.Now we're at terrain_draw, which I recommend you leave at 6001. Values below 5000 tend to create giant invisible missing chunks of the terrain. Raising this value above 6001 will draw more terrain cells but will also decrease FPS.This next tweak: terrain_basemap_distance directly effects how good terrain looks from a distance. By default 51 is already a little blocky. If you're looking for extra FPS on the world map, bumping this up to 75, 100, or higher will definitely help, but at the cost of progressively worse looking terrain.Tall grass, bushes, and shrubs, the number of these things are determined by our next setting, which is terrain_detail_density. By default, this is set to 100, which means 100% of the grass, bushes, and shrubs I hand painted are displayed (yes, I hand placed all the vegetation in the game.) If you're looking for extra FPS, the lower this number the less grass, bushes, and shrubs that are painted on the terrains. Even reducing this to 75 can have a noticeable frame jump.Next up we have terrain_detail_object_distance which is the distance at which grass, bushes, and shrubs are drawn. By default this is set to 250, which means the vegetation is only shown that is within 250m around the camera. Decreasing this value looks bad, but does increase FPS.The distance that 3d tree models transform into 2d pictures of trees is terrain_tree_billboard_distance, which is set to 50 by default. You should probably leave it at this value.Finally, the terrain_tree_distance determines at what distance terrain trees are rendered. By default this is set to 2000. You can decrease this slightly and benefit from a few gained FPS in some areas. I wouldn't go below 1750 personally.So here's what the bottom of this file looks like: