Hey everyone, Hendrich here. Today I feel like to make a thread explaining how to improve the performance of your Tremulous experience. Since I cannot put anything here that could drastically improve performance without damaging your computer, this guide will show some basic tips, not anything new, but some of them are intresting. Go on and read on if you like.
Also, I removed part of my guide about my dear friend (20000 character limit), so yes, I apologize to my friend, but the guide must go on, and it was a hard desicion. 
Now, I know most of you are rollling your eyes, because Tremulous is based on the Quake 3 engine, an engine that could easily be run with the Dreamcast on full settings. Well, that is true, but the developers of Tremulous pushed the Quake 3 Engine to the max, and for the Quake 3 Engine, Tremulous looks amazing. Didn't you ever stop to take in the realism of Tremulous? Look at the little things, particles are flown after a lucifier shot was made, humans and aliens seems to be breathing on and out when they stop moving, or how the shadows are drawn on the player models when you go near a area under a shadow. Inspect how the Models are made, and the detail to all the objects. This is the Quake 3 Engine at it's best, but with that there is a cost.
Many players I know do not have good computers that an run Tremulous at a decent framerate, and thats why I made this guide, for the players who have slow computers. Now, I have two computers, a gorgeous Over-clocked 4 Ghz Quad core computer with the latest video cards, with a fancy price tag to boot. Then theres my crappy computer, a 733 mhz steaming pile of do-do. I mostly play with my crappy one for my reasons alone, but with the tips I know, my computer manages to play Tremulous fine. Read on to find out how to increase your computer's framerate.Note: I'm not going to tell you your computer will be a beast and will run Treulous at 200 FPS. Results in doing this guide will may vary for different computers. You may or may not see a signifigant performance increase by doing this guide. Also, I am not responsible for any damage and/or action caused by following this guide, so if you continue to read, DO IT AT YOUR OWN RISK!<-<-Part One; Good ol' simple computer clean up->->It's simple, it's obvious, it's easy. Cleaning your computer's harddrive of un-necessary files is one of the best ways to ensure system speed and stability. When you play Tremulous, Tremulous uses your computer's harddrive as "Virtual Memory", and "VM" is an amount of space used by programs (Like Tremulous) to do shit like graphic processing. The more VM you have, the more space Tremulous has to process player models,weapons,etc which means the faster Tremlous will go. Now I know most of you do not have this problem, you might have crappy computers that has 200 GB harddrives, but I'm telling this for those who has very little space on thier harddrives. I recommend leaving 2-3 GB of harddrive space on your computer, which will help Tremulous run more effiecently. I have 2.3 GB of harddrive space on my shitty computer, more then enough for Tremulous.
<-<-Part Two; Know your limits->->Tremulous is a pretty small (100 MB) but powerful game for Q3, so many old computers might have a hard time trying to run it. I know people are saying if your computer can run Q3 it can run Tremulous, but remember the important thing. People in Tremulous makes lots of turrets/teselas, and People in Tremulous lags the servers, plus Treulous has improved graphics, physics and a huge particle system to boot. So that means its best to play on servers you know that won't lag like the hells on earth, and servers that is located far away from your computer and attracts foreign players who has huge ping. Take this advice, it helps. If your computer is slow, don't go to servers that has Unlimited BP or has commands or features that creates huge explosions, because your computer's FPS will go down like a brick falling off a tower.
Then theres system requirements. Here are the system requirements "I" recommend, obviously this doesnt mean its "The Official, You Must Meet This Criteria" requirements:Lowest possible system requirements for the Quake 3 Engine:-350 Mhz
-64 Mb of RAM
-Windows 95 or higher
(I put this on for reference ONLY, I am positive that no computer with these "specs" can possibly run Tremulous.)
Minimum System Requirements:-600 mhz
-256MB of RAM
-Windows 98 or higher (I don't know of the other non-Windows Operating Systems)
Reccommended System Requirements:-800 Mhz/1 Ghz
-512MB of RAM
-Windows XP or higher
Optimal System Requirements:-2 Ghz or above
-1 GB of RAM or above
-Windows XP or higher (I really don't reccommend playing Tremulous with any version of Vista)
You might have noticed my computer doesn't meet "my" System Requirements, yea, its really a steaming pile of doggy do-do, even I know it.
<-<-Part Three; Update your daum drivers once in awhile->->Many of you should know what I am talking about, if you don't, then keep reading. "Drivers", is code (Like software) an operating system uses to control disk devices, display adapters, input devices such as a mouse or trackball, modems, fax machines, printers, and other hardware. I am mostly talking about your video drivers. Video drivers are the software that controls your graphics card and such (correct me if I'm wrong). A graphics card it a chip in your computer that supports the games you are playing in 3D. When you first got your computer, it came with the latest driver software for your computer card. After awhile, the company that made the driver software created updates, which improves speed,performance and visuals for you graphics card.
So, I know you now want to update your video drivers for better performance, but how? First you gotta go to your video driver's manufacturer's website. To do this, you gotta know the type of graphics card you have.
(For Windows XP or higher)
Go to Start > Control Panel > System > Hardware (Tab) > Click on Device Manager > Click on Display Adapters and below it you should see the name of your card.
Afterwards go to your computer's manufacturer's website. To find out who is you manufacturer you could look at the front of your computer for a name (Mine is Compaq, yea, I suck) or go to Start > Control Panel > System > General (Tab) and below the lines "Manufactured and Supproted by:" and you should see the name of your computer's manufacturer.
Go to their website by googling them (Like "Compaq's website or somethign like that), and if you cant simply google that because you don't know how to, then you REALLY shouldn't be playing Tremulous, or be using Windows in that case. In thier website should be instructions or a column saying how to download the latest drivers for your card. You can go to Start > Control Panel > System > Hardware (Tab) > Click on Device Manager > Click on Display Adapters and right click on your video driver and click on "Update Drivers", but that may or may not work.
Once your there, you could look for you graphics card and see where you could update your drivers. You on your own there, sorry, but I'm just too lazy to explain how to do everything in the world.
<-<-Part Four; Don't download useless programs->->Many, many, many, many, many people do this. It's stupid, its obvious, but mostly it's stupid. What I mean of useless programs, is programs that say they can acclererate your computer's performance, can update your computer's drivers or they delete viruses/spyware from your computer so your games can go faster. Its..its just dumb. NOTHING out there that has these claims are doing it for free, they themselves has spyware, programs that try to take over your computer or steal private information like credit card numbers. What programs are these? Well, get ready for Hendrich's small-ass list of shitty programs:
Driver DetectiveOh come on, even the title says it all. Driver detective? You can't tell me that isn't spyware, because it is, detectives are alot like spies, god these people were dumb. I downloaded it and it gave me spyware, yay. Didn't see that coming. Supposedly this program says it updates your drivers without you doing anything, hmm, suspicious? Hell no, I'm OK with a program downloading something without my approval, because it can't be spyware, right? No, it is, and when you update your drivers (or so-called) it says your drivers are still out-of-date, so you download again. Oh, its out-of-date again, so youd download again and again and again, then you find out your computers slow, why? well take a wild guess, comon, I dare you.
GL-DirectHmm, I womder what this does? It says on the very-confusing-to-understand description (after you deciphered the daum description), that if you do not have OpenGL, which is a 3D driver that is needed to make Tremulous go, you can use the slower, crappier, and the more diffuclt-to-use Direct 3D! Direct 3D was just like OpenGL, but slower, and it was used in older computers and video games until it was universally replaced by OpenGL. GL-Direct replaces video games that needs OpenGL with Direct 3D. Does it work? barely. Is it slower? yes. Does it have pop-ups that claim your computer has viruses so you should use a bogus virus cleaner which will add more spyware to your system? YES, yes and yes! Comon, don't download this, your smarter then they think you are, are you?
Registrey Booster,Registrey Cleaner, Reg Cleaner, you get the ideaWow, people who download these must be really, really, really stupid. I cannot believe it, I just cant. These programs, like the ones mentioned above states that they clean up your computer's registrey to imrpove your computer's performance, but some of them (Like Registrey Booster) only kills 15 errors on your computer and you have to pay to clean up ALL of the errors. Are people this dumb? Ask yourself, where did these errors come from, because everyone who got these programs had exactly those 15 specific errors, now why does everyone have them? Even people who has Macs or linux, hell, people with FreeBSD had exactly 15 errors. Does every computer, no matter what computer or OS they had have these specific 15 errors. Oh yea, and why cant they un-install Registrey Booster/whatever? Take a guess, comon, take one guess why. Its not just spyware, its Zombieware. Now you must be like "WTF IZ ZUMBII WARE?". Zombieware is a program you cannot un-install, and so most likely its also has spyware, eating your computer up. And besides, why the hell would I trust some foreign program to change my computer's registrey? Take a look on this site, and please tell these idiots whats going on, this is where I got my information from (And yes, I also downloaded ALL of these programs and tested them):
http://forums.cnet.com/5208-6138_102-0.html?forumID=31&threadID=116309&messageID=1321562All of these programs I have reveiwed was 100% tested,spyware scanned, anti-virus scanned and used by me, for your cause. Now I have to delete the spyware that came with it. 
<-<-Part Five, Tips from Techies->->This part focuses on the replies from one of our Tremulous fourm members who actually knows a thing or two about Windows, so you might want to read up on what they say. If you like you can say something that can help others, even if it concerns users with other operating systems, you may.
*I get to edit what they say, if it is necesarry, which is (right now) not the case*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Lakitu7
-Tips about Windows XP/Windows Vista--------------------------------------------------------------------------------I suppose that as one of the few techie guys around here that primarily runs Windows I should weigh in. For qualifications, I think it's sufficient to say that this XP install has lasted for circa 5 years now without an issue (No, if you don't suck you don't have to reformat Windows once a month), and that I reguarly achieve 1.5-2 months of heavy, heavy use without needing to reboot.
I'm impressed that this guide didn't fall into the usual trap of recommending 500 "tweaks" that are, primarily, snake-oil if not outright harmful (BlackViper guide, I'm looking at you).
In XP, you should keep Virtual Memory on. Your system won't use it until you're almost full on real-RAM anyway. If you turn it off and your system needs some more memory, things will just close. Further, many apps (Photoshop, to name one that's rather common) were written with swap-space in mind and do not function with the swapfile turned off. So, DO leave it on. Turning it off is much more likely to hurt you than help. However, the advice to set it to a constant size of something like 1.5-2x your physical RAM is correct. The setting to "automatically manage" is just a recipe for fragmentation. One tip that DOES help a little bit with virtual memory is to split it across different physical drives if you have them. Reading a large thing from swap that's stored on 2 drives will happen faster: twice the max access speed.
In Vista, the OS is more aggressive with using physical RAM and even less aggressive with use of disk cache than XP was. There's even less reason to disable disk cache in Vista. Yes, Vista's aggressive use of physical RAM makes people say "omg it uses so much memory" but that's because they're idiots who listened to OS zealots instead of trying to read how things work. The "extra" memory is prefetch and will be freed as soon as something needs it.
If you're running NTFS, and you really should be on your system drive, defragmenting is really unlikely to make a performance difference.
But yes, by-and-large, this guide has the right idea to not screwing up Windows: Don't do stupid things and don't listen when people tell you to do stupid things. Don't install programs that "MAKE YOUR COMPUTER RUN FASTER" or blindly apply "tweaks" that claim to do the same thing.
If you want your computer to run faster and Trem to load faster, buy another stick of RAM. You can buy 2 gigs of DDR2 in a good brand for $40.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Tuple
-Tips about NTFS + Other tips--------------------------------------------------------------------------------If you're running NTFS, and you really should be on your system drive, defragmenting is really unlikely to make a performance difference.
- Lakitu7Defraging NTFS won't make trem run faster, however depending on how fragmented your drive is, it could greatly improve load times. Additionally, if your page file has been set to autogrow for a while, it too can become fragmented. The only way to fix that is to remove the page file, defrag as much as possible, the recreate the page file at a set size. My only thought in this is that a lot of the younger folks playing trem may have downloaded large zip files/ISOs etc, (ala pirates bay) and could have a pretty heavily fragmented drive. WARNING if your computer has a fragmented page file, there's a good chance you need that page file. Removing it and rebooting (which will be required) may cause extremely painful slowdowns until the page file is recreated, assuming your computer successfully boots.
What may help is to check for running processes in memory using the task manager. Lots of programs leave little helpers behind that are ultimately pointless and stupid, doing little else than checking for an update once a day or less. Some of the culprits are java, adobe acrobat, adaware, some zip programs, etc. I haven't used windows in a while so I don't recall any more, though I used to run into tons of them. If your machine is squeezed for memory, the little amount freed by stopping/killing these programs may make a considerable difference. If there are many of them, the amount of memory they consume may be substantial. Running msconfig from the run dialog comes to mind. I seem to recall that as the name of the program that will simplify locating programs that are run at boot time.
For more advanced users, I'd also recommend checking your system services. Turn off and/or disable any that aren't needed. But I warn you, MS seems to intentionally obfuscates their service names and does not do a good job of defining what they do, so if you don't know what a service does don't touch it. Or at least remember the services you changed and be prepared to change them back. I've seen windows systems do strange things when seemingly (completely) unrelated services are disabled, prepare yourself to reenable them if you run into weirdness. I'm reminded of a win2000 box that failed making VPN connections when a service that appeared (by name and MS web site) to have nothing to do with VPNs, encryption, tunnels, etc was turned off.
All of this is really just an end run around the real performance enhancer, in case you are for some reason unable to do it:
The single most effective performance enhancement has always been, in my experience, to add memory. If your GPU is the issue, memory may not help, for all other things it will. Scavenge old machines, talk to friends or family, they may have an old computer sitting unused that has the same type of memory that your system uses. You'd be surprised where you can find memory if you ask around and/or keep you eyes open for it. Its not as easy as it used to be (which was VERY) as there are many different types of ram these days, its still worth it though.Well, so far thats my guide, I'll add more stuff tommorrow, and feel free to ask any questions. Right now I'm going to play Tremulous, I'm bored. But before I go, I want to let all of you nerds know its OK to try to tell me the information I gave was in-correct or mis-understood. I would like it to be polite though, nobody wants a flaming nerd-douche-bag blabbing on and on how a computer works. Got a problem with my langauge? Then if it's not because of Moderator/Fourm Regulations Issues, then you my friend, cannot handle tremulous, or a rated "M" game. I would gladly censor my content upon request, but guys, who cares? It's just words, I never meant to hurt anybody. (Except for Bush 
)
