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Level Editor
With the Level Editor, modders are able to create totally new missions, even story-based campaigns and distribute them to other gamers, who can easily enjoy the new content with the built-in support in Shadowgrounds Launcher utility.
A set of building blocks were created to help users create buildings fast and easy, instead of using the costly professional tools used in the making of the original Shadowgrounds game. With dedication it's also entirely possible to match Shadowgrounds' outdoor environment quality. Gamers can also use features such as environmental effects (rain, snow, sandstorm, and lightning), conversations between characters, computer screens/PDAs and much more.
Download:
Approximately 2.6MB
Links:
+ WorthPlaying
+ StrategyInformer
+ FileFront
+ Meridian4
FAQ
Click here for PDF version
What are the Launcher options?
In general, the overall options that you would select from the Launcher's standard menu (not the Advanced menu) should be quite well adjusted for most cases. If you have a CPU and a graphics card that are of "the same caliber", you should have no need to tweak the individual options found in the Advanced menu. If you have an old CPU but a new graphics card, or vice versa, then adjusting the individual Advanced options accordingly may give you better visual quality with no significant performance loss.
If you are experiencing a big framerate drop during fights, then you probably have a bottleneck caused by the CPU. If you have constantly low framerates, even when nothing is happening, then your performance is probably limited by the graphics card. (Of course, in reality, it's not this simple, but this is a good guideline.)
Ground Shadows Texture - this option affects the shadows that are projected on the ground/floor from various static/semi-dynamic light sources. This option defines the resolution at which the shadows are drawn. If you set it to lowest setting, you'll have shadows with slightly jagged edges. If you set it to highest setting, the shadows should be sharp/smooth. Which setting is best for you, depends on your screen resolution, graphics card and preference... (If you have a very low screen resolution, raising the shadows texture quality very high won't make much difference.) This option will mostly just affect your graphics card performance, setting it to a higher setting will not add any CPU load.
Shadow Texture Quality - this option affects the shadows that you get from dynamic lights (player's flashlight being the most common one). Basically the effect is the same as with the above "Ground Shadows Texture". Low quality may give you shadows with jagged edges, high quality will not. Mostly affects graphics card performance, and not CPU.
Shadows Level - when set on very low, this option will disable most shadows. When set on low/medium, this will disable some shadows and render only the most apparently visible shadows (may cause some shadow "popping" at screen edges), when set on higher settings this option will render the maximum amount of shadows. Mostly affects graphics card performance, some effect on CPU too.
Misc - this option affects a lot of miscellaneous quality factors. Along with the "Weather Effects Level" option, this option probably has the most CPU performance effect... So if you have a slow CPU but a good graphics card, these 2 options are probably the ones you'll want to lower first. (In case of a slow CPU, you probably should not set these above the medium setting, or at the highest setting.)
Distortion Effects - this will have a huge performance hit on your graphics card. Use it only if you have a powerful graphics card. Not-so-powerful graphics cards will most likely take a big hit if the Distortion Effects are on. (The Distortion Effects are used in explosions and in the water effects and they also add significant coolness to the Flamethrower.)
It is possible to tweak some of the rendering options even more accurately than what the Launcher allows. You'll have to either manually edit the configuration files or use the game console to modify those options. However, there should be no need to do any such tweaking, as the Launcher already offers more than enough options to tweak.
The Launcher text does not fit the window!
There have been some problems with widescreen resolutions but those should be fixed. However, there is a known bug that makes the text and buttons go out of the Launcher window.
Most likely your DPI settings are turned up. Turning them down should fix the problem. We may fix the need for turning them down in an upcoming patch, but for now please do so.
The settings can be found in the Control Panel -> Display Properties -> Settings tab -> Advanced button -> General tab -> DPI Setting. The normal size is 96.
My game doesn't start!
Please make sure you have DirectX 9.0c or later installed. Also make sure you have the latest graphics card drivers and that you system meets the minimum system requirements.
The game runs really slow on my computer.
Try setting your graphics options to low settings. Also note that “Disappearing corpses” (dead monsters will disappear in 30 seconds after their death) improves the performance. Another such option is the “Distortion”, which means the beautiful Heat Distortion effect used with the flamethrower and explosions – Distortion should definitely be deselected on slow machines.
After playing for a while, my fps drops drastically.
This error may occur with certain graphics cards with certain drivers. Try visiting the operating system desktop once by pressing alt-tab (not by exiting the game). Then go back to the game in similar manner, or click the Shadowgrounds button in the Taskbar. This should fix the poor fps.
When I start the game it says "Version mismatch"?!
This error is due to a copied executable file. If you have bought the game from normal channels, this error should not happen. Please contact Support for more information.
To start a co-op gamepad game, follow these steps:
- Check that your gamepads show up in your operating system’s Game Controllers (in Control Panel)
- Launch Shadowgrounds
- Go to Profiles and create a new player profile for each gamepad/player, or modify an existing profile.
- Select one of the newly created profiles and go to Options menu.
- Set up the button configuration and the X and Y axis (for aiming, usually mapped to the right analog stick).
- Repeat the process for each player participating in the game.
- When all players have configured their gamepads and/or keyboard+mouse, select New Game (or Load Game if you have a previously saved Co-op game).
- Select Co-Operative, then the difficulty level, and press Start.
- That's it! Have fun!
I have very low FPS in missions with water.
The water effects use procedural textures, which may cause some problems. These will help:
Set the Launcher to Low or Very Low settings, and play the game
OR
In the Launcher Advanced menu, select Low or Very Low in the Misc box (lower-left corner).
There are some weird graphics sparkles on the screen when flashlight is off?!
This problem is very rare but may happen on some graphics cards. The problem is related to the glow buffer. It has been noted on at least GeForce FX5900 XT. This only happens when the flashlight is turned off.
However, the fix is very simple: Deselect "Render Glow" from the Launcher Advanced menu. If this does not help, then turn off "Distortion Effects" too. Now the problem should be gone.
The game can't play videos / WMV codec problems.
A very minor portion of players have some problems with the WMV codecs used by the game. Some of the cut scenes use rendered videos and these use WMV. The required WMV codecs should have been installed during the installation process, but it might be that they don't work on some computers.
You may also get a message like this when trying to launch the game or during the game: "The procedure entrypoint WMCreateReader could not be located in the dynamic link library WMVCore.DLL." (or similar).
Luckily there is a simple fix for this: Download Windows Media Player 10 from Microsoft.
I can't use all the keyboard buttons?
Shadowgrounds allows only certain keyboard buttons to be mapped as controls.
However, some people might want to use buttons that are not supported initially. Such could be the left and right brackets on the US keyboard (located next to the P letter). This is possible but it requires that you manually edit the keybinds.txt which is located in Profiles\yourprofile\Config\ directory. Please take a backup copy of this file before you edit it.
Now, you should see lines of text with a keyboard button next to it, such as:
attack = button-1
Before you can map your desired button to the file, you need to know the correct number for it. This might be hard to obtain, because it's only included in the DirectX Input key codes names, and doesn't seem to be readily available on the Internet. The best way is to experiment or get in touch via the forums (Steam and/or Shadowgrounds). The key codes are related to their position on the keyboard.
In the case of the left and right brackets, their numbers are #26 and #27, respectively. So if you want the left bracket to shoot the primary fire, you would write:
attack = #26
That should work. However, with the original Shadowgrounds retail version, there is a bug when you quit the game the next time, that the keybinds.txt file gets messed up if you use the # character. So, before playing the game, set the file as "read-only" (in XP, right-click, select Properties, and give the read-only attribute). Of course, after this you can't change the controls in the game menus, so make sure you have good controls. (And of course you can always uncheck the read-only attribute.)
This # problem has been fixed and will be corrected in the current patch.
The game crashes at New Atlantis loading screen.
One user has reported that the demo played fine for the first two missions, but the New Atlantis level crashed right after the loading screen. In the Steam demo, the computer rebooted itself, and on the normal demo the New Atlantis introduction cut scene played ok but then crashed and the computer rebooted itself.
The problem went away when the user updated his graphics and sound card drivers.
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