2.11 Graphics

2.11.1 Standard, high and low resolution

Liquid War 6 will try and pick up a default resolution when the game is launched the first time. It won’t use your maximum screen resolution but will instead list all available fullscreen modes, and pick up one which is usually something like two thirds of the highest mode. This is to allow switching back and forth between fullscreen and windowed mode using the same settings. This automatically picked-up resolution really depends on your hardware and driver. It is called “standard” in the graphics options menu.

Then it is possible to automatically select the minimum and maximum resolution your hardware allows in fullscreen mode. These are called “low” and “high” in the graphics options menu. Just click on the button that display the resolution, it will change and use the next setting. In windowed mode, the game won’t accept the highest available mode but will instead use a percentage of it, defined by the --windowed-mode-limit parameter.

You might still be in a case where this is not enough. For instance your maximum resolution is 1600x1200, Liquid War 6 picks a default mode of 1280x960 for you but for some reason you want to play in 800x600, fullscreen. In this case, simply switch to windowed mode, resize the window with the mouse (the resolution button will show you the current resolution) and just choose a resolution near 800x600. It does not even need to be exactly 800x600, 798x603 would probably fit. Then when switching back to fullscreen, you’ll be in 800x600, the game will automatically pick up the fullscreen mode which is closest to the current windowed mode resolution.

2.11.2 Display rate

By default the game will try and run at 60 frames per second. Given the nature of Liquid War 6, this is probably enough. Higher values will maybe give a slightly smoother display, but barely noticeable.

You can activate the display of frames per seconds (aka “fps”) through the menu (“options -> system”) or with the command line (“–display-fps”).

On a single processor system, reducing the number of frames per second might allow the rest of the game run faster. So if you notice the game is really slow, in terms of “fighters move slowly” then you might be happy reducing the display rate and therefore giving power back to the other parts of the program. On a dual-core (or more) or on a multi-processor system, this is probably useless since the game is threaded and has a dedicated thread for display purposes. The command line option to reduce the number of frames per second is --target-fps.

Additionnally, the parameter --gfx-cpu-usage allows you to force the display thread to “take a rest” and go idle for some time. This is advanced settings, most users won’t touch this.