Since there doesn’t seem to be a definitive guide on UT2004 frame-rates and connection settings, I thought I’d share what I found to make everyone’s online experience (much) better.There is often some confusion as to what netspeed to use and which frame-rate is better than the other, hopefully this guide will put this to an end. Since this game is almost ten years old a lot of the settings were designed for PC’s and networks of pre-2004, but we can now change some things to make better use of current tech.What we all want to achieve is lower latency when playing online to give us the best gaming experience. To achieve this we need a high stable frame-rate and to also tweak connection settings to send more packets of data. Why more packets? So that the game doesn’t have to wait as long to send your ‘hit data’ to the server – meaning that your hits will be registered more often and more accurately! Before anyone complains, the weapons fire rates are independent of the games’ tick-rate, frame-rate, or packets sent/s, meaning that firing weapons online should be closer to how they feel offline (The way it’s meant to be played ).By default the online fps is capped to 85fps. This sends about 43 packets/s, which gives you 24ms of latency before you’ve sent that data to the server. When the Netspeed is set above 10000 (also unlocks fps cap) then the game will send 85 packets/s at 85fps, which gives you 12ms of latency.Now what if you want higher frame-rate?I’ve found that the engine caps the online frame-rates to these values:FPS Caps (BIOS: HPET=off): 85, 93, 102, 113, 127, 145, 169, 202, 252, 335, 502FPS Caps (BIOS: HPET=on): 90, 100, 111, 125, 142, 166, 199, 250, 333, 500So, 85fps = (1/0.012 + 2), 93fps = (1/0.011 + 2), 102fps = (1/0.010 + 2), etc.This can be changed via ut2004.ini:[Engine.LevelInfo]MaxClientFrameRate=85.0Let’s say that you wanted 120fps and you put MaxClientFrameRate=120 in your ut2004.ini, you’ll only get 113fps in-game as that’s the next cap down according to the above fps caps. So, you cannot pick whatever fps cap you like.OK, so how do you work out which Netspeed to set?User.ini:[Engine.Player]ConfiguredInternetSpeed=Or, type: ‘Netspeed xxxxx’ in console.Or, bind to a key: ‘key=Netspeed xxxxx’.
[WinDrv.WindowsClient]MinDesiredFrameRate=201.000000
[Engine.LevelInfo]MaxClientFrameRate=201
[Engine.Input]//NumPad8=Stat Net | stat fps | netspeed 10001//NumPad8=Stat Net | stat fps | netspeed 10880NumPad8=Stat Net | stat fps | netspeed 20000
