Tweaking the Game

The game is in general a bit sluggish when it comes to controls. But you can compensate with lower resolutions, especially on slower systems. It doesn't look so great, but it's certainly more pleasant than dropped inputs and slow reactions. See also Graphics Settings on the matter.

By default the game only offers 4:3 resolution. With the 1.3 patch is also allows for wide-screen resolutions.

Important: It is a known problem for the Armada 1 CD version to not run with resolutions beyond full HD (1920×1080). The game lets you set higher resolutions. But when trying to actually start a game, the game crashes to the desktop and resets the setting to safe 640×480. See also section Too High Resolutions Crash the Game on the matter.

The GOG release of the game comes with the gog.com DirectX Wrapper. It allows for an adjustment of the game's optical properties. However, it is recommended to use the following settings:

• Display mode: Do not use a particular resolution or the desktop resolution. Instead, set it to Set by application. This way the game selects the resolutions and it will work as expected. Otherwise you might end up using not the desired resolution (e.g. setting 3840×2160 in-game is well possible with the 1.3 patch and similar techniques, but when you override this with another resolution with the wrapper, let's say, full HD, then the game will use full HD instead).
• Presentation: Should work either way, but if you encounter problems, you might want to switch the setting.
• Aspect ratio correction: Use it.
• Scaling method: Use Screen fit.
• Antialiasing: Do not over-do that! On high resolutions it will enhance the experience. On low resolutions too high of an AA value will make the game look fuzzy.

The rest of the settings does not seem to make a whole lot of difference, except maybe the Gamma correction (if you need that).

One small annoyance can be remedied if one is not completely satisfied with the standard overview. Armada starts by default zoomed in quite far, which doesn't exactly improve the overview of the events at all. In principle, you can now adjust this zoom by holding down both mouse buttons at the same time or use the - and + keys of your numbers block. (The mouse control of this is a bit bumpy, but once you got the hang of it, it works. First the right button, then the left one, in between make sure that you don't move the mouse.) But you can also adjust this setting in the RTS_CFG.h file. There you can find this line:

float OVERVIEW_INIT_HEIGHT = 1000.0;

That is the value of how far the game starts zoomed out when a match or campaign mission is loaded. It is in general useful to use the maximum value here. You can set the maximum value in this line:

float OVERVIEW_MAX_HEIGHT = 1000.0;

The values 1000.0 are deliberately chosen in this example. If you configure higher settings, parts of the map may start to disappear, due to clipping. You can also increase the clipping distance by adjusting the ART_CFG.h file accordingly. The line with:

float FAR_CLIPPING_PLANE = 1400.0;

is the reason why you can't see anything on the map that is beyond a certain distance. You can set it generously to 20000.0. Then you can increase the OVERVIEW_MAX_HEIGHT value accordingly. Normally it is sufficient to be in the range of 5000. With this you can already see practically the whole map.

At this point, a warning is in order: The larger overview of course requires more computations from the system, so the CPU/GPU load will increase and the game may start to jolt. Especially if many nebulae and other elements have to be rendered, the game jolts even on current computers. Also some people consider this change to be cheating, as it gives a player the advantage of a bigger overview over the battle field. The default value for OVERVIEW_INIT_HEIGHT is 400 and OVERVIEW_MAX_HEIGHT is 700. While setting OVERVIEW_INIT_HEIGHT to 700 will certainly not hurt, as you can achieve this without any changes in-game as well, the OVERVIEW_MAX_HEIGHT might be a matter for discussion.

If one uses such increased zoom levels, one will notice very quickly that even at maximum scroll speed, the scroll is rather slow. This can be changed by turning up the parameters FAST_MAX_SCROLL_SPEED and MAX_SCROLL_SPEED in the RTS_CFG.h, e.g. to 20. This is not only useful when zoomed in, but also at higher resolutions, e.g. when playing on full HD. The scrolling always feels a bit slow otherwise.

The sound settings may be of some concern, because Armada causes problems with Windows XP and 2000. The unit messages and notifications sound choppy. So if the following tricks shown in Sound Stutters on XP or Windows 2000 don't work and the sound still sounds terrible, just set the speech volume to 0. You are not required to hear that, if it sounds crappy anyway.

This one of the two most important configuration files, that control the Armada behavior with settings that are not reachable from in-game settings. Here is an overview of the most interesting config variables:

This file uses the ART_CFG.h (include directive), so everything set in ART_CFG.h can be overridden here as well. It controls more of the technical aspects. Be careful with some of the values here, that actually affect the game rules (e.g. how much something costs or where a unit can go). If these parameters are not set to the same values for all involved players in multi-player, the game will go de-sync rather early on (as units or yards do things they would normally not be possible for some of the players).