Detail Level System
Tiberian Sun, Red Alert 2 have built-in, three-stage system for controlling the degree of visual details displayed. This page contains details on how the system works and also lists any related INI flags.
General
Game, at any given time, has a visual detail display level set which corresponds to one of three possible values, which are 0 (Low Detail), 1 (Medium Detail) and 2 (High Detail). Detail level is set in RA2(MD).INI/SUN.INI, and can be customized with detail level slider in options screen. Furthermore in RA2 and YR, the detail level can be customized automatically by the game itself during the play, using certain INI settings as a guide (see: DetailMinFrameRateNormal, DetailMinFrameRateMovie and DetailBufferZoneWidth).
Effects of the detail levels
Various effects of the different visual detail levels, hardcoded or otherwise, are listed below. The effects are listed in a comparison to the mode above them in case of Low & Medium.
Detail level 2 (High)
- Full visual details.
Detail level 1 (Medium)
- Translucency effects on particles are toggled off.
- Animations with DetailLevel above 1 are not drawn.
- Animations with TranslucencyDetailLevel above 1 are drawn completely opaque, even if they use Translucency or Translucent.
Detail level 0 (Low)
- Drawing code for lasers is simplified, resulting in solid lasers without glow effect.
- The way map lighting affects terrain is altered. This is visible, sometimes in rather subtle changes in map lighting.
- Area lighting from light posts appears more simplified & blocky. Same goes for radiation.
- LineTrailColorDecrement value used by UseLineTrail is multiplied by 2.
- Particles with BehavesLike set to Railgun or Smoke are not drawn.
- Animations with DetailLevel above 0 are not drawn.
- Animations with TranslucencyDetailLevel above 0 are drawn completely opaque, even if they use Translucency or Translucent.