Optimization

Like many players, we love smoothness in games. Here are some tips to optimise your game experience.

(1) Disable compositing

Compositing is known to interfer with games as it takes graphical resources to draw desktop elements. Game running at the same time may experience choppy framerate, stuttering or image tearing.

Some operating systems or desktops(in Linux) may disable compositing automaticaly when you play in fullscreen but many of them doesn't do in windowed modes. Some of them even doesnt do in fullscreen nor permit to programs to disable it.

How to disable compositing :

Windows XP : Not concerned, this os has no compositing.

Windows 7 :

In the folder where you extracted the game zip.
Select the game file executable in file explorer,
Use the right click button to display contextual button.
Select "options".
Select in the box "disable compositing".
Clique "ok".
Compositing will be automaticaly disabled at Blackvoxel launching and enabled again on

Linux - All versions :

On many linux desktop, compositing can't be disabled and there is no standardized way for applications to tell compositor to stop camping on graphical resources. This is NOT a Blackvoxel issue, this is the same problem with all OpenGL games on Linux. These advices are usefull for all games.

How you can turn around the problem :

-Use "2D only" desktop that doesn't use compositing.
-Disable compositing on desktops that allow switching between compositing and non compositing modes.
-On Ubuntu 12.04 LTS in the login box, click on the round point and choose "Unity 2D" to get to non composited mode.
-On KDE, you can use some scripts to disable compositing using DBUS.

(2) Tune graphic options

If your processor and graphic card are fast and powerfull and can sustain high framerate at best settings  you can :

Disable Vertical Sync to maximize sector refreshing speed.
Set texture quality to "best" or same to ensure best texture quality.
Force Anisotropic filtering to high level to enable best image quality.
Enable anti aliasing to have smooth graphics.

If your computer hardware isn't powerfull :

Disable Vertical sync to maximize framerate.
Force Anisotropic Filtering to "force off" because blackvoxel use anisotropic 8x by default.
Disable any anti aliasing.
Reduce rendering distance in the file "Settings_Hardware.dat" with text editor. This file is located in your user home data directory(My Documents in Windows) in a directory named  "Blackvoxel".