Section One: Talks about hardware requirements to play the game.
Section Two: Talks about software requirements to play the game.

Section Three: Talks about optimizating your game startup.
Section Four: Talks about optimizating your video settings.
Section Five: Talks about optimizating your latency. (ping)
Section Twelve: Talks about reducing the size of your game.

Section Six: Talks about anyalising ingame performance factors.
Section Seven: Talks about anyalising your server latency. (ping)

Section Eight: Talks about fixing issue corrupt game installs.
Section Nine: Talks about issues installing your game client.
Section Ten: Talks about viruses/malware with your computer.
Section Eleven: Talks about servers not appearing on the list.

One of the most common questions is can my computer run this game decently. Bellow provides more detailed and turthful insight than the store page. This game will use a maximum for six threads/cores. Over 85% is on the first four threads. (requiring higher ghz)

For a lagg free expereince, you should atleast have a dual core clocked at 2.8ghz intel or 3.2ghz amd. Simularly a quad core clocked at 2.2ghz intel or 2.6ghz amd. (0.1 ghz less for six cores)

Nuclear Dawn doesn't use much on your video card, however it's recommanded having atleast 1250 points here: http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

These speifications should be run with all low settings for a higher quaility gameplay expereince. When the server fills, you should be able to hold 60 fps on low. There might be afew rare instances which drop your framerate to 45-50fps, but it should sling back up.

For the absoulate best gameplay expereince on high settings, you have atleast a quad core clocked at 3.0ghz intel or 4.0ghz amd. (0.1 ghz less for six cores)

Nuclear Dawn doesn't use much on your video card, however for high settings, it's recommanded having atleast 3000 points here: http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

For amd, it would help to have an six core to make the most out the game engine. If you have an eight core, the last two cores will not be used. 90% of the processing rests on the first four threads.

Almost every game is distributed with manatory prerequisites. These are required for your game to run properly and in some cases to even launch.

For any Windows operating system this includes direct x and various Visual C++ Redistributables.

You can manually retreive these things from the microsoft website. Bellow is list of of all the requirements for Nuclear Dawn.

Direct X: https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/download/details.aspx?id=35
Visual C++ 2005 SP1: https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/download/details.aspx?id=5638

The biggest mistake is to just click next really fast to get through the setups. Microsoft makes money by distrubiting junk with these setups which then gets on your computer. You need to look for things like "Install Bing Bar" and etheir decline or uncheck the boxes.

This first thing to do is retreive the error code from the setup. This many be a funky number like cx00000001234, a simple text message as to the failure reason, or a combination of the two.

Now, chances are somebody else had the issue as you. Your best freind is everyone's favourite search engine Google. Plug in the error code and/or text message and start searching.

Chances are pretty high that many popular sites like yahoo answers, microsoft knowledge base and toms hardware will appear with experts posting the solution to the problem. Read carefully and attempt to complete different diagonistic steps to resolve the issue.

The only time you should ask for help is when you've tried your best to resolve the issue yourself but cannot find a solution. When creating a thread, post every micro-detail you think of. The worst thing you can do is post "help, my game won't run." then create the thread.

If your game isn't starting up properly and/or constantly crashing, one thing you can try is removing un-needed elements from the startup procedure. Furthermore, you can take this step further by changing the way your game is displayed.

Right click on Nuclear Dawn in your steam library -> Properties -> General -> Set Launch Options and add the following set of parameters in there.

Just want optimization?
Hit ok and try restarting your game. This will turn off some junk and make your game startup faster, aswell as prevent interference from other operating system processes.

Having Crashing Issues?
Hit ok and try restarting your game. The game will startup differently, this is just a diagnostic process to see if any of these things are causing issues.

A common question one may ask is how can this be acomplished from a desktop shortcut? This is abit more complicated by can still be acheived.

Step 1: Right click on your desktop shortcut -> Properties -> Click the Shortcut tab.

Step 2: Make sure your target begans and ends with a quoation. Note: Your File Path may be different than mine, this is perfectly fine and nothing to worry about.

Step 3: Fix the issue will prevent your game from securely launching. This is acomplished by adding -steam as a commandline argument.

Step 4: Add the additonal command line arguments from above with a space between each one.

Having Issues?

Just want optimization?

Many games allow you to change the detail of various game elements. This provides a lagg free expereince for weaker computers and a high quaility expereince stronger computers.

Nuclear Dawn has an issue with the usage of high effect detail. It will increase your cpu ussage which creates an overhead effect lagging your gameplay expereince.

This usually receives one of two responces when mentioning it a client.
Responce 1: "I got a good computer, it can handle it."
Responce 2: "I got 60 fps, there's no need to lower this setting."

It doesn't matter how strong your computer is or how high your fps is. It still creates a lagg effect which delays processing of various of game elements. All clients alike will see much better game performance by changing this setting to low. The difference is invisible, just like the lagg from keeping this setting on high. (until you actually change it)


To adjust these settings go to options-> video -> advanced. This guide will provide you with two profiles to use, you may however fine tune these settings on your own. Your goal is to hold 60 fps for a lagg free expereince, not 45-50 fps.

Profile 1: This profile is desgined for clients lagging, playing nd on a non-gaming laptop (80% of laptops are too weak for high settings), or using a weaker computer.

• All low settings where applicate
  
• Bilinear filtering and antialiasing.
  
• Multi-core rendering on?
  
• Very low view distance

[/b][/list]

Profile 2: This profile is designed for clients running Nuclear Dawn on high performance hardware. This includes an i5/i7 3.0ghz/ amd 4.0ghz / Mac Book Pro or Gaming 2013 Laptop.

• Low effect detail (see why above)
  
• High settings for everything else.
  
• x4 filtering and antialiasing.
  
• Multi-core rendering on
  
• Moderate view distance (high will crash you)

[/b][/list]

If you really know your stuff, the performance of an i5/i7 can fluxicate by 20-30% depending on the architecture of the model. Haswell or Broadwell requires slighly less than 3ghz for high settings. (long as it has four or more cores)

It's quite common for people to experience inference from other things on their network. This can very easily cause lagg spikes, ping spikes, teleporting etc. If you're running through a router, you can log into it and enable QoS (quaility of service) controls.

If this is done correctly, you can literally download/update steam games while playing Nuclear Dawn. It will have minimal effects on your gameplay expereince interms of networking.

When setting up QoS, it critical that you set a cap which consitents of 90-95% of your total download and upload speed. This will prevent your transit link from getting fully saturated.

The amount of bandwidth which needs allocated depends on the speed of your connection.

Slower connections require a higher percentage bandwidth to flagged as unusable to prevent high latency spikes. They will often resault in more devasting latency spikes aswell.

Ex. 1: Vertex has a 30mbps (30 000kbps) download speed and 10mbps (10 000kbps) upload speed. A cap of 28.5mbps (28 500kbps) download and 9.5mbps (9 500kbps) was implemented.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/97812849/screenshots/Screenshot-QoS.png

Ex. 2: Anyomous has a 6mbps (6 000kps) download speed and 1.5mbps (1 500kps) upload speed. A cap of 5.5mbps (5 500kbps) download and 1.25mbps (1 250kbps) was implemented.

Game Traffic (ie. Nuclear Dawn on port 27005 UDP) should be set the highest possible priority. This traffic is very important and only uses a very small portion of your connection. Also, if there's an option which says "optimize gaming" make sure to check it off.

Other Traffic (http on port 80) should be set to a lower priority. This traffic is less important than your game and often eats up your entire connection.

Enable Console: (esc-> back) -> options -> keyboard -> advanced -> enable console
Open Console: Press ~ (to the left of the number one key)
Open net_graph: Type net_graph 4 in console and press enter.

sv:

• This is the server's frame rate.
  
• Performance degrades from 100% starting bellow 60.
  
• Yellow and red warnings lights are really really bad.
  
• This often fluxicates too much to measure server performance.

Var Msec:

• This is your ping varience based on the server performance.
  
• An 6-8 var msec should be expected, anything higher is bad.
  
• An 30-50 var msec indictates an immediate issue with the server.

FPS:

• This is a measure of how well your game client is perfoming.
  
• For approximately 98% of clients max performance is 60fps
  
• 55-60fps is the threshold for excellent game performance.
  
• 30-45 fps is the threshold for lagg compensation (usually invisible).
  
• 10-20fps is the threshold for major performance issues.

Ping:

• This the communication delay between you and the server.
  
• 10ms ping variences are perfectly normal and not-concerning.

In/Out:

• In the amount of data being received from the server.
  
• Out is the amount of data being sent to the server.

Lerp

• Targets are adjusted by a sent amount of milliseconds. (default: 100ms x2 [200ms])
  
• Changing will mess with your aiming, only change if you understand this feature.

Loss/Choke:

• Loss: Packets are being loss between you and the server. (latency issue)
  
• Choke: You aren't receiving enough packets from the server.

Graph

• This is a measure of the amount of action happening in the game.
  
• The higher the graph, the more demanding it is on your computer.

Far right /s values

• Top: Your set update rate.
  
• 2nd Down: The amount of updates being received from the server.
  
• 3rd Down: The amount of updates being sent to the server.
  
• Bottom: Your set cmd rate.

Disable net_graph: Type net_graph 0 in console and press enter.

To analyze you latency to a target ip address you MTR is a really effective tool.

Windows: Get it here. http://winmtr.net/download-winmtr/
Linux: For Ubuntu use apt-get install mtr. Then in terminal do mtr ip.

Quick Take: This consistents of 50-150 packets. Expereinced users will normally stop here when they pinpoint the issue.

Long Take: This conistantes of 500+ packets. This is the standard when posting it to other users. It's also used to pinpoint on and off type issues.

Posted bellow is an example I took from my connection to the Redstone London server. (108.61.173.62) I took a shortcut and only did 151 packets becuase results are very consistent.

Notice: The packet loss means nothing becuase it isn't carriered to the final resault. The easist way to describe it is deprotizied ICMP traffic or a false alarm.

DD-WRT: This is my dir 615 router, I flashed with dd-wrt. (works extremely good)

10.194.140.1: This is the cable connection from my house to the node down the street.

cpe,ae2,ae1: This my traffic which runs to my Internet Service Provider's (ISP's) server in Toronto, Ontario. 15ms to reach here is considered decent for a cable internet connection.

gtt.net: This is my ISP passing the traffic off to the GTT carrier in Toronto.

Level 3.net: This is my traffic running to the Level 3 carrier overseas.

CHOOPA-LLC: This is the traffic being passed off to the choopa datacenter in London, UK.

Vultr.com: This if the traffic being sent to the gameserver hosted in the datacenter.

Final Result: I reached the server with a 104ms best ping and 105ms ping average. This is a model route becuase it goes directly from Toronto, Ontario to London, UK.

The way steam operates is the game files to every game are stored in the cloud on their servers. When you download/install a game, a game cache on your computer is created. A cache is a collection of files stored in memory. (in this case a game stored on your hardrive)

Sometimes this cache can get corrupt causing all sorts of random game issues. To solve this issue, you can verify it's integerity. This will go through and check every file to make sure it matches the exact replica from steam servers. Any different files will be redownloaded and reinstalled apon completion.

This has virtually the same effect as reinstalling your game and takes a fraction of the time. Depending on the speed of your hardrive, it will etheir take afew minutes or ten minutes. Your steam will lock up and may appear unresponsive... This is completely normal.

To Verify the Integery of the Game Cache...
Right Click on Game -> Properties -> Local Files -> Click Verify

Having issues installing your steam game? Welp you've come to the right place.

Have you tried downloading a different game at the exact moment you're expereincing these issues with Nuclear Dawn?

Under steam-> downloads -> download region
Have you tried changing the download region to rule out a specific download server?

Have you attemped to delete your download progress and try again?
Right Click on Nuclear Dawn -> Delete Local Content.

What operating system are running? And are you opt-ed into the steam beta client?
It may have random issues with your steam client, as it lacks alot of testing.

Uninstall some games you no longer need. Right click on them and hit delete local content. Also see crap cleaner and disk cleaner on section 10: malware removal.

~Got any other errors? Post a comment bellow. I'd be glad to add more issues and solutions.~

Disclaimer: I TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR DAMAGES CAUSED BY ANYTHING IN THIS SECTION. THESE TOOLS SHOULD BE RUN AT YOUR OWN RISK.

This section retains to removing things off your computer, which shouldn't be on there. These can slow down your computer and/or cause all sorts of random problems.

If your computer is badly infected, there is a slight chance it may not boot back up after running combofix. Should this happen, you should consult a virus removel expect. (such as Vertex) More complicated techniques will be required to clean up your computer in this case. The chances this happening are aproximately 1-3%. To revert these changes, press f8 repeatively and 'restore to the last know good configuration'.

Run these in the EXACT order posted bellow.

Combofix: This is by the far the most effective virsus/malware removel tool out there. It's sadly only compatiable with windows 8.0 or ealier however. Get it here. http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/combofix/

Junkware Removal Tool: Anther virus/malware removel tool. Get it here. http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/junkware-removal-tool/

Adware Cleaner: Anther virus/malware removel tool. Get it here. http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/adwcleaner/

Malware Bytes: Scan for anything left over. Get it here. https://www.malwarebytes.org/

Tweaking Tool: Repair damages by removel and viruses. Get it here. (installer recommended) http://www.tweaking.com/content/page/windows_repair_all_in_one.html

Crap Cleaner: Clean up un-needed stuff from doing various things. Get it here. http://download.cnet.com/CCleaner/

Windows Update: Keep checking and installing updates until there isn't anymore left.

Disk Cleanup: Find it on Windows. Clean up system files. Remove all but the most recent restore point.

Enjoy your cleaned up computer!

Notice: You can only run one virus scanner on your PC. Malware Bytes isn't considered a virus scanner. Also, you don't need to pay for premium on any of these.

Avast: You will never have to pay for a virus scanner again. My personal favourite, very effective at protection. If you're happy with your virus scanner that's good aswell.

Malwarebytes: This can be run in-combination with your virus scanner.

Windows 10: If your're on any ealier version of Windows consider upgrading. It much more secure and harder to get a virus. Some features include the smart screen and secure boot.

Chances are you're just trying querying faster than your connection can handle.

Go to: Steam-> Settings -> Ingame.

Set your ingame browser pings to a excessively small number like 500.

Notice:: Simply checking everything off can remove unwanted things from your PC. It's highly recommended taking the time to read warnings as you check things off. A good example of this is custom content from servers, which is best used as an one time thing.

CCleaner is very popular application for cleaning up junk on your computer. It typically free's gigibytes of space on your hardrive by removing scum buildup overtime.

Download Link: https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download

I have added Nuclear Dawn support to ccleaner via the community winapp2.ini file. It allows you to remove garbage received from servers, broken tutorials, developer files etc. These can easily total almost one gigabyte. Also included, is steam support for removing first time setup files.

Download Link: http://winapp2.com/Winapp2.ini

Step 1: Go to installation directory.

Step 2: Paste winapp2.ini file.

Step 3: (optional): trim winapp2.ini for faster startup. paste in installation directory and follow instructions. This *may* be complicated for certain types of users.
Trim.bat
Trim Instructions