More Jade Empire - Some Tweaks

So I'm playing through Jade Empire right now. Really enjoying it. It has all the usual BioWare hallmarks - interesting characters, branching choices, unique and fun lore. If purchased on Steam, there are a few tweaks required to get the game to run, as I posted earlier.

I'm almost done with Chapter 3 (of seven), so I am almost half-way. Even though it is an old game, it was not running as well as it might. So I started playing around with the JadeEmpire.ini file in the game's root folder (in my case, this is located in F: > SteamLibrary > SteamApps > common > Jade Empire).


Note: many of the settings for graphics and such in JadeEmpire.ini are in simple binary. Setting an option to "1" means "true", setting an option to "0" means false. Setting an option to more than 1 will result in it being viewed as 1. Obvious exceptions are for instance the sound-level settings, which operate on a scale of 0-100.

First off, getting rid of the silly frames-per-second lock (default is capped at 30). Thanks to this thread at GOG for making things simple. Open JadeEmpire.ini in Notepad and find the setting "ClampFPS". By default, this is set to "1". Set it to "0". The game is no longer locked at 30fps. Now it seems like the game's framte-rate is auto-locked to my screen refresh rate (60hz). That works for me. If you want fps to go higher, I'm not sure how to do that, as there is no obvious setting for Vertical Sync.

Next I started playing with some of the Render settings. FXAA is off by default; turning that on will reduce some jaggies. BloomLighting will help with some light. Here are my final Render settings:
[Render]
ScrW=1920
ScrH=1080
RefreshRate=60
SoftShadows=1
FSAA=1
BloomLighting=1
FrameBufferFx=1
FocusTrails=1
NoLogos=0
NoMovies=0
D3DAdapter=0
Widescreen=1
DispFmt=1
Windowed=0
SkinSW=0
ForceShader1=0
FontScale=50
AllowAtiFSAA=0
PresentImmediate=0
VertexOpt=1

Jade Empire now plays at a silky smooth 60 fps, and it looks pretty good for a game from 2005. I've done some searching for an HD texture mod. While I've found a few small texture packs focused on individual characters, I have found nothing to re-cloak the entire game. A pity. Jade Empire is as good as any other game made by BioWare (including Mass Effect or Dragon Age). Its lore and location (a land based upon Chinese myths) is unique and largely ignored in today's industry (the new 2D Assassin's Creed Chronicles, partly set in China, may alter that slightly). I hope it is not left to rot, but at the moment there is no indication that anything will be done to continue the franchise.