Joint Operations Tips and Tricks

For many many good Joint Operations tips and tweaks, you should visit the (german) Joint Ops Basecamp-Website (search the forum!).

There are ways to simulate missing 3D-Hardware in Software. Remember that this will cause more CPU-consumption (~10%-100% more depending on screen resolution and graphics features). Therefore it's always good to decrease the screensize and the graphics features, see Setting up the game for hosting.

ServeOnly-Flag:

• Try this first: set the Game Shortcut like this: “C:\…\Jointops.exe” /w /serveonly /exp jox01
  • /w - makes the game run windowed.
  • /serveonly - game will run with lower demands on the graphics card.
  • /exp jox01 - chooses the extension 'Escalation' to be run.
• Important:
  • Set your Desktop color depth to more than 16 Bit (24 or 32 Bit recommended)!
  • Set 3D Acceleration under the 'Advanced' graphics settings to Maximum.

Swiftshader:

With Swiftshader, you don't need a 3D-accelerated graphics card. It also doesn't need to have much RAM, so your 4MB S3-Virge PCI-card would work. But the graphics-emulation will cost some CPU-Power, so you need a faster Processor!

• Install SwiftShader: (SwiftShader emulates the graphics card)
  • download the Transgaming SwiftShader Demo.
  • unzip the files d3d8.dll and d3d9.dll to your Joint-Ops directory.
  • copy my SwiftShader.ini to your Joint-Ops directory, it will set all SwiftShader-options to lowest possible.
  • Remeber to set your game resultion very low (640×480) and use the 'Performance Profile'.
  • You could use my game.cfg, it is preconfigured for lowest graphic settings and for SwiftShader.

3D-Analyzer:

With 3D-Analyzer, you can emulate Hardware-T&L on a 3D-accelerated graphics card. This means, the game will run on many newer onboard-graphics that have some 3D-support and at least 16 MB RAM. You will also need the graphics driver from the card vendor, which is a huge problem for Windows Server 2003: There are only few graphics drivers from vendors available.

• Download 3D-analyzer from Tommti-Systems, and install it.
  • Choose the Jointops.exe from the game directory.
  • Check all options in the top middle field (saying emulate …)
  • Click Run (and hope it works!)

There are already some good guides (in german) at the Joint Ops Basecamp Forum, see these first. I'll might write more on the topic for the sake of completeness, but don't expect anything new.