As newer video cards come out it becomes more aparent that Freelancer is an aging game and more people run into video card related problems (one being that the game no longer recognizes their hardware). It is for this reason that the QuickFix patch project will always contain the latest PCI hardware signatures for newer video cards (and additional config files may be made available between patch releases). However, this does not solve all of Freelancer's problems. To help combat these problems here is a quick guide.


1) flconfigdatabase.txt (what it does and why you need updates)

The most important thing to know about this file is that it is a hardware compatibility config file. This file tells the game that the Intel 740 Graphics Accelerator does not have the technological capabilities of running Freelancer. It also tells the game that the nVidia GeForce 7900 GTX is one badass piece of hardware that will run the game to Stuttgart and back faster than a Nomad can blow you out of the sky.

There are two ways to get an updated config file : the easy way is to install the Freelancer QuickFix Patch and then download the latest interim patch, or you can do it the hard way and edit the flconfigdatabase.txt file by hand. If you plan on doing it yourself then you will need to find out what the Device ID is of your video card and the Vendor ID of the company that made it.

To get the IDs you need, download a program called System Information Viewer, unzip it, and then run the program. Once it's running click on the "Machine" button and then the "Devices" button to get to the correct screen. Once you reach the Devices screen look under the Class column for a line labeled Display and trace across to the Vendor-Dev-Sub_OEM-Rev column. The first set of four characters (they can be numbers or letters) is the Vendor ID , and the second set (not including the hyphen "-" ) is the Device ID . The last bit of information you need is from the Windows Description (PCI Description) column, which gives the Device Description (the name) of your video card.

To add your hardware device open the flconfigdatabase.txt file (it is found in the EXE folder) and scroll down to the section where your brand of video card is located (you can search by Vendor ID codes: ATI is 1002 and nVidia is 10de). Next you need to find the existing group of similar cards to the one you want to add (so that you add a Radeon in the Radeon section, if you add it to the wrong section you could screw up the game). Once you are in the right spot in the file you need to add your new line in the proper alpha-numerical order (as follows):

0x5b60 = "Radeon X300 PCX (RV370)"
0x5b62 = "Radeon X600 PCX (RV370)" <-- if your Device ID is 5b62 it goes here (make sure to add "0x" before the ID or the config file will not work)
0x5b63 = "Radeon X550 PCX (RV370)"

When adding new lines you have to follow the entry format exactly or you will cause problems. The format is:

0x{Device ID} = "{Device Description}"

Where {Device ID} and {Device Description} are the respective items of information you pulled from the System Information Viewer program. The best practice for the description is to leave out the vendor name (so "Radeon X600 PCX (RV370)" instead of "ATI Radeon X600 PCX (RV370)" ), and also replace any square brackets "[" with parenthesis "(".

And that's it. You are probably better off letting the =EOA= Players Consortium deal with updating the config file and by Submitting Hardware Devices to us you can contribute to the entire community.

*** Continued below ***

Edited by - Louva-Deus on 1/2/2007 3:54:09 PM