Note - some of these tweaks may not apply to your version of Midtown Madness.

Performance / Visual Tweaks

When most people begin tweaking their computers or software, the reason is because something is running too slowly or poorly. Midtown Madness has several options which can be disabled in order to boost performance. Start Midtown Madness, click the Options button at the first menu, and choose Graphics. Several options will now be available to you.

Texture Resolution: Obviously, this is the resolution of the textures in the game. If your video card has very low texture memory (e.g. Voodoo Graphics) you can set this option to Medium or Low in order to gain performance. Most users should set this option to High if it is not already. If you have an AGP card or any card with a great deal of texture memory, set this value to Very High. The performance hit is not too severe, and it will greatly impact the overall detail of objects.

Object Detail: This will also impact several extra 3D objects in the game, including the detail of shadows, cars, smoke, and distant objects. Lower this setting only if your frame rate is too low. We recommend using Medium to boost performance a bit, or even Low for very slow systems. If you have a fast enough system, set this to High, or even Very High for all of the eye candy.

Resolution: Increasing the resolution will smooth out the scene, and make nearly all objects look better. If you're using any 3D accelerator card, keep the resolution at 640x480 or higher. If your monitor is 17" or larger, aim for 800x600 or higher. The resolution will directly impact your frame rate, so lower accordingly to boost performance. If are not using a 3D accelerator (see below) then set the resolution to as low as 320x200 for a good frame rate, or higher if you can spare the performance. If your copy of Midtown Madness allows a maximum resolution of 640x480 (or lower/higher) and you want to use a HIGHER resolution, scroll down to "Additional Tweaks."

Renderer: This option configures how the graphics will be rendered. If the only option you have is "Software renderer", then your video card is either not supported or does not support Direct3D. If you are certain your video card does support Direct3D, make sure DirectX 6.1 or higher is installed. Make sure that if your video card is supported, you have selected to use it with this option.

Shadows: The Shadows option allows you to disable or enable shadows on either no objects (None), Vehicles only, Vehicles and Props, or Vehicles, Props, and Skidmarks. We recommend leaving the shadows on for Vehicles only for a slight performance boost on most systems, or set to None for very slow systems. As with many of the other options, set this to Vehicles and Props if your game runs fine for an even higher detail level. If you want all of the detail possible, choose Vehicles, Props, and Skidmarks.

Cloud Shadows: This will toggle the Cloud Shadows, which look like great spots of darkness moving across the ground. Disable this option to ensure a high frame rate at a high resolution. Disabling this will certainly boost performance.

Textured Sky: If you don't care for a detailed background and sky, disable this option for a large performance increase.

Vehicle Reflections: I recommend disabling vehicle reflections only if you're in desperate need of performance. The reflections are the metallic effects you see on all other cars and your own. Disabling this will make the cars look flat instead of glossy.

Hide Pedestrians: Check this box for a performance boost. Pedestrians don't effect or interact with the game at all: they only gobble up performance. Besides, you can't run them over anyway.

Interlaced Rendering: This option is only available if you are using a Software renderer. Enabling this option will boost performance a great deal because only every other line will be rendered. While the result may be a bit strange at first, it looks just fine after a few minutes of play.

Best Texture Filter: Enabling this will select the best texture filter that your video card supports. For most 3D cards this is trilinear filtering. Enabling this feature will not hurt performance and will improve the visual quality a lot, especially in distant objects. If this leads to problems, try enabling trilinear filtering or MIP-mapping in your Windows display settings, if the option is available.

Far Clip Distance: This slider will allow you to choose the distance of the horizon. For more realistic play, set this option farther away (+), and for a higher frame rate, set this option lower (-). The higher the clip distance, the lower frame rate.

Lighting Quality: As you probably guessed, this is the overall quality of the lighting effects, including headlights, sunsets, and light reflections. This will not effect performance as much as clip distance, so feel free to keep this setting high.

Before deciding that all of these settings are what you want, test the game several times.

Sound Tweaks

There are only a few options to tweak the sound in Midtown Madness. To access the sound menu, start Midtown Madness. Click the Options button. Click Audio Options.

Device: If your sound card supports DirectSound, try enabling this. You will know by clicking the selection box. If you see "DirectSound..." try it out. The game should sound the same, but will actually be using less CPU power to work.

Stereo FX: If your system desperately needs performance, set the sound system to Mono instead of Stereo. This will help mostly on low end systems with older sound cards.

Sound Quality: As with the Stereo FX option, only lower this if you desperately need performance.

Play Music: If you uncheck this box, the CD audio music will not be played. Disabling CD audio will help performance for most machines.

Additional Tweaks

Here are a few additional tips to help you boost performance:

Close all other programs when running Midtown Madness. The game takes a lot of memory to run smoothly.

Play in the cockpit view instead of the external view for a slight performance boost.

Lower the Traffic and Pedestrian Density by clicking the Change button at the Races menu.

If your system is giving you problems with Midtown Madness, make sure your latest video drivers are installed and your desktop is set to 16-bit color (or higher in some cases).

If your resolution is stuck at 640x480 or lower (or some other value), you can fix this quite easily. Make sure you don't choose a resolution that your monitor and/or video card does not support though. Edit the video.cfg file in notepad. (or just choose Start, Run, and type "notepad C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Midtown Madness\video.cfg". Hit F3 on the keyboard. Search for "320". You should find a few matches. Assuming you are not going to use 320x200, change EVERY entry that says 320 200 to 800 600 (or the resolution you want). We recommend you try one of these resolutions: 800 600, 1024 768, 1280 1024, 1600 1200. Now, save changes in notepad and start Midtown Madness. You can now access the resolution you entered from the dropdown box under Options -> Graphic Options -> Resolution.