The Main Menu

Armed Response Conduit

Soldier of Fortune’s Main Menu can be accessed at any time during a game by pressing Esc. Use the mouse or the Tab key to highlight options inside the Main Menu. Press Esc at any time to go to the previous screen.

Main Menu Components

Game Multiplayer Options Game Statistics Violence Lock Exit Game News Ticker

Game

This menu screen offers a variety of game options regarding saved games, loading games, starting games, difficulty levels, game credits, and your customizable login name.

Begin a New Game

Starts the game with all of the current settings.

Change Codename – The default name is John Mullins. Feel free to change the user name to reflect your real name, nickname, or online identity.

Play Tutorial – Launches the tutorial level, which shows you how to play Soldier of Fortune. If you are new to the first-person action genre, playing through the tutorial is highly recommended.

Start Game – After you have adjusted all of your configuration options and set the difficulty options to your liking, pressing the Start Game button will launch Soldier of Fortune, propelling you into a covert world of mercenary combat.

Difficulty: The difficulty levels in Soldier of Fortune are set up to provide an ever-increasing level of challenge for beginners to expert players. As your skills improve, you can increase the difficulty level to make the game more challenging. Difficulty levels affect the number of enemies that appear, the number of weapon and item pickups, the health level of the enemies, and a number of other factors. Below is a listing of the difficulty level choices you are offered and the number of saves you are allowed per game level.

Note: The game automatically saves at the beginning of each level. The difficulty level you select determines the number of additional saves above and beyond the begin-level save.

Effortless (Unlimited Saves)
Easy (Four Saves)
Medium (Three Saves)
Challenging (Two Saves)
Unfair (No User Saves)
Custom (Player’s Choice)

Custom Settings – This menu allows you to customize the difficulty settings for Soldier of Fortune. Use this menu to determine the number of saves, amount of enemy spawning, the enemies’ toughness, and your weapon carrying capacity. For more information, see the Multiplayer section on page 27.

Load a Game

Allows you to return to the action of a previously saved game.

Save a Game

Allows you to save your current game to your hard disk.

Credits

An homage to all of the people at Raven Software, Activision, and a dozen other companies who worked together to bring you Soldier of Fortune.

Options

This menu screen brings up menus that customize all aspects of the game’s configuration. Screens regarding controls, video, sound, and scalability options can all be found here. See page 27 for multiplayer settings.

Alter Key Bindings

This sub screen, allows you to adjust weapon, movement, and item keys as well as multiplayer keys for help, show scores, chat, and team chat. Unbound keys are represented with question marks. Press the Reset To Defaults button at any time to reestablish the default configuration. Please see Controlling The Action (page 18) for more information about key bindings.

Soldier of Fortune offers a pre-defined key configuration so you can jump straight into the action. Since not all playing styles are the same, there are five different configurations. Left-click on the name of the key configuration currently displayed to cycle through all of the available key options. You can also set your own key bindings and save your own configuration.

Alter Display Settings

This sub screen, represented by the monitor icon, allows you to adjust the dynamic video settings and video system settings and provides sliders for gamma, contrast, brightness, and light intensity.

Dynamic Video Settings

These five settings can be adjusted based on the speed of your PC and the quality of your 3D accelerator card. If you have a low-end video card, these options should be turned down or off to increase the frame rate. If you have a high-end video card, you can take full advantage of these features.

GHOUL Lighting Method – Controls the detail level of lighting on models in the game.
Specular Lighting – Turns model highlighting on and off in the game.
Detail Texturing – Controls the detail of textures based on your proximity to them.
Detail Texturing Range – Controls the distance away from detail textures the player needs to stand in order to see them.
Texture Mode – Increases and decreases the overall texture quality of the game.

Note: Some of these options also appear in the Adjust Dynamic Scalability menu. You can adjust them in either place and the change will be reflected in both sections of the menu.

Video System Settings

Video Driver – Allows you to select a driver for your 3D accelerator card.
Resolution – Selects a screen resolution for the game. Soldier of Fortune supports resolutions from 640 x 480 up to 1600 x 1200.
Full Screen – Allows you to choose between running the game full screen or in a window.
Bitdepth – Sets the texture color depth in the game to 16 bit or 32 bit color. (Note: 3dfx cards do not support 32 bit color.)
Alternate Simple Textures – This setting adjusts to correspond with your video card’s texture memory. On low-end video cards, you can replace certain textures in the game, such as signs and graffiti, with standard wall textures to conserve memory.
Texture Quality – The lower this option is set, the blurrier the world textures will appear, thus consuming less texture memory from your video card. Low texture quality is recommended for low-end video cards.
Skin Texture Quality – The lower this option is set, the blurrier the enemy skin textures will appear, thus consuming less texture memory from your video card. Low skin texture quality is recommended for low-end video cards.
Texture Format – Allows you to select 16 or 32 bit color mode for the textures. If your video card doesn’t support 32 bit textures, this will default to a lower setting.
Translucent Texture Format – Allows you to select 16 or 32 bit color mode for alpha textures in the game. If your card doesn’t support 32 bit textures, this will default to a lower setting.

Sliders

Gamma – Adjusts your video card’s gamma settings.
Contrast – Adjusts your video card’s contrast level.
Brightness – Adjusts your video card’s brightness.
Intensity – Adjusts the intensity of the in-world lighting levels.
Apply Changes – Click this button to apply your changes.
Apply Defaults – Click this button to return to the default configuration.

Alter Audio Settings

This sub screen allows you to configure the sound setup for the game. The Audio Settings menu consists of the following options:

Dynamic Sound Settings

Effects Volume Slider – Adjusts the volume of the game’s sound effects.
Music Volume Slider – Adjusts the volume of the game’s music.

Sound System Settings

Sound Driver – Selects the appropriate driver for your sound hardware configuration.
Sound Frequency – Defaults to 22khz. Select 11khz if you are on a lower-end machine.
Sample Rate – Defaults to high quality 16-bit audio. Select 8-bit if you are on a lower-end machine.
Exclusive DS Buffer - A high-performance sound feature which may improve sound quality and performance in Windows. If you are having sound problems, try turning this setting off.
Dynamic Music – Allows you to enable or disable the game’s dynamic music.
Apply Changes – Click this button to hear the results of your changes.
Apply Defaults – Click this button to return to the default configuration.

Adjust Dynamic Scalability

Graphical Scalability

Ghoul Light Method – Controls the detail level of lighting on models in the game.
Shadow Quality – Controls the quality and detail of shadows in the game.
Specular Lighting – Turns highlighting on and off for models in the game.
Detail Texturing – Controls the detail of textures based on your proximity to them.
Number of Decals – Controls the number of explosion marks, blood splatters, and bullet holes that appear in the world before they drop from your view.
Effect Overdraw – The amount of detail the effects system gives to explosions before they fade out.

Note: Some of these options also appear in the Alter Display Settings menu. You can adjust them in either place and the change will be reflected in both sections of the menu.

Game Scalability

Corpse Duration – Allows you to adjust how long fallen enemy bodies remain on the screen.
Model Expressions – Controls the number of expressions used by the enemy models.
Skin Variety – Controls the number of different types of skins that appear on each enemy type.

Miscellaneous Options

Crosshair – Choose between Dot, Reticle, Cross, Circle, or None.
Always Run – Choose if your character runs all the time or not.
Look Spring – Keyboard players can choose if they want the camera to auto-center while moving forward.
Look Strafe – Especially for keyboard players.
Subtitles – Choose to display subtitles in the game.
Disable Task Switching – Turn Alt + Tab function on or off.
Disable Fullscreen Toggle – Turn fullscreen option on or off.

Mouse

Allows you to modify the following settings:

Mouse X Sensitivity – A slider changes the vertical look speed.
Invert Horizontal – A toggle inverts horizontal turning.
Mouse Y Sensitivity – A slider changes the horizontal turn speed.
Invert Vertical – A toggle inverts vertical looking.
Mouse Wheel Sensitivity– A slider changes the wheel response speed.
Mouse Double-Click Speed – A slider increases or decreases the double-click response.
Mouse Look – A toggle turns mouse looking on or off.
Mouse Filtering – A toggle turns on or off simulated mouse smoothness.
Mouse Emulation Top Speed – A slider allows a higher top speed for the pointer while using Alt + arrow keys.
Mouse Emulation Acceleration – A slider allows acceleration of the pointer while using Alt + arrow keys. The slider increases the acceleration of the cursor.
Language Select – Select the language that you want to play in.
Configure Joystick – Change the default settings of your joystick to your preferred settings.
Reset to Defaults – Reset the miscellaneous options to their original settings.

Display Game Statistics

This sub screen gives you the option to look back on your previous encounters and your performance rating on each mission.

Violence Lock

This sub screen allows you to enter a password to gain access to the Parental Lock options. After you have entered your password, you will need to re-enter it each time you use this menu option to alter the content settings of the game. Write down your password and keep it in a safe place, out of reach of children. The first time you start the game and enter the Parental Lock menu, there is no password. Pressing the Enter key at the password prompt will take you to the full Violence Lock menu, which consists of the following options:

Damage Skins – Enables and disables the gore zones on the enemy model.
Blood – Enables and disables the appearance of blood in the game.
Death Animations – Enables and disables the realistic, motion-captured death sequences.
Dismembered Limbs – Enables and disables the dismemberment of enemy models.
Adult Textures – Enables and disables the appearance of mature writing and subject matter.
Set New Password – This feature allows you to set a new password for the parental lock feature. Simply type in your new password and click on Set New Password. The next time you try to enter the Violence Lock sub screen you will need to enter the new password.

Note: Please write down and remember your password!

Exit Game

Pressing the Exit Game icon will ask you if you want to end your current game. Selecting No will return you to the previous menu screen. Selecting Yes will end the game and return you to your desktop environment.

News Ticker