CSiS help system: system options
the launcher: system options window
when you start CSiS from your desktop shortcut or your windows start menu, you will be greeted with the animated launcher window. the button "options" takes you to the system options window, which will be explained on this page. the options window is comprised of three tabs, each holding different tools to adjust the game's look and feel to your and your computer's needs.system options window: player tab
this tab allows you to customize your player appearance. you can set a custom logo for your ship, set a color for non-team based game modes, set your name and allow/disallow logo sending for security reasons.
set new image:
pick an image from your hard disk to set as your new player logo. the images are scaled and formatted automatically. transparency and alpha channels are accepted for image formats that support them. csis supports png, tga, jpeg, ico and bmp.
reset to default:
restore the default player image as seen on the screenshot above.
player nickname:
choose a nickname for your player. limited to 25 characters, be careful with special characters, no spaces are allowed.
pick a new player color:
this button opens a window where you can select a new color for your ship. those will only be displayed in non-team modes, while your ship will use the specific team color while playing capture the station, asteroid football, save the transport and team deathmatch.
detailled information about every mode can be found here.
allow sending/receiving of player logos:
download other player's logos and display them on their ships. only activate once you are sure you only play with trustworthy people, like in a LAN. we strongly advise you to deactivate this while playing on the internet. default is off.
system options window: video and audio tab
this tab allows you to adjust the graphics quality of the game to your computer power. if you experience a slow gameplay or stuttering, try lower values.
visibility distance:
move this slider to the left to clip objects away faster or to the right to see further into the map. we recommend to stay with the default value of 30.000. using a lower visibility has a direct impact on the game's difficulty, while bigger values demand a very powerful PC.
particle maximum:
if you experience a huge framerate drop while looking at explosions or nebula clouds, try reducing the particle number.
screen resolution:
the 'classic' way to gain more performance is by reducing the screen resolution. be careful to choose the resolution not only by your native screen pixel count, but also the aspect ratio.
color depth:
always use 32 bit. 16bit color depth is for testing and debugging purposes and very weak graphics cards only.
screen mode:
play in a window or in fullscreen mode.
object quality:
has currently no effect on performance.
shadow quality:
"high quality" will enable realtime shadowmapping, which looks gorgeous, but requires a powerful computer. all other settings currently disable shadow mapping, the final release will enable less performance hungry, but also less beautiful shadows.
post processing/enhanced effects:
those checkboxes active various post processing effects that demand a rather fast graphics card.
audio volume levels:
adjust the audio volume. bottom is 0%, top is 100%, default is 80% overall.
enable game voice:
has currently no effect. the final release will have an ingame voice that comments on your achievements, the score and the match.
set custom music folder:
you can set a path to a directory filled with your music files that will be played instead of the CSiS soundtrack while playing the game. supported formats are wav, mp3, wma and ogg. subdirectories will not be taken into account. to return to the CSiS original soundtrack, leave that field blank (click "cancel" in the path requester). to skip to the next track while fighting in the game, press F3.
system options window: controls tab
for a detailled description of the keyboard layout, please click here or follow the navigation to "default keyboard layout".
