Refresh rate tip

[AnnularVoid]

Full-screen games in the latest operating systems normally launch with a 60Hz refresh rate. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a good universal way to change this. 60Hz is rarely a problem for LCD users, but the low refresh can be seen as “flickering” on CRT screens (those older “not flat” monitors) and it can be the cause of migraine headaches for some people. (Setting the number to 72Hz and above usually helps in these cases.) Projectors may need to use a different refresh as well, such as 50Hz. Here is how to force Shadowgrounds, Shadowgrounds: Survivor and Trine to use a different refresh rate on Windows.

Shadowgrounds and Shadowgrounds: Survivor have the ability to run in a full-screen borderless window. This looks just like full-screen, except the refresh rate will be set to that of your desktop. The procedure:

• Set the desired resolution and refresh rate for your desktop.
• Open the installation folder of your game and navigate to Config.
• Open the file options.txt.
• In that file, find Display{} section. In there, make sure the following options are set:
• windowed = 1
• maximize_window = 1
You will also need to change screen_height and screen_width to match the resolution of your desktop.

• Save the file. There is no need to make it read-only.
• Run the game as usual, without changing any options in the launcher. Check to make sure the refresh rate is now that of your desktop rather than the default 60Hz.

Trine, thankfully, has a better way of achieving this without bringing it out of true full-screen mode:

• Right-click the shortcut for Trine. Click Copy in the resulting menu. Right-click on an empty space below the shortcut. Click Paste in the resulting menu. You should now have Play Trine and Copy of Play Trine.
• Right-click Copy of Play Trine. In the menu, click Properties. Click the second tab, Shortcut.
• In that tab, there will be a text field, Target:. Click in there. Press the End key on your keyboard. The cursor will jump to the end of the line. You should see “trine_launcher.exe”
• Delete the word launcher and the underscore before it to end up with trine.exe.
• Press End again. You should see the cursor blinking to the right of the double quotation mark. Press space once and put this there:
  • -refresh_rate_override 85
  Change 85 to whatever refresh you want.
• Click OK to close the properties. You can rename this shortcut to anything you like.
• Double-click the new shortcut and make sure the game runs with the new refresh rate.

Note that the above procedure is an alternative to putting refresh_rate_override = 85 into the options.txt file and making it read-only. In this case, since there is no need to make the file read-only, so the game will have no problem changing options from within in-game menus.

If you have found this post helpful, please tell your success story. If not, please describe in detail the steps you have followed.

[fb_joel]

Thanks for posting. Much more detailed than our own help on the issue, heh. Also the command line/shortcut option is nice, I hadn't actually realized that it worked but glad to hear it does.