The first steps we ALL know is to check the drivers on your PC like graphics card, sound, motherboard ETC. Once you have the hunter installed, you should run the game to see it running on default. this makes sure all the files are in place and your PC knows you have the game.

Nvidia cards will play theHunter very well, I dont use a top end PC myself yet theHunter runs perfectly smooth, heres the rig:

Diablo GTX
Power supply: Corsair CX600 600W
Core i7 2600K 8MB Cache Socket 1155
nVidia GeForce GTX 570 1280MB GDDR5 PCI
16GB Corsair DDR3 1600MHz C9 Dual Channel Memory Kit (4 x 4GB)
Asus P8Z77-V LX Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) Motherboard
Onboard HD 7.1 Audio
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit

(Quick Tip): using these PC spec's you can see they all use "Drivers" find the drivers for all these devices (on your own PC) and update them and you should be up-to-date.

Next is your Nvidia profile...

Like a lot of games on steam you might find in your Nvidia control panel section : Manage 3D settings - That there are TWO TheHunter profiles in there. you want to use the "TheHunter (TheHunter.exe) not the Launcher one.


So here are a few things i changes from default. remember after this we will also be looking at "in game settings" to go with these.

FXAA - ON
Gama Correction - ON
Antialiasing mode - App' Controlled
Transparency - OFF
Max pre-rendered frames - 1
Multi-display - Single
Power management - max performance
Shader Cache - ON
Negative LOD bias - CLAMP
Quality - HIGH QUALITY
Threaded Optimisation - ON
Triple Buffering - ON
Vertical Sync - Adaptive

IMPORTANT NOTE: If any settings are already set to these you still need to RE-SELECT it. So even if by default say Power Management was already set to "Default- max performance" you STILL need to re-click on it. the title will go from normal to BOLD. (Its an Nvidia bug)


REMEMBER these settings may vary slightly so test them first if you will.


NEXT up is in-game settings...

TheHunter in-game settings are kept basic so you wont break the game or get lost in mess.

Heres how you want it:

Screen Resolution should be a personal choice given the ammount of screens we all use but here i use 1920x1080 (60HZ)

Scene Complexity - VERY HIGH (Highest)
Texture Quality - HIGH (Highest)
Shadows - High (NOTE: there is a very high setting here but it makes not much of a change yet if you scale back to "HIGH" you gain a lot of FPS and dont loose any quality at all really)

Multisample - 8
Anisotropic Filtering - 8

REMEMBER: you can play with these and find a better sweet spot but this setup will not harm quality, scale it back for low-end PC's.


NEXT up is the final few tweeks...

Ok just two other things that will help things run better,

One- Explorer Suite'
This small programe will allow you to make a very simple adjustment to the games memory use.
Most games WILL benefit from this so feel free to check any other games you have installed. you will see what I mean..

What it does: most know games run using 2G memory yet our PC's are ready to give more, and were talking Win 64bit here. So,

Download Explorer suite and install it, it has no maleware and feel free to scan it, its clean.

http://www.ntcore.com/exsuite.php

Now run Explorer suite, small window will appear so just click "open file"
Go to your steam games folder and find TheHunter.exe and open it.

In the LEFT box look for FILE HEADER and click on it, now you will see some info in the bigger right box, there is a blue box that says "click here", guess what, click it..

A small window will open, look for "App can handle >2gb address space" and make sure it is TICKED. click ok and close. save over the original file and your done. this wont brake ANY game.

FINALY..

this part did not apply to TheHunter untill now it is on steam, meaning we can now make use of the Launch Options, you can read up on this on steam in many tech areas but here is the only launch parameters I use:

-cpuCount=8 -maxMem=16 -exThreads=4 as we all know these settings are down to your own PC so dont just copy mine unless you have the same PC setup..

AND TO CLOSE:

ALWAYS check your cores are all on and none are "parked" google will sort this for you.

Your ready to go, enjoy!

As a long-term hunter heres a few tips

Sound - My rule of thumb for volume levels are simples, start walking on a road, if you cant hear your foot steps clearly, turn the volume up. now you will here your own steps and other game around you. plus you would sometimes MISS a far off Dear call or Coyote.

Stay low - Wild Game are very jumpy! I spend more or less my HOLE hunt crouched, really.

Stop! hammer time! - stop every few yards for a second, just to hear movement around you.

take a leaf from my book - you dont really need wind indicator, just look at whats falling around you.

Tumble time! - some game will charge you! Bears, Moose, Hogs and wild Bore. they will make a "grunt" un-like there call. this would be a good time to run away firing warning round to make them flee!. keep a first aid bag with you.

Thanks for reading this small guide

A hunting guide will be done in a few weeks so stay tuned

Happy hunting and feel free to have a look at the CeltS Clan, were a great bunch plus ill be putting togather hunting partys in the next few weeks or so.

Cheers Vaulcan

http://www.celtsclan.co.uk/