How to force Anti-Alias in Rome: Total War?! Please help!! :( [SOLVED w/ SOLUTION]

**Maverik770** · October 24, 2011, 04:43 PM

Hey everyone!

I just installed Rome: Total War Gold Edition from Steam on my work computer. When I go into the game and adjust the video settings, the only option available on the drop down menu for Anti-Aliasing is "No Anti-Aliasing". This is extremely frustrating because the game looks like crap without AA enabled. My work PC is not super powerful but it is a very modern Acer unit that we just bought within the last 5 months. It's packing 4 GBs of DDR3 ram and an Intel i3 core. I'm sure the onboard gfx card isn't anything outstanding, just some integrated Intel gfx chip but it is certainly more than powerful to play a game like Rome: Total War in max settings. I play many other games more graphically intensive on this computer than it with no problems.

The game will allow me to crank every graphical option except anti-aliasing. There just isn't any options available on the drop down menu for Anti-Aliasing. I have looked EVERY where on the net for a work around to this and can't find anything. Except one really old post on these forums from 2007 that said to use something called Archer's mod to fix this issue. Except that Archer's mod is now no where to be found on these forums anymore. Apparently Archer's mod overrode the game's system check and allowed all graphics options to be adjustable. Which is exactly what I need right now.

Everything else I've read said this bug is caused by the game failing to properly auto detect the capabilities of the hardware in my PC. Thus the game thinks it isnt capalble of enabling AA and just flat out disables the option entirely. Which is retarded. I don't care if it MIGHT hurt performance, you should NEVER disable critical graphics options on a PC game. Give the user the chance to turn it on and see how it performs for them.

So anyways, getting to the point here. How can I override this crap and force Rome:Total War to allow the AA options to be adjusted? I have tried editing the preferences.txt file but it just keeps defaulting back to "AA_OFF" every time I launch the game. Someone else suggested trying to edit the descr_auto_optimise_options.txt file because it is what is causing the AA options to be disabled. But I have no idea how I'm supposed to edit that file and nothing I have tried in it works so far. I registered on these forums just to ask this question. Please someone help me get AA turned on in Rome: Total War. I know this PC can handle it. Please I hope someone has this information, this is SO frustrating. Thanks everyone.

**irishron** · October 24, 2011, 05:19 PM

Post your dxddiag for this computer.

**Chris Death** · October 24, 2011, 06:37 PM

In the properties of your graphics card settings you could also try to enable AA instead of let it
be controlled by the aplication (meanwhile).

:edit - oh and one more thing;

4GB of ram sounds good but RTW is a pretty old game and without tweaks not being allowed to
mention here you won't be able to get around the 2GB limit.

Also RTW is not taking advantage of multi core processors.

~S~ CD

**Maverik770** · October 25, 2011, 09:07 AM

Originally Posted by Chris Death

In the properties of your graphics card settings you could also try to enable AA instead of let it
be controlled by the aplication (meanwhile).

:edit - oh and one more thing;

4GB of ram sounds good but RTW is a pretty old game and without tweaks not being allowed to
mention here you won't be able to get around the 2GB limit.

Also RTW is not taking advantage of multi core processors.

~S~ CD

Unfortunately my Intel Integrated Graphics control panel does not have options to force AA. It only has options for forcing Anistroping filtering, Vertical Synch and a couple other things. I understand this computer isn't very powerful but I currently have all other options within the game cranked to full and vertical synch enabled and Im getting a solid 60 FPS in game. So I really think it could atleast push low AA. I mean the game looks terrible without any AA on. The huge open battle fields and all the spears, old school weaponry and flag poles just make it so blatantly obvious with extreme jaggies. It looks so bad.

I do not understand why they would force AA to be disabled. I have many other games on this PC that atleast allow me the option to turn AA on or off. I should atleast be able to see if it can handle having AA turned on. The fact that I'm running 60 solid FPS with everything else cranked to max settings really makes me think it can handle atleast some AA.

I've read other topics on these forums and the net that suggest there are ways to override the game by adjusting settings files and force the game to allow you to toggle the AA settings. The problem is that I don't know what the proper parameter is to use in either the preferences.txt file or descr_auto_optimise_options.txt files. Within the preferences.txt file it says:

AA_QUALITY:AA_OFF

I do not know what the correct parameter to replace "AA_OFF" with is. Does anyone know? Can you check your preferences.txt file with AA enabled and tell me what you see?

I have a similar situation with the descr_auto_optimise_options.txt file. I read it's possible to edit the 'antialias' column of that file to force the AA options to be available in game. But that entire 'antialias' column within that file is blank and I have no idea what parametere to fill in for each line in that column.

I need to force the AA options to be available in game. Any help is much appreciated! Thanks everyone.

**Chris Death** · October 25, 2011, 09:41 AM

Originally Posted by Maverik770

Within the preferences.txt file it says:

AA_QUALITY:AA_OFF

I do not know what the correct parameter to replace "AA_OFF" with is. Does anyone know? Can you check your preferences.txt file with AA enabled and tell me what you see?

I have a similar situation with the descr_auto_optimise_options.txt file. I read it's possible to edit the 'antialias' column of that file to force the AA options to be available in game. But that entire 'antialias' column within that file is blank and I have no idea what parametere to fill in for each line in that column.

I need to force the AA options to be available in game. Any help is much appreciated! Thanks everyone.

I just had a quick look onto my old pc at work where i found a preferences file with AA enabled on low.
I can't start the game right now to change to something higher (ma boss is still in da house)

but on low it looks like that:

AA_QUALITY:AA_LOW

:edit - hehe - found another preferences with AA on high;

AA_QUALITY:AA_HIGH

hope this helps

~S~ CD

**Maverik770** · October 25, 2011, 01:33 PM

Originally Posted by Chris Death

I just had a quick look onto my old pc at work where i found a preferences file with AA enabled on low.
I can't start the game right now to change to something higher (ma boss is still in da house)

but on low it looks like that:

AA_QUALITY:AA_LOW

:edit - hehe - found another preferences with AA on high;

AA_QUALITY:AA_HIGH

hope this helps

~S~ CD

Thanks a lot for posting this information Chris! I really appreciate it! I'm gonna try a few things and I will let yall know how it goes. I'd really like to post a work around for this issue if I can find one.

**Maverik770** · October 25, 2011, 08:54 AM

Dxdiag Log as requested:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

**irishron** · October 25, 2011, 09:18 AM

Here is what it tells me:

1. All graphics is being pushed through the integrated graphics part of the i3 chip.
2. There is no dedicated graphics card in the machine.
3. The game is only reading the 64mb of dedicated graphics memory as set in BIOS.
4. The game's program is too old to know what shared memory is.

Things to try,

1. Update the drivers at www.intel.com.
2. Update the High Definifition Audio codecs at www.realtek.com.tw

Is this a laptop or desktop?
Did I miss anything?

**Maverik770** · October 25, 2011, 01:31 PM

Originally Posted by irishron

Here is what it tells me:

1. All graphics is being pushed through the integrated graphics part of the i3 chip.
2. There is no dedicated graphics card in the machine.
3. The game is only reading the 64mb of dedicated graphics memory as set in BIOS.
4. The game's program is too old to know what shared memory is.

Things to try,

1. Update the drivers at www.intel.com.
2. Update the High Definifition Audio codecs at www.realtek.com.tw

Is this a laptop or desktop?
Did I miss anything?

It's a desktop PC. Acer AX3960-U4102 to be exact.

I figured this was the cause because no this desktop does not have a dedicated graphics card. It's integrated. I knew that already. The iussue is that since the game is old and does not recognize the system specs of this PC properly it is forcing the AA options to be disabled in game. Which is retarded. I can assure you that this PC is capable of running Rome: Total War is full settings with AT LEAST low AA enabled. In all likelihood it can probably run the game at a solid 60 FPS with everything including AA cranked to max.

But regardless of what the PC can do, the game isn't recognizing it's capabilities and is purposely limiting the Anti Aliasing options to "Off". I need to override the game and force it to enable the AA options. Any ideas? I have seen plenty of talk of accomplishing this in other threads on these forums and on the internet in general but no one posted actual instructions on how to do it... I really appreciate the help Irishron, thank you.

**irishron** · October 25, 2011, 01:54 PM

I think Chris has the best idea. Hopefully it works.

**Chris Death** · October 25, 2011, 02:21 PM

One more thing i found by goog'ling around - as you said you ain't got an option for AA in the
graphic's card properties - i've read something that the option will appear after enabling "Anistroping filtering".

It's not exactly your graphic chip but it's an intel;

http://www.ehow.com/how_7335119_use-...-graphics.html

In case the link's not loading;

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

~S~ CD

**Maverik770** · October 26, 2011, 10:44 AM

I wanted to update this thread with the found solution and give a big thank you to both of you gentlemen for assisting me in resolving this issue. I hope this information proves useful for other people on these forums and the internet.

If Rome: Total War is restricting the Anti-Aliasing settings within the Graphics Options in game to "No Anti-Aliasing", you can manually override this setting by editing the preferences.txt file in the following way:

1) Locate your preferences.txt file for Rome: Total War. It should be in either the game's main directory or in the "preferences" folder. Here is the path to mine. Please note I'm running the Steam version on Windows 7. A disc installed version would have a different folder path depending on where you chose to install the game during installation.

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\rome total war gold\preferences\preferences.txt

2) Open it with Notepad.

3) Locate the following line of code: AA_QUALITY:AA_OFF

4) Replace "AA_OFF" with any of the following settings: "AA_LOW", "AA_MEDIUM" or "AA_HIGH". Without quotation marks.

5) Save the preferences.txt and launch the game. You should now have AA working in game at the level you specified in the preferences.txt.

**Important!** Please note that if you look at the in game Graphics Options that Anti-Aliasing will still be set to "No Anti-Aliasing" and it will still be the only option available on the dropdown menu for Anti-Aliasing. However, when you actually load the game, anti-aliasing will be enabled at the level you specified. Thus, I recommend to load the game, apply all of your desired Graphical settings in the Options area and then exit the game and apply this change after all other graphics options have all been set. This way you do not have to go back into the Graphics Options in game because you may accidentally force the game to reset the Anti-Alias setting you manually applied.

Since you cannot check the options area in game to verify your manual change has worked, I posted some basic screenshots to show you what Anti-Aliasing looks like both off and on. You should be able to load into a battle area and instantly tell if AA is working or not. Please note that I did NOT include a screenshot example for the "AA_MEDIUM" setting as it is hard to see the slight differences in these small screenshots.

AA_OFF: Notice how jagged the spears, other straight lines and all of the edges are.

AA_LOW: A noticable improvement in the spears, straight lines and edges.

AA_HIGH: A very noticable improvement to spears, straight lines and edges.

**Side Note** You can also adjust the game's resolutions by editing the resolution values in the preferences.txt. Although this is covered in many other threads on these forums and the net.

I hope this is useful to anybody having issues with enabling Anti-Aliasing in Rome: Total War. From what I've read this is a pretty common issue as the game gets older and isn't able to recognize the capability of newer hardware properly. I think it's ridiculous that a PC game would run auto check and forcibly hide or disable certain graphics options but there is usually a way around them with a little effort. Happy conquering everyone and thanks again for all of the help with solving this issue!

P.S. If a moderator could change the thread title to include [SOLVED w/ SOLUTION] at the end of the title, that would be great and much appreciated. I have done so to my posts but I could not find how to edit the thread's title instead of the individual posts. Possibly even sticky this thread if it's worthy enough, hehe. Thank you!