Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet is built in Unreal Engine 4. UE4 is a very flexible engine which allows changing many settings outside the game--even those which don't appear in the in-game options menu. In this guide, we'll examine how to configure a handful of these settings which may be of particular interest to SAO:FB players.

UE4 settings for SAO:FB are stored in a series of .ini files located at:


This folder contains several .ini files, many of which are empty. However, for our purposes we only need three: Engine.ini, Scalability.ini, and GameUserSettings.ini.

The first file contains explicit engine settings, while the last two handle user-level options instead. To edit the most basic settings, open GameUserSettings.ini and look for the header ScalabilityGroups.


Most of these settings are directly configurable from the in-game options menu, and have a range of 0-3, where 0 is low/off and 3 is ultra. But note the term "scalability groups". Each of these settings actually modifies an entire group of settings. While it's a nice way to simplify things, it's entirely possible you only want to disable one or two features while keeping the rest.

That's where Scalability.ini comes in. In this file, it is possible to modify individual settings affected by scalability groups and even determine which quality setting to apply them to. In other words, instead of permanently overriding the in-game options menu, you can completely customize how the in-game options menu behaves! Just take the scalability group category name and add an @ symbol followed by the quality level the settings apply to. For example:


With this value set in Scalability.ini, if sg.TextureQuality is set to 3 in GameUserSettings.ini, anisotropic filtering will be set to 16.


Now that you know how each of these three configuration files is used, let's take a look at some of the things you can do with them!

To apply engine settings, edit Engine.ini and add the header:


Almost any custom engine settings should be added under this header to function.

SAO:FB uses a method of anti-aliasing known as FXAA by default. FXAA is a very fast, shader-based approach to anti-aliasing, but as a post-process effect it is unable to truly eliminate jaggies at the source. Temporal anti-aliasing is a newer alternative built directly into UE4 which works by jittering pixels and sampling color data from a variety of positions to create a smoother final image.

To enable TAA in SAO:FB, add the following settings under the [SystemSettings] header:


The setting r.TemporalAASamples essentially determines TAA quality. Acceptable values are 4, 8 (default), 16, 32, and 64. The higher the value, the less visible jitter is produced as a side effect of the AA method, but at slight cost to performance.

For additional settings, UE4 supports adding a second header in Engine.ini:


This is a very powerful feature, as it allows setting values for nearly any miscellaneous variables that might not have anywhere else to be declared. For example:


This will force the game to render at 75% resolution scaling, improving performance without actually changing the output screen resolution. Because this is an override, there is no need to worry about in-game settings overwriting the change, allowing to set a scale higher or lower than is officially supported.

There are MANY console variables available, depending on the exact version of Unreal Engine 4 used to build the game. While more recently-added variables might not work, most can be added here to greatly customize your experience.

See here[www.kosmokleaner.de] or here[digilander.libero.it] for a searchable list of variables. Or, if you have UE4 installed yourself (it's free!), you can use the "dumpconsolecommands" command in an actual Unreal Engine console.

To apply scalability settings, edit Scalability.ini and add a new header for each scalability group you wish to modify, followed by the @ symbol and the quality level you wish to apply settings to. For example:


The corresponding scalability group must be set to the same quality level in GameUserSettings.ini for changes to be applied in-game.

Ambient occlusion is a shading technique which produces soft shadows based on objects' proximity to each other. This applies to everything from individual body parts to huge environments, so it has a big impact on scene appearance. However, it can also have a big impact on performance for weaker GPUs. On the other hand, stronger GPUs can benefit from even higher-quality AO than is enabled by default.


Acceptable values range from 0-4, where 2 is default at both medium and high settings.

SAO:FB uses a maximum of 8x anisotropic filtering by default. Higher AF improves the appearance of textures when viewed at an angle, making them true to their original detail and less blurry.


Acceptable values include 0, 2, 4, 8, and 16.

At higher settings, SAO:FB uses a separate buffer for certain post-processing effects. This can produce slightly higher-quality results, but often isn't noticeable to the naked eye and can have a huge performance penalty. Most users will want to simply disable this for more FPS.


Acceptable values are 0 (off) and 1 (on), where 1 is default at both medium and high settings.

Chromatic aberration is designed to simulate the color distortions of real camera lenses, but SAO:FB more likely just uses it for aesthetic effect. Unfortunately, it also default adds pixelation and blur to the scene, so you may prefer to just disable it. Chromatic aberration is enabled by default at quality levels 2 and 3, so you'll need to include both to get rid of it altogether.


Acceptable values are 0 (off) and 1 (on), where 1 is default at both medium and high settings.

Depth of field is a diffusion technique designed to simulate camera blur, but SAO:FB uses it more as a light bloom technique on various scene elements. As a result, DOF can be disabled for improved performance even in scenes which have no traditional camera blur effect.


Acceptable values range from 0-2, where 2 is default at both medium and high settings.

GGO can be a shiny place with lots of reflective surfaces using a combination of basic environment mapping and more advanced screen-space reflections. While the effect looks quite nice, it can also be taxing on weaker GPUs. On the other hand, stronger GPUs can benefit from even higher-quality reflections than are enabled by default.


Acceptable values range from 0-4, where 0 is off, 3 is default, and 4 is max quality.

Dynamic shadows are a crucial element for adding depth to a scene. However, they can also have a big impact on performance for weaker GPUs. On the other hand, stronger GPUs can benefit from even higher-quality shadows than are enabled by default.

Shadows are primarily affected by two values: quality and resolution. As these are independent of each other, it is possible to reduce shadow resolution while keeping the same quality, or reduce quality while keeping the same resolution. In this way it is possible to balance performance and appearance on low-end systems.


Shadow quality ranges from 0-5, where 5 is default at medium and high settings. Max resolution is the square resolution of shadows in texels, where 4 is minimum and 1024 is default.

Made any other great tweaks? Share them in the comments below!