America's Army Tweak Guide

[Page 3] Troubleshooting Tips



This section contains specific troubleshooting tips which address many of the most common problems experienced by America's Army players. Several of the tips below are drawn from my guides mentioned in the Essential Optimization section. This is no coincidence, since some of the common America's Army problems are not game bugs, but specific sub-optimal system conditions which lead to problems. America's Army is quite system intensive and uses some advanced features, and this brings out instability and problems on many systems. I can't stress enough the importance of taking the time to go through the checklist of advice below if you're having a problem with the game:


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Official Support: If you have a problem with the game, the first place to visit is The Official America's Army Support Site. There are various categories of FAQs there, such as Video, Audio and Known Issues, and you should go through all the FAQs listed as it's highly likely the answer to your question is there. For details of the changes in the latest version of the game, read the ArmyOpsReadMe.txt file found in your \America's Army\System\ directory. If you still can't find what you're looking for, try the Official America's Army Support Forum where you can post questions which other members of the community can help with. If you want to chat live to support personnel using the in-game Chat function, or by using an IRC client (like mIRC) then join the #aa-support channel on irc.americasarmy.com


Minimum System Requirements: The minimum system requirements for America's Army are quite high. However the latest version of the game has actually lowered the requirements slightly given optimizations in the Unreal Engine 2.5, but for reasonable performance you should try to meet the Recommended system requirements. These are listed here: America's Army System Requirements. If you don't meet the hardware requirements, or barely meet them, then expect to see very poor performance, visual anomalies, and in some cases the game simply will not run. This includes things like playing AA on a laptop or nonstandard graphics chipset.


Installation Issues: While installation of the game is relatively simple, there are several things you can do to minimize installation-related problems. Firstly, it is strongly recommended that when upgrading to the latest version you completely uninstall any existing versions of the game. To do this properly, go to Control Panel>Add/Remove Programs and uninstall the 'America's Army' item. Then go to your AA installation directory (typically \Program Files\America's Army\ and delete the entire folder and everything under it. Then download and install the latest full version of America's Army. Finally, do not keep or restore your old Armyops.ini and User.ini files - they are usually not fully compatible with the latest version. Read this guide and apply the relevant tweaks from scratch to minimize any potential problems.


Account Problems: You can check your online player account status and details at the America's Army Account Management Site. However if you are having problems with your online account, and can't find any solutions in this guide or in the America's Army Support Forums, you should visit the Account Management Support Site to lodge a support request. If your account has been wrongly banned, you can go to the Authentication & Account Support Forum for more help.


PunkBuster Issues: The PunkBuster anti-cheat system is software which attempts to detect and remove cheaters from America's Army. See the PunkBuster America's Army Support Site for more details. You can also read the America's Army PunkBuster FAQ. However PunkBuster can cause some problems in certain circumstances. To start with, you should have Administrator level access to your PC when playing America's Army or you may experience PunkBuster errors. Also in some instances PunkBuster may have problems updating automatically, in which case you will have to manually update by going to your Program Files\America's Army\System\pbsetup\ directory and running the pbsetup.exe file. This will open a series of agreements you must click 'I Agree' to, and then the 'PunkBuster Setup' window. Here you can select to add any game to the list of PunkBuster supported games displayed by clicking the 'Add a game' button. Do so and select 'America's Army' from the Game list, then click the OK button. Now on the main screen listing click the 'Check for Updates' button. If a new version of PB for America's Army is available, it will be downloaded and applied automatically. The next time you go to play AA online, there will be no need to wait for a lengthy update process to occur - so long as you remember to manually update PB as often as possible.


Connection Problems: If you are having errors logging into your Account, see the Account Problems section above. For general connection problems such as using the server browser and/or connecting to servers, first check your Filter settings to make sure the Honor limits are 1 minimum and 100 maximum, and that at the very least Official Servers are able to show. If that doesn't help, try another server browser like the All Seeing Eye. Furthermore, sometimes the America's Army Master Server is simply under load or experiencing problems and may Time Out or have other errors trying to verify your account. The best you can do is wait a while and try again later.


Lag, Pings and Graphical Slowdowns: These terms are often used to describe problems in America's Army (and other online games). To clarify what they mean, their causes and solutions see the Advanced Tweaking section. I've also written a detailed post on this topic here on the official America's Army forums.


General Protection Faults/Critical Errors: The Unreal Engine is known to generate 'General Protection Faults' and 'Critical Error' crashes to desktop if your system is not running optimally. This is not an AA-specific bug, and occurs with all games based on the Unreal Engine. However, there are ways to minimize it: these crashes are directly related to the 'memory subset' on your system. That means that one or more of the following components on your system are malfunctioning under stress: the L2 Cache on your CPU; your RAM; your Windows Virtual Memory/Disk Cache; and/or a background program/service in memory. That doesn't mean they are physically faulty - it usually occurs due to overclocking or sub-optimal software settings, and aside from following the tips further below, make sure you don't have an extremely high CacheSizeMegs value (See the Advanced Tweaking section), and make sure you go through my TweakGuides Tweaking Companion in detail. In particular check the BIOS Optimization, Memory Optimization, Overclocking and Benchmarking & Stress Testing chapters for further assistance. There is no single quick fix - you have to optimize your entire machine.


Antialiasing and Anisotropic: If you have mysteriously low frames per second despite being certain that your hardware is capable of more, then one place to check would be your graphics card's Antialiasing and Anisotropic Filtering settings. These are explained in detail in my Simple Antialiasing and Anisotropic Guide. Even 2x Antialiasing for example can turn America's Army into a slideshow in certain areas, depending on your hardware and in-game settings. For maximum framerates set both AA and AF to 0x or 'Application Controlled' in your graphics card's control panel.


Virus Scan: Do a full scan of all your files using a free virus scanner such as AVG Antivirus, a free trojan cleaner such as A-Squared, and a free spyware cleaner such as Ad-aware. Viruses and trojans can cause unexplained behavior and general file corruption, so it's best to make sure your system isn't infected before moving on to other troubleshooting measures. However make sure to disable any background scanning programs once you're done (See Background Programs below). More details of securing your PC are in the PC Security chapter of my TweakGuides Tweaking Companion.


Background Programs: Disable all background applications, especially virus, trojan and spyware scanners and messaging utilities. These applications can and do use up valuable CPU resources, take up precious RAM, cause memory conflicts and crashes to desktop, and lag online play, but most importantly they interfere with read/writes to your hard drive effectively slowing it down and causing more in-game freezes and increasing load times. Full instructions on how to identify your startup programs and services and how to correctly disable unnecessary ones are in the Startup Programs and Services chapters of my TweakGuides Tweaking Companion.


Overclocking: The Unreal Engine on which America's Army is based is very sensitive to overclocking. If you have overclocked any components on your system and are having problems, set everything back to the default speeds and try running the game. If you don't experience the same problems at default then your overclock is the primary culprit. In particular, read through the Overclocking and Benchmarking & Stress Testing chapters of my TweakGuides Tweaking Companion for tools and instructions on how to correctly stress-test an overclocked system and determine which components are being pushed too far. Even if every other game and program you run works just fine at your current overclock, AA may well be crashing because of your overclock.


Defragging: Make sure that after you have installed AA that you run through the Regular Maintenance procedures detailed in my TweakGuides Tweaking Companion. If you only do one thing on that list though, make sure you run the Windows Defragmentation utility after installing a large game like AA (which takes up over 2GB of disk space). Defragging ensures that the game's files are all on the same place on your hard drive, greatly reducing loading pauses/freezes and loading times. It may take a little while but it is well worth it.


Fast CPU and Fast Graphics Card: Recent games based on the Unreal Engine (like America's Army) require a balance of both a medium to fast CPU and a medium to fast graphics card for optimal performance. If you have a fast CPU but a slow graphics card for example (e.g. P4 3.2Ghz combined with an FX5200), or vice versa, then your machine will struggle. While you can certainly reduce the load on your machine by scaling down the in-game settings and undertaking some advanced tweaking, you cannot alter the advanced character and bullet physics, the basic terrain complexity, or the sheer amount of essential detail on screen during a heavy combat scene.



That's just a basic rundown of troubleshooting tips. Read the remainder of this guide for more specific settings and tweaks which can help improve your performance and resolve any problems.