Game Setup

Perhaps you were looking for advanced settings or about the game world?

Installation
FUEL was sold in the following platforms / versions:


 * Playstation 3 (PS3)
 * Xbox 360
 * PC DVD-ROM
 * PC Steam

X360, PS3 & PC DVD-ROM install should be straight-forward. (IE: Everything you need to install should already be on the disc). However, you may need to download/run some patch files to get the game up-to-date after install.

The game is playable in both single-player/solo and online/multi-player:


 * PS3 version used GameSpy, which has been discontinued
 * Xbox 360 & PC used Xbox Live (however GFWL/Steam in PC version of the game).

FUEL on PC (Steam) Install
''Note: It's highly recommended to use the Steam Guide method further below to neuter GFWL from FUEL, b/c almost all issues with FUEL on PC are caused by GFWL. - HappyHamster''

Problem: After installing FUEL from Steam, you can see the setup screen, but when you try to run the game either nothing happens or you get a pop-up saying: missing xlive.dll or The ordinal 43 could not be located in the dynamic link library C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\xlive.dll

Cause: When Codemasters listed and supported FUEL on Steam it would auto-install GFWL when you installed the game. But, when Microsoft announced GFWL was retiring Codemasters patched GFWL out of their popular games while simply delisting less popular ones like FUEL. This means titles like FUEL still need GFWL installed to play. Unfortunately, when you install FUEL from Steam now the GFWL won't auto-install.

Solution (Win 7/8/8.1)
 * 1) Start the FUEL Launcher
 * 2) Click "Games For Windows Live" button
 * 3) GFWL should install itself

Solution (Win 10)

The GFWL client that shipped with FUEL doesn't work in Win 10, but the last version you can download from Microsoft's old GFWL site does. So, you'll need to download and install it from http://www.xbox.com/en-IE/Live/PC/DownloadClient.

Problem: GFWL asks you to login when FUEL starts.

Solution: You don't need an online account to play. You can create a local profile.


 * 1) Start game
 * 2) On GFWL pop-up, select "Create Profile"
 * 3) Scroll down, and click "create local profile" link
 * 4) Enjoy

You can also set up GFWL to auto-login a profile. You can also log your profile out, and create other local profiles to either experiment around or let other family and friends run their own race career w/o screwing yours up.

Problem: Game freezes on FUEL logo, and white "processing" circle icon doesn't spin like it's supposed to. Atl-tabbing shows an error pop-up saying something about resource issues, and see WinLiveNetPlayerManager_Z as part of error message.

Cause: MS' updates to Win 10 seem to completely break GFWL for some FUEL players now (EG: Win 10 1903). Game hangs trying to run GFWL.

Solution: Neuter GFWL from FUEL via following guide:

Steam Guide: How to Play FUEL without GFWL while still being able to Save

Guide has a download for alternate xlive.dll & xlive.ini files you can put directly in your FUEL install folder, which bypasses GFWL in FUEL. (Essentially, you can start FUEL w/o GFWL starting.)

Video Options
FUEL's startup loader lets you set Video Options. Some work. Some don't.


 * Resolution  ... (works and is self-explanatory). Setting a higher resolution has a greater impact on FPS performance, but also has the greatest impact on visual appearance of any other option available.


 * Anti-aliasing ... (doesn't work) The "fx.phl" shader file has code for anti-aliasing, but it doesn't work. (you can literally delete those functions out of the file, and the shaders will still compile). However, you can use your graphics card's control panel set some. (See "Advanced Setup" section below).


 * Texture Quality ... (doesn't work). Texture quality is controlled via the shader files. There are high-res textures stored in the DPC archives. FUEL runs them through the shaders that have a compression routine. This effectively reduces texture size by 1/2 (lower-res). This code is branched to allow compression or not allow it.
 * Anisotropic (Filtering) ... (doesn't work). Playing with the options in the setup loader does nothing. You can set this via your graphics card's control panel, though.
 * Advanced: Lets you select / deselect shader maps to use:
 * Normal Maps ... Makes some textures better, eg: certain vehicles will have better tire textures (bump mapping), and show panel damage when banged around too much.
 * Dirt Maps: When enabled, your vehicle gets progressively muddier when running off-road, and cleaner when running through water. Your screen borders also get progressively caked in dirt and cleaned off.
 * (Ambient) Occlusion Maps: Provides some extra shading around objects to give them more depth/realism. Ambient Occlusion tends to have a pretty big FPS hit on older systems in some games.
 * Shadow Maps: Dynamically generates shadows from objects based on the movement of the sun.

Optional Graphical Enhancements
There's a few external things you can install to FUEL to help punch give you more options to graphical goodness.

FUEL: RESHADED is a mod that re-works the FUEL shaders to clean them up, optimize them a bit, add on/off switches to the most common things folks like turning on/off (eg: bloom, dynamic eye adapt), and adds some enhancements (eg: rain sheen to make things wet when it rain, darker nights, etc). A lot of the new features are already baked-in, like rain sheen effects. Others you can tweak, like enhanced shadows.
 * 1) Download the .zip file
 * 2) Go to your FUEL game install folder
 * 3) Go to "shaders" folder
 * 4) Save your old shaders if you want (eg: make an "old" sub-folder to toss them into, or zip them up into a file called "oldshaders.zip" or something)
 * 5) Unzip the FUEL: RESHADED shaders into the shaders folder. (Tell it to overwrite the old shaders if they're still in the shaders folder)
 * 6) Open the "_setup.h" file if you want to tweak options.

ReShade is an ENB-like shader injector that works with FUEL. You can get it to work with FUEL via the following: If you don't see the ReShade menu when you start the game, or if the game crashes... (Not sure why, but when I initially setup FUEL with DX9 in reshade, it crashed. Then I tried DX10, and it ran but w/o reshade. When I set it back to DX9, it ran reshade overlay fine. So, it's like doing that helps get reshades injector working in FUEL for some reason.)
 * 1) Download the latest reshade .exe file from the site
 * 2) Run it .. it'll start listing games .. DON'T pick FUEL.exe
 * 3) Instead, click "browse"
 * 4) Go to your FUEL game install folder
 * 5) Select "SecuLauncher.exe"
 * 6) Select DirectX / D3D 9 as graphics type game uses
 * 7) Select shader artist files to install (can just let it install defaults for now)
 * 8) ReShade will download and save the shader files to FUEL folder
 * 9) Close ReShade when it says it's done
 * 10) Launch FUEL
 * 11) You should see a ReShade overlay letting you look at a tutorial on how to use it, and checkboxes to activate different shaders. Pressing "HOME" key will show / hide ReShade menu. Mess around and see which shaders you like using. (EG: LumaSharpen is a cheap sharpening post-procesiing shader. Technicolor2 shader adds even more color to the game.)
 * 1) Re-run ReShade.exe
 * 2) Make sure you select "browse" and pick "SecuLauncher.exe" for FUEL
 * 3) Try selecting DirectX / D3D 10 and let Reshade finish.
 * 4) Then launch the game. It should start up w/o showing the reshade menu.
 * 5) Exit the game.
 * 6) Rerun reshade.exe, and now select DirectX / D3D 9 again.
 * 7) Let Reshade finish it's setup.
 * 8) Rerun FUEL (preferably by running SecuLauncher.exe directly, not GameSetup.exe)
 * 9) You should get the reshade overlay now.

Good shaders to try out in ReShade:
 * Bloom ... Disable FUEL's Bloom using FUEL: RESHADED or FUEL: REFUELED, then enable one of the bloom shaders in ReShade. Some bloom the entire scene (even the UI) while others are less heavy-handed. Most have the ability to control how much bloom they provide, so you can mess around with them.
 * SMAA ... Subpixel Morphological Anti-Aliasing. AA helps smooth out jaggies on edges of objects. The best way to lower jaggies is to increase screen resolution. But, even at 1920x1080, SMAA helps smooth out more jaggies. In ReShade, move this to the top of the shader processing list, so it will smooth out jaggies before other shaders, like Sharpening, try to add more detail.

Shaders that don't seem to work with FUEL:
 * Sharpening ... Some of FUEL's textures are low-res / smudgy. LumaSharpening, Filmic Sharpening or Anamorphic Filmic Sharpening shader will help make them look higher-def. Even with video set to 1920x1080, a sharpening shader will make the game look 2K. Make this run after any Anti-aliasing, so the AA can straighten up jaggies before they get sharpened / enhanced.
 * Technicolor2.fx ... disable FUEL: RESHADED's "color saturation" post-processing effect, and try using ReShade's Technicolor2 shader instead. Punches up the colors and provides more control over how much. (There's other shaders that provide saturation, contrast, etc control. Technicolor2 just has defaults where you can immediately notice the difference without having to mess around with it.)
 * Curves .... This adds faux HDR (High Dynamic Range) lighting, where it tries to provide more difference between colors to help the scene pop. FUEL has an HDR algorithm in the post-processing shader, but this can help "unwash" the scene a bit more.
 * EyeAdaptation.fx ... Reshade has a dynamic eye adaptation shader, but it doesn't seem to work with FUEL. So, can't disable FUEL's to swap out for it.
 * Ambient Occlusion .. Reshade as a Screen-Space AO and a MXAO (?) shaders. They don't seem to work with FUEL.