Fix For BulletStorm Save, Crash, Resolution, Performance & PhysX Issues

Bulletstorm is finally released. This was a first person shooter I personally was looking forward to playing in 2011. The raly reviews for the game are looking promising and it’s already got an aggregated review score of 82% at Gamerankings.com. I’ve had the opportunity to play the game for a couple of hours and it was a very enjoyable experience. Built on the unreal engine 3, BulleStorm had nice graphics and it ran surprisingly well even on my system with aging hardware. However, from what I have heard the game is pretty short  - it might take only around 5 hours for a veteran gamer to complete. Either way this post is not a review of BulletStorm – it’s a troubleshooting article which aims to fix some of the most commonly reported problems with the game.

How to increase BulletStorm performance by choosing the correct display resolution

While BulletStorm is a pretty well optimized PC port, there seems to be a weird issue with the game slowing down to a crawl on certain resolutions. For example, most people report having major slowdowns, stuttering and FPS drops in resolutions such as 1650x1080 and 1440x900. The trick here is to use a screen resolution that’s MOD 8. That is, the numeric values for width and height should be divisible by 8, with a remainder of 0. Examples of optimal resolutions include:

• 1920x1080
• 1360x768
• 1600x1024

The above might not work for everyone and you will have to experiment a little to find the optimal solution for your particular case. However, if you experience unbelievable crappy performance, try changing the resolution – this is known to sometimes give gains as much as 40FPS.

Fix Bulletstorm crashing during launch or due to PhysX issue

Your game might crash during startup or will close with a PhysX related error message. In case this happens, please install latest PhysX system software that came bundled with the game (or you can download it from here). In case this does solve the problem, try the steps below.

1. Install the latest NVIDIA PhysX system software.
2. Navigate to :\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\PhysX\Common\ folder. Copy all files inside this directory.
3. Navigate to \Binaries\Win32\PhysXLocal\ folder in your BulletStorm installation folder. Paste all copied files inside the PhysXLocal folder, overwriting any existing ones.
4. Restart the game.

How to save progress in Bulletstorm with a Windows Live Offline account

This is one of the most frequently asked questions in our troubleshooting articles. We have explained in detail the steps to resolve this but the issue pops up every time a GFWL based title is released.  Bulletstorm is a Games For Windows Live (GFWL) based title and you need to have an GFWL account in order to save game progress. But don’t worry, in case you don’t have an online profile, you can still save the game using an offline account. Step by step instructions on how to do this is given below:

1. Launch the game. Open the Windows Live menu (or it will open automatically, prompting you to log in or create a new account).
2. If you are not logged into any GFWL profile continue to step 3. If you are already logged onto a profile (local or online), try launching the single player component and try to save progress. If saving and loading works fine, you obviously have no problem. If it does not work, you’ll need to sign out of the current profile before continuing to step 3 (Create profile button will only become visible when you aren’t logged in).
3. Click on ‘Create new profile’ button.
4. In the dialog box that pops up DO NOT hit continue. Hitting continue will take you to a registration page for an ONLINE profile – this is not the requirement.
5. Once in the ‘Create Gamer Profile’ window, scroll down so that you can see the bottom paragraph.
6. Look for the hyperlinked ‘created a local profile’ link in last paragraph. Clicking this will allow you to create a new offline profile.

Note that an offline GFWL account will not let you play online. But you should be able to play single player mode without any issues whatsoever. A YouTube video showing how to make an offline xlive account can also be found here.

General tips to avoid crashes

• Update to the latest DirectX monthly runtime (August 2010) – this is an absolute must not just for BulletStorm for for pretty much every PC game that comes out these days. Latest monthly runtime can be downloaded from here.
• If you experience random CTD, try disabling multi GPU technologies such as SLI or Crossfire, if using any.
• Update video card drivers to the latest build before running the game – if latest drivers do not work, try downloading and installing latest beta drivers (do this at your own risk).
  ATI Drivers: Download the latest ATI Catalyst drivers from this link: http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx
  NVIDIA Drivers: Download latest official NVIDIA drivers from this link: http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us
  Beta Drivers: Check here http://donloads.guru3d.com/

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