here is what you can do:
- start sauer at a smaller resolution. 800x500 or 600 will work fine and just appear a bit more pixelish. anything more than 1200 is really unnecessary.
to do so with windows: rightclick on the sauerbraten.bat > edit and enter for example "-w640 -h480" after "bin/sauerbraten.exe"
- turn anti-aliasing off by starting sauerbraten with the parameter -a0
windows: rightclick on the sauerbraten.bat > edit and enter "-a0" after "bin/sauerbraten.exe"
mac: turn the launcher's switch to "off"
- turn off almost ALL gfx (graphical effects) in the menu (esc>options>gfx) so it looks like in the picture below. i have model glow turned on, as it eats almost nothing but helps you identify your enemies a lot. it is propably most important that you turn off shaders (the first point in the gfx-tab. make sure by entering /shaders 0 in game
- use the old playermdel ogro, as the ogro ist faster to render
to do so: choose ogro in the options tab
- if you are on a computer with a rather old graphics card, try to start sauer with 16 bit colors by adding these parameters:
-b16 -z24
windows: right click on sauerbraten.bat > edit > add the parameters after "bin/sauerbraten.exe -r"
mac: enter the parameters in the field "advanced options" of the launcher
- turn hudguns off with the command /hudgun
to do that, enter /hudgun 0 in-game, and /hudgun 1 to get them back
- if this all still does not get you the fps you want test to enter the following commands in-game:
/texreduce 6 - to turn it off again: /texreduce 0
this will also make the map "cleaner" so enemies are easier to spot - but you will also have mor difficulties measuring distances
you can also test the following commands if they improve the fps:
/maxtexsize 128 for cards with less than 64 MB
/texcompress 128 for cards with less than 64 MB
reduce the value for /maxparticles in a way that does not bother you
Hope your framerate is better now. Enjoy it!
There is also a cubewiki entry with similar tricks here: http://cube.wikispaces.com/Performance+Guide