Reshade for Kotor / TSL

[Todd Hellid 16]

Ok actually I found this out. I plugged in a DVI-VGA adapter and it works but only without the shader files. I have  AMD Radeon R9 270x video card using Windows 7 64bit. The latest drivers which are the Omega drivers work with the shader but a saved game will not load. It crashes. If I use the 13.12 drivers the game loads but only without the shader.

[Euilogy 1]

Every time I try to run TSL with the Reshader I get a wierd runtime error. Any idea what it could be?

 

I'm using TSLRCM, M4-78EP, Jedi Temple and various texture mods.

 

My build is an Overclocked i5-3750K, 8GB Ram, AMD 7950 and an AsRock z77 Extreme4 Motherboard

[alinadem 11]

Ok actually I found this out. I plugged in a DVI-VGA adapter and it works but only without the shader files. I have  AMD Radeon R9 270x video card using Windows 7 64bit. The latest drivers which are the Omega drivers work with the shader but a saved game will not load. It crashes. If I use the 13.12 drivers the game loads but only without the shader.

 

By default effects should load. The Reshade.fx file has the scroll-lock key as a toggle to effects on/off. If it's still remaining of not sure, I'd recommend posting a screenshot of the directory. Also Crosire is continiously updating his injector. I imagine whatever minor issues, such as movies causing the injector to have problems, should be fixed very soon. 

 

Every time I try to run TSL with the Reshader I get a wierd runtime error. Any idea what it could be?

 

I'm using TSLRCM, M4-78EP, Jedi Temple and various texture mods.

 

My build is an Overclocked i5-3750K, 8GB Ram, AMD 7950 and an AsRock z77 Extreme4 Motherboard

 

Can you link a screenshot of the error? Or if you could link me the OPENGL32.log file 

 

If the log file is very large, delete it, start the game/reshade again. 

[Todd Hellid 16]

By default effects should load. The Reshade.fx file has the scroll-lock key as a toggle to effects on/off. If it's still remaining of not sure, I'd recommend posting a screenshot of the directory. Also Crosire is continiously updating his injector. I imagine whatever minor issues, such as movies causing the injector to have problems, should be fixed very soon. 

 

 

Can you link a screenshot of the error? Or if you could link me the OPENGL32.log file 

 

If the log file is very large, delete it, start the game/reshade again. 

I get no error It just crashes to the desktop abruptly after the in game picture of Nihillus

https://app.dumptruck.goldenfrog.com/f/OPENGL32.log

[Euilogy 1]

Reinstalled the game and that seemed to solve the error, no idea what caused it. This mod is brilliant though. Definitely improves the visuals in subtle but nicely noticeable ways

[Medragor-des 10]

Oooh! My eyes says delicious! Downloading and giving it a shot, asap!

By the way, do I have to have Frame Buffer turned on? Cause my game always gets crashed, after I turn on, because of my ATI driver. :S

[Euilogy 1]

I run it fine without Frame Buffer. I've got the same ATI issues 

[Medragor-des 10]

Really?

I was sure that my ATI card was not compatible or something, cause it gave me an error, right at the beginning, saying:

"OpenGL 4.3 required..."

I checked, and mine was at 6.2 or .3. After that, knowing that ATI has quite the problems with such and such, I thought that this is just another, so...

[DiamondchessMaster 0]

This looks excellent but this reminds me of how old TSL is, I think that maybe someone should redo the entire graphics and modernise them I would but I know nothing about modding. But this is definitly sufficient.

[3dmember 6]

For some reason I cannot get this to work or any post processing to work like QEPro or QGL effects or the conversion OPENGL ENB which i've been able to get to work on every other opengl game old and new. Mind you i've had a ton of issues with getting post processing to work on all other games because i'm an ATi user(HD6970 2gb). I'm using the GOG version of the game which is 1.03. For some reason the game comes packaged with atioglxx.dll it runs fine with that dll in the .exe folder problem is thats an older opengl version and post processing won't function when the game runs off of it. If I remove it and try to use my video cards drivers(which are up to date with the latest Omega drivers). The game will boot up with ReShade but the game will refuse to run(i.e. i can't start a new game or anything). I'm hoping someone can help me here. Thanks in advance.

 

P.S.

 

I will never be buying an ATi ever again. Ever since I switched to bloody ATi I've had nothing but problems; seems every month I encounter an issue with an old or new game I want to play off GoG or Steam... issues I never had on my nvidia system. I either cannot run the game at all the way I want to or I have to sacrifice something I consider to be big(graphical customization like enb/PP stuff) in order to get it to run. Whatever minor superior hardware the ATi has over it's Nvidia counterpart seems to be completely negated by shitty drivers, optimization etc. Really disappointed in AMD. 

[Happy 0]

Cool stuff. Too bad you removed the SSAO

[3dmember 6]

Okay I'm back again with good news. I figured out a work around to get KOTOR 1 and TSL to run shader libraries with my ATi hunk of junk. It took some major tweaking but I managed to get it to work flawlessly. That said I have used what I know about Reshade 1.5+ SweetFX 2.0 and got a combo version that works together with Master Effects+SweetFX and now I have the following effects working flawlessly together combined with KOTOR 1 and TSL HD texture mods to make a truly stunning experience that is also easy on the FPS(some shaders stomp on even the most powerfull systems due to shader incompatibilities). Right now I have the following shaders reconfigured custom because the default values don't work properly or look like trash and now they are all working together seamlessly:

 

-Raymarch AO(custom values that accent the HDR dark shading areas making them look more dramatic to physical lighting effects/bloom. Can really only be seen in real time. A good example where it can be seen is anamflare/bloom from a lightsaber or flickering broken light in a complex, particle effects or something similar.)

-Gaussian Anamflare(very custom setup that is not stupid or blinding like most of the configs I've seen also with colour correction(no more overly blinding blue tone))

-Bloom(very nice and subtle light weight with good color setup to accent the custom tonemapping setup with filmic pass I have)

-SSAO(yes i'm running two AO's; screen capture doesn't do it justice but they look incredible running on top of each other combined with HDR)

-MatsoDOF(works flawelessly as is but I've custom edited the bias so that is lines up with sharpen mask + lumasharpen)

-Liftgammagain(custom values to more accurately control dark shadow colours changed by DOF and custom tonemapping)

-Vibrance(custom so that saturation isn't overwhelming in certain lights with the tonemapping)

-Sharpening mask(nearly full)

-Film grain(lowest weight, normally I hate most film grains, however I do like it when it's the good version of film grain which is the moving static variant with colour modes and intensity+tone controls properly configured, hopefully you don't hate mine, my friend says it's too subtle. I know some prefer heavy film grain(I hate it haha))

-FilmicPass(extremely mild custom setup)

-HDR(SweetFX HDR with custom setting)

-Lumasharpen with (slightly less than moderate value to accent the sharpen mask so that objects close up look detailed and far away they look less sharp but more defined - can really only be seen in real time unfortunately, it took me quite awhile to get the values to line up properly with sharpen mask +MatsoDOF(the bokeh effect in it quite often screws it up when objects just transition into focus))

 

This is an example screenshot, I'd like to point out as I'm sure many are aware of this. Screen shots really are not a good demonstration of what the shaders really look like because the most noticeable differences can really only be seen in real time. Anyways here's a sample. Also keep in mind that Imgur is a stupid bastard and always downsamples uploaded images I have found into shitty quality jpg(original was nice quality png). http://i.imgur.com/ggaDKPS.jpg

 

One more thing to add. With any opengl game I would encourage people to use hardware AA(if available - something like adaptive MSAA w/ edge detect mode) or brute force software AA through the game options because these methods of AA do not interfere with shaders. If you use for example Master Effect FXAA or SweetFX SMAA they massively interfere with things like lumasharpen, sharpen mask, HDR and film grain. This interference is more noticeable in opengl than direct 3d. Not sure why but it will often look terrible. Just a heads up.

 

 

Posted Today, 01:51 AM -

 

I'm having a blast playing the game right now, I'll be back soon, perhaps tomorrow with some more sample screen shots of my KOTOR 1 playthrough with more vista examples of these shaders in play. If people like what I've done and there's enough demand for it I'll setup a mediafire account and post a download link to my custom setup.

 

Posted Today, 03:03 AM -

 

Update: So turns out no matter what I do there's no way to stop any kind of tonemapping from screwing up UI(Makes the Mini Map and a few other important menus virtually unreadable) until Cosire implements GUI detection in the new ReShade framework they are developing. So unfortunately any of the advanced tonemapping shaders are a no go for me atleast. I can't stand the look of it on the UI.

[Kexikus 994]

That screenshot really looks great. I would have to see a video or try it for myself to decide if I want to play like this but I'm quite impressed.

I'm wondering about one thing however: When I activated SSAO I had some really annoying effects so that I had to play without it and I was wondering if you managed to get around those. The problem was that whenever a part of a character was close to another surface (like the feets during normal gameplay or simply during the vision cutscenes when you lay in bed) there were shadows around those parts of the body but they always were a little too far away from my character so that there was a bright line between the character and the shadow which looked really bad. I played around with the SSAO settings a bit but I couldn't find a way to fix this so I was wondering if had the same problem.

[3dmember 6]

Yes I managed to correct the SSAO and Raymarch AO shadow artifacts. The reason it happens is because this is an old opengl game and the problem with that is that ReShade was never configured for it so the depth bias(the distance from mesh that add or culls shadows and light casts to textures) is completely inaccurate for this. I reconfigured the entire depth so now it should atleast 99% of the time have no visible shader artifacts. In addition, I was able to reconfigure the contrast clamping and sub-pixel clamping of FXAA to make it so that there are no visible contrast artifacts. So FXAA is now an option for those who like me find that FXAA over blurrs, bleaches and causes visual artifacts when rendered onto older games like this; I've eliminated 99% of the problem with it as well. That being said i'm going to continue my playthrough now that i'm comfortable with the results and try to get as many of the best screenshots as I can(The screen shots from this point on should be much better than that one since I've improved my shaders a bit more) and then i'll post them here within a day and if you're still interested like I said earlier i'll post a download link.

 

Also like in that screen shot there is no tonemapping. The reason for this like I said earlier is because it breaks the UI quite a bit more than even FXAA. So I won't be using it at least until Crosire adds GUI detection. Until that happens I won't even bother trying to make it look accurate because the UI distortion is just too great(on the really good tonemapping suites) like the filmic one, HPD, and reinhic etc.

[3dmember 6]

Here are some more screens... I know I know nothing special yet but I've only just begun my playthrough so i'm still on boring Taris. 

 

I'll have more examples of new locales as I get further into my replay.

 

Edit: For some reason now that I have tweaked the FXAA to be acceptable it's distorted the film grain. I just readjusted it and it's much better now. The next set of screen shots should look much better.

 

Edit: I removed the old list of screen shots that the new FXAA settings I made which distorted the screen noise(moving film grain). 

 

Here a few new screens with the corrected FXAA and film grain:

 

http://i.imgur.com/qFuHMZz.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/LBpXN1C.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/fTfjPUE.jpg

 

Locales are nothing special but it shows the improved clarity I've achieved.

 

I really like what I've managed to do with the DOF edits unfortunately MatsoDOF is the best for most opengl games and what that means is that I cannot edit the DOF response time. He has no configuration for it yet. Hopefully in the future there will be. So for now you might notice in some screens that the DOF is not really being applied and that's because it's purely situational. 95% of the time DOF is applied but sometimes it can take a few seconds to kick in and I get jumpy with my SS button haha. So I miss including DOF into the shot.

[Kampher 0]

That looks great 3dMember!

 

I've been trying to get DoF to work for about a week, but I can't seem to get the blur to stop overtaking large portions of the UI. This is especially true in conversations.

 

Did you manage to get Matso's to work with conversations? Would you be willing to setup that download link for your settings? They look great, and I'd really enjoy trying it out on my next TSL play-through.

[3dmember 6]

Unfortunately not as of yet. The problem with Matso DoF is actually a problem with ReShade. You see until Crosire and the team implement GUI detection there is only so much I can do. I have tweaked the radius and depth bias so that it's not as noticeable but it's still there. you'll notice it still clipping off portions of the text if the conversation is long enough. Now i'm still trying to tweak it because I think I can get it better but it's hard because if I switch the values too much then DoF disappears entirely.

 

So I still need a few days. I'm a Skyrim modder and my Skyrim modding takes priority over any other kind of game tweaking. However I really want to continue my KOTOR 1+2 playthroughs so I will get to it today or tomorrow. Once I get the DoF tweaked to a point i'm satisfied with(it's ALOT of trial and error because it's hard to reproduce every situation where the DoF might blur the text). Once that's done i'll setup a download link. Just give me a day or two but it will be done.

 

Like I said I will tweak it more there are some other values I can mess around with(but Matso warns not to lol) that I believe may alleviate the issue. Playing KOTOR again after not playing it for so many years with all the new shiny mods, HD stuff, and post processing... I mean wow it's like a brand new game. Also I don't even remember what the game was really about since it was 10 years since I last played KOTOR 1+2 LOL.

[3dmember 6]

Okay here's the first beta of my ReShade 0.15 + Master Effect ReBorn + SweetFX 2.0 preset. Enjoy. There is still some issues with MatsoDoF. I plan to iron them out soon but keep in mind it's difficult without GUI detection implemented. I might end up having to wait for the new Shader framework being developed. However most of the time text is not affected I tweaked the aperture to a decent degree and left auto-focus on so that in case it does blur the text it will eventually kick out.

 

Here's the link to my drop box:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/9b3fq2lo13eychv/AABeyJ_cxlc4nu2YYy6u2SG_a?dl=0
 

Let me know if there are any problems.

[Kampher 0]

Thanks for throwing this out for us to use!

 

My FPS seems to be down to about 5, and I have a pretty mid-range rig. I wonder what's killing the FPS?

 

The other strange thing, is that everything only seems to compile when I'm in the menu. If i'm in-game, reshade gets stuck loading and never does anything. Strange.

[Squall Lionhart 81]

Same as Kampher, although it looks really promising, however my FPS went straight to hell after using. 

[3dmember 6]

You know I knew this would happen but I still forgot to include two extremely important directions into the README LOL. You must disable soft shadows and frame buffer effects to use this configuration.

 

The reason for this is because of an opengl shader conflict. Alot of ReShade effects conflict with the games frame buffer effects(which are basically primitive forms of post processing). Also the double AO approach I use conflicts with Soft Shadows as well. I have frame buffer effects and soft shadows disabled anyways because I find they look terrible in comparison to my ReShade config. I'm truly sorry that I forgot to mention that. Turn those two off and then try using this.

 

I'm sure you'll find it will work just fine without any frame issues once those two options are disabled. The reason it happens is because the ReShade shader effects i'm using access the same resources as soft shadows and frame buffer effects to create there shaders. Trust me you don't need them. All default frame buffer effects this game uses are only 16-24 bit effects. Where as ReShade and SweetFX 2.0 are using 32bit effects with more complex lighting shaders on particles(meaning stuff like sparks and lightsabers have more lights with ReShade than the games default frame buffer effects). Also soft shadowing is overrated.

 

My double AO + HDR approach to softening shadows may not be as transitional however it's far more accurate looking than the games default soft shadows. Because the soft shadowing shader used by this games Odyssey engine is very limited meaning it will not apply soft shading to reflective surfaces, higher poly meshed textures or affect other lights. In addition the games soft shadowing only applies a blurred shadow mask focal point algorithm to only the shadows specified(which is very few shadows) by the game engine. It then applies this mask from the projected aperture of only localized lights. Where as softening shadows by using AO + HDR applies shadow softening to the entire scene.

 

I hope this clears things up and makes it work for your game. For me disabling frame buffer and soft shadows makes it work perfectly and look visually better as you can see in the screenshots. I meant to put these instructions into the README. I just forgot. Sorry about about that. I'll make another post detailing this. Anyways that's the reason for the FPS hit. When two shader libraries try to access the same resources, BAM! conflict and frame rate just gets destroyed as it's continuously bottle necking the processes.

 

Also on certain video cards(which explains why the other guy was having it not compile past the menu screen) the shader library will refuse to compile when encountering a conflict(i'm guessing he has an ATi gaming card because they have a safety built in that stops alternate shader libraries when this happens). There are a few really powerful NVidia cards that can brute force there way through the conflict. However that only puts them in the acceptable frame rate range and also disables a lot of the shaders my preset adds in the process. If you have said NVidia card you will lose at least one of the AO approaches, if not both; your bloom, gaussian anamflare, DoF will only be running at a severely diminished capacity and complexity. HDR and sharpening masks will also be affected.

 

So make sure you disable frame buffer effects and soft shadows.

[Squall Lionhart 81]

Does ReShade come with its own version of frame effects or will we be without those?

[3dmember 6]

I thought I made that clear. Post Processing = Frame Buffer Effects. ReShade = Post Processing. Understand?

 

All Frame Buffer Effects were just a primitive form of post processing back when post processing was a brand new concept. A Frame Buffer Effect is 8-24bit MTC effect applied to the image during the buffer process of a frame. The problem with frame buffer effects is like I said they were primitive and severely limited. It was a piggy back process designed for CRT monitors and not widescreen high definition so it was severely limited to what it could do.

 

The other unfortunate limitation to Frame Buffer Effects is that they access the portion of the opengl resources that advanced Post Processing methods access(if it was Direct3D it wouldn't matter because advanced post processing would always take priority and frame buffer effects would be disabled as a result without turning the feature off). 

 

Heres the bottom line so you can see a comparison and understand what Frame Buffer Effects exactly are:

 

Frame Buffer Effects:

24bit MTC per pixel flares(primitive bloom - it doesn't look as good as today's bloom)

24bit MTC per pixel noise(primitive film effect that looks inferior to colour correction/HDR/tonemapping)

24bit MTC speed blur(I hate speed blur personally and frame buffer speed blur is the shittiest kind - however if it's something you really want over ReShades advanced effects then disregard using my shader config)

 

ReShade Post Processing with my config:

32bit HD per pixel flares(colour corrected)(today's bloom standard)

32bit HD per pixel noise(superior method)(film effect similar to frame buffer effects but much better(it is a moving screen noise - frame buffer is static))

32bit HD HDR lighting simulation(advanced photo realistic image toning with shader tone correction)

32bit HD 2 Sharpening texture methods(1 sharpen mask, 1 sharpening texture bias applied to the alpha channel(can interfere with SMAA techniques but we're not using them))

32bit HD colour corrected blur mask lens flare effect(photo simulated lens flare effect)(gaussian anamflare)

32bit HD fullscreen FXAA method(combined with my values + 2x AA from game gives best visual smoothing)

32bit HD screen space ambient occlusion mapping shader(tries to simulate physically realistic shading similar to soft shadowing but applied to the entire image)

32bit HD raymarch ambient occlusion applied with filter on top of SSAO(same as above but a secondary method that with my values catches what SSAO misses and vice versa

32bit HD Vibrancy shader(intelligent integrated colour enhancement/correction)

32bit HD Gamma lift (improves shadow colours and tones so that no shadow that is exposed to light is pure black)

32bit HD Depth of Field with it's own effects(gaussian blur/bokeh etc)(Matso DoF)

 

In addition I could add speed blur shader to ReShade but I won't because personally I hate it and it distorts the clarity of the effects i'm using(I did try to add it originally, even with ReShades superior approach it looked terrible).

 

Soft Shadowing is basically just a non full image(only applied to a very limited amount of shadows), non frame buffer method of adding occlusion culling and physical saturation to shadowing done in the game world. In certain cases it can look neat but like I said it really only affects the shadows cast by NPCs/PC and a small number of lighting affects. These effects still apply a shadow regardless of soft shadowing being on/off. Soft shadowing is just a non post process method of softening them. If you notice with my effects softening will occur as well due to double AO approaches and HDR tonemapping as well as gamma control of the shadows themselves(lift gamma gain).

 

Another thing to note is that the opengl that this game uses is limited to a maximum of 14 post processing effects. The effects used require opengl library 4.3+. However that's the reason I only use 12 effects. If I use more my double AO approach most likely will start to misbehave because technically speaking AO accounts for 2 post processing methods each as it's a very hefty process.

 

As you can see ReShade is superior to frame buffer effects method in every single way.

 

I hope this clarifies things more.

[Squall Lionhart 81]

So sorry for bothering you for just trying to clarify on a subject.

[3dmember 6]

It's no bother man. I hope you got it working is all. Sorry if I sounded hasty. I just thought I had described it in an earlier post.

 

Did you get it working with a decent framerate? I'm wondering because frame buffer effects and soft shadowing should be the culprits because of there resource interference.

 

I just hope the above post makes other understand why you can't really use frame buffers effects and soft shadowing with ReShade and why you don't really want to even if you have a card that can brute force through it. Though I suppose soft shadowing might be alright if you have a card that can brute force through it, however I can't guarantee that it won't kill your framerate or disable some ReShade effects.

 

Bottom line disabling soft shadows and frame buffer effects when using this will result in you gaining visual fidelity, not losing it.