Reshade for Kotor / TSL

[3dmember 6]

I will be making a post later with an updated DoF version and better instructions detailing everything that's been explained on this forum in the README as well as some new screen shots of Dantooine. My Dantooine shots should give other people a good idea of what they are missing hehe.

[3dmember 6]

Well i'm still not satisfied with the DoF so no release as of yet. Still tweaking it. However here is a few more screen shots. These are of Dantooine.

 

http://i.imgur.com/b2lIW4y.jpg

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

http://i.imgur.com/1Xjczdg.jpg

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

http://i.imgur.com/2w5Txkd.jpg

[Squall Lionhart 81]

Well, I tried turning off the Frame buffer and the soft shadows, but my FPS still went down. However the effect did work in game like you said. 

[Mephiles550 227]

Well i'm still not satisfied with the DoF so no release as of yet. Still tweaking it. However here is a few more screen shots. These are of Dantooine.

 

http://i.imgur.com/b2lIW4y.jpg

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

http://i.imgur.com/1Xjczdg.jpg

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

http://i.imgur.com/2w5Txkd.jpg

Amazing Screenshots! I love the additional texture pack you added to Dantooine, but it's one I don't recognize. Can you tell me where I can download this texture mod for Dantooine?

[3dmember 6]

 

Well, I tried turning off the Frame buffer and the soft shadows, but my FPS still went down. However the effect did work in game like you said.

 

I'd be interested in knowing your hardware specifications. If it's not too much trouble. If I know them, I might be able to make a version for you with less of an FPS impact. However it might not look as grand.

 

 

Amazing Screenshots! I love the additional texture pack you added to Dantooine, but it's one I don't recognize. Can you tell me where I can download this texture mod for Dantooine?

The texture pack i'm using is the best I've seen and it nearly replaces every default texture in game. You can get it here. It's for KOTOR 1 though only and it's a Russian texture pack. However it doesn't change your language. It's just the installer is in Russian. It's still easy enough to install.

 

You can get it here:
http://www.playground.ru/files/star_wars_knights_of_the_old_republic_graphic_modification_obnovleno-77204/

[Squall Lionhart 81]

I'd be interested in knowing your hardware specifications. If it's not too much trouble. If I know them, I might be able to make a version for you with less of an FPS impact. However it might not look as grand.

I have an intel i5 processor, Nvidia GTX 745 Graphics, and Windows 8 OS.

[Mephiles550 227]

 The texture pack i'm using is the best I've seen and it nearly replaces every default texture in game. You can get it here. It's for KOTOR 1 though only and it's a Russian texture pack. However it doesn't change your language. It's just the installer is in Russian. It's still easy enough to install.

 

You can get it here:

http://www.playground.ru/files/star_wars_knights_of_the_old_republic_graphic_modification_obnovleno-77204/

I'd love to download this, but my browser keeps insisting that it's virus infested and that I should keep away from it.

For all I know, Chrome may just have a bias towards Russian websites, but you're sure this is a safe download?

[3dmember 6]

 

I have an intel i5 processor, Nvidia GTX 745 Graphics, and Windows 8 OS.

 

Interesting... I don't know why you're machine is having an issue then. This is very odd. Your machine is more powerful mine rofl and I'm having no issues. I know this may sound insulting but it doesn't take long for drivers to become out of date. Are your drivers updated to the newest release? If they are updated then I suggest that you go into ReShade.fx and turn off Raymarch AO and see if only running one AO method alleviates your framerate issue.

 

It could be a problem with driver conflict. Nvidia inspector has it's own forced AO as well so you could try to force Ambient Occlusion through your driver settings and turn off both ReShade methods(SSAO/Raymarch AO) as well but I don't know if NVidia AO is able to be forced onto Opengl games. You could try though and see. Something tells me NVidia AO is Direct3D only.

 

I will try my best to setup something that will work with your hardware as I believe the issue is a hardware one that I can't reproduce because my video card is ATi.
So just try to bare with me and give me as much information as you can so that I might troubleshoot this with you.

 

Also in your game directory there should be an Opengl log if you could throw that into a dropbox or paste it's contents into a spoiler that I can see what's going on I might be able to fix this issue for you by way of driver options, etcs. Basically it might be a driver setting conflict(which i'm pretty sure it is) and a specific profile made in inspector for KOTOR might alleviate the framerate issue.

 

I haven't used an NVidia rig for about half a year(I dismantled my old NVidia rig). However I am familiar with it's drivers and utilities like inspector. So I may be able to help troubleshoot this.

 

 

I'd love to download this, but my browser keeps insisting that it's virus infested and that I should keep away from it.
For all I know, Chrome may just have a bias towards Russian websites, but you're sure this is a safe download?

I'm positive the real file is safe. What's weird is that it's saying it's a virus. Just a warning. Make sure you use google to translate the page(right click on some russian text and select "translate page") and then locate the right download link(there are spam links which will download bad stuff on your computer). You will know if you're downloading the right file because the real Russian HD texture package is about 3.5 gigabytes. Yes it's quite large, then again it is replacing nearly all textures in the game with top quality textures. Also it might take awhile; if it still says it's a virus just ignore stupid google. It's a false positive issue and underneath the file in the download page of your browser click the link that says "recover malicious file". Then confirm.

[Squall Lionhart 81]

Interesting... I don't know why you're machine is having an issue then. This is very odd. Your machine is more powerful mine rofl and I'm having no issues. I know this may sound insulting but it doesn't take long for drivers to become out of date. Are your drivers updated to the newest release? If they are updated then I suggest that you go into ReShade.fx and turn off Raymarch AO and see if only running one AO method alleviates your framerate issue.

 

It could be a problem with driver conflict. Nvidia inspector has it's own forced AO as well so you could try to force Ambient Occlusion through your driver settings and turn off both ReShade methods(SSAO/Raymarch AO) as well but I don't know if NVidia AO is able to be forced onto Opengl games. You could try though and see. Something tells me NVidia AO is Direct3D only.

 

I will try my best to setup something that will work with your hardware as I believe the issue is a hardware one that I can't reproduce because my video card is ATi.

So just try to bare with me and give me as much information as you can so that I might troubleshoot this with you.

 

Also in your game directory there should be an Opengl log if you could throw that into a dropbox or paste it's contents into a spoiler that I can see what's going on I might be able to fix this issue for you by way of driver options, etcs. Basically it might be a driver setting conflict(which i'm pretty sure it is) and a specific profile made in inspector for KOTOR might alleviate the framerate issue. 

 

I haven't used an NVidia rig for about half a year(I dismantled my old NVidia rig). However I am familiar with it's drivers and utilities like inspector. So I may be able to help troubleshoot this.

Well, all drivers are updated, but all of my textures are turned up high. On copying the contents to the game folder, I am assuming that the SweetFX goes in with the game folder. Or is this mistaken as this may be the cause of my FPS issue.

[3dmember 6]

SweetFX goes into the game folder just as ReShade does. My textures are turned up high as well. Just be sure that in your NVidia driver config that there is nothing like driver forced Ambient Occlusion(inspector) on and maybe try forcing 16x anistrophy on with your drivers instead of ingame(older anistrophy methods don't always play nice with new drivers). Also do not turn ingame Anti Aliasing on more than 2x. Tbh you shouldn't need AA on at all with my config. All this being said the issue could very well be Windows 8(i've heard some pretty bad horror stories and i've used it myself which is why i'm currently rolled back to Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit). However I don't see why Windows 8 would be affecting this game but who knows.

 

Another thing that would help me help you is if you could copy/paste your swotor.ini/swotor2.ini into a spoiler.

 

This is how mine looks for example:

 

[Graphics Options]

RefreshRate=60

V-Sync=0

Anisotropy=16

Frame Buffer=0

Anti Aliasing=2

Texture Quality=2

Emitters=1

Grass=1

Soft Shadows=0

Shadows=1

Brightness=54

EnableHardwareMouse=1

FullScreen=1

Disable Vertex Buffer Objects=1

Height=1080

Width=1920

 

Oh crap spoilers don't work here. What the..

 

As you can see I have V-Sync turned off. You could try that as well. It could be that your driver V-Sync(if enabled) is conflicting. I dunno, anything is possible at this point. Many claim that V-Syncs can't conflict with one another. I beg to differ as I've had them conflict before. You could also disable all V-Sync options(in video card options and in game) and see if that alleviates your frame rate issues.

 

Also if you have an option that says:

 

AllowSoftShadows=1

 

Try removing it as well. It will be under graphic options in your swotor/2.ini.

 

[3dmember 6]

By the time i'm done here I might have to include a 10 page readme detailing all the troubleshooting we're doing here to include with the new version rofl.

[3dmember 6]

Okay just an update. I won't be releasing another build until the new Master Effect Reborn comes out. He just released a few revisions of 1.1 but they are still really buggy. The reason for this is because there's just no way I can tweak the DoF to work without blurring at least some text and if I do tweak it to stop blurring the text one of two things happens. 1) The DoF threshold completely falls off too early and auto-focus nearly never kicks in, or 2) I tweak the radius to expand the screen more on auto-focus so that text is visible however the DoF effect ends up too strong around the aperture and and fish eye/bokeh's the entire screen nearly all the time.

 

So within the month Marty McFly plans to release a better working version of his new 1.1 build. Which includes GUI detection(already does but the build is buggy and unstable like I said) also right now he doesn't have FXAA working yet. He has SMAA but older opengl games don't run SMAA well infact most of the time it downright refuses to work and glitches out the sharpening methods. So when he fixes all that I'll create a new preset based off that version and release it.

 

For now all I can do is try to trouble shoot any problems you guys have with the current build.

[Constar 23]

That is awesome news! GUI detection and working DoF will make the Kotor Games look at least 10 years younger! Great!
 

 

Now to the FPS problem, that some people, including me seem to have:

 

I found out, that it is linked to the Raymarch Ambient Occlusion. adjusting the values wont help, FPS is allways the same.

 

It can't be my Rig's fault, since I got 2 GTX660s running and also a i7 processor, wich is paired with 22GB Ram.

 

Could you have missed a certain .dll when uploading, or do you use a driver tweak, that may have influence over the Raymarch Method?

[3dmember 6]

Well the problem seems to be restricted to NVidia. So I am wondering are you guys using NVidia inspector and is its Ambient Occlusion method enabled?(Alot of people just throw it on for all games and forget to turn it off) I'm saying this because I missed nothing in the download. What I have given is the complete package. I'm running an ATi Radeon 6970 2gb and a much lesser specced system than yours and I'm getting 60fps that never dips. So I don't think the problem has anything to do with performance of a rig. I think it has to do with NVidia's drivers conflicting with something in the ReShade MER(Master Effect Reborn) Package. It could also be that enabling SweetFX with MER is incompatible with the NVidia driver architecture as well.

 

Try disabling SweetFX(it only has HDR and an extra sharpening bias method enabled - with the next release of MER both are being included with MER so there will be no point in using SweetFX for them in the future) by temporaily relocating sweet.fx and the SweetFX folder out of the game directory and then go into the ReShade.fx and at the top remove the line #include "Sweet.fx". If that doesn't work then the issue must be an incompatibility with NVidia vs Raymarch AO and if that's the case I would suggest just beefing up the values of SSAO by raising the sample rate + smoothing + power. Note that this will not look as good as the double approach but it should still look considerably better than not having it.

 

Also you could try using NVidia's inspector and see if it's Ambient Occlusion is compatible with the games Opengl. Crank the setting to high and make sure to use HBAO Ultra or w/e it is and not Volumetric approach(volumetric is the low quality AO method). I think Inspector has 2 or 3 methods it's able to apply I just don't remember if they are compatible with opengl games. In addition keep in mind that a lot post processing and graphics enhancement API's have their preferential video card brand. For example I have noticed that ENBs of any variety prefer NVidia rigs and run better on them and ReShade seems to run better on ATi(I have no idea why this is). However take Skyrim for instance; try getting the same performance out of a high intensity ENB on a ATi Rig... good luck with that. Even on my friends insanely overpowered ATi rig with 2x R9 290s he gets lousy performance running the latest NL&A ENB(which is the most performance heavy one atm). Yet my friend running a single GTX 970 gets better performance LOL.

 

Also I will repeat this again because I myself will quite often will not take the time to read every post within a forum topic specially if there are multiple pages involved. Anyways make sure that frame buffer effects and soft shadows are turned off. They are not compatible with new methods of post processing(frame buffer effects and soft shadows are essentially primitive forms of light/shadow post processing). Anyways frame buffer effects is not compatible with ReShades bloom/gaussian blur and other stuff and soft shadows are not compatible with Ambient Occlusion methods. So just remember that even if the game will run with both; one of two things will happen. 1) you lose some of ReShades effects which will result in lower visual fidelity or 2) really bad driver conflict, resulting in a crash/fps destroyed with almost no post processing occurring.

 

I really hope this helps NVidia users get this working. I will try to troubleshoot it more if that doesn't work. Just help me by giving me opengl logs, inspector settings, driver settings, etc. So that I know what's going on.

[Squall Lionhart 81]

Thanks for your help, I'll try all of it tomorrow when I get the chance. Reason why I mention the OS is because when I rolled back to Windows 7 on my old system, the Frame Buffer Effects did not like the graphics card, yet when I updated to Windows 8 (with the same Graphics Card) the effects worked like a charm.

[3dmember 6]

Yeah this all could be a matter of finicky hardware configs. Post processing can be a really tricky business and nothing is guaranteed to run on every system unfortunately. I just hope we can work something out that nets you guys at least 80% of what i'm trying to achieve with this preset.

[3dmember 6]

I'll check back tomorrow with some more screens and read your progress and any other questions you might have.

 

To be honest I feel kinda bad for hijacking alinadem's forum topic lol but he/she seems to be inactive so w/e I guess.

[3dmember 6]

So bad news friends. I just tested out ReShade 0.16 with the new Master Effect Reborn and the GUI detection and it is just not there yet. It seems to cause at least in older OpenGL games huge portions of the screen to become distorted and it affects where ReShade enhancements on non GUI portions of the screen are implemented. Basically it turns the whole thing into a gloomy garbled mess. However it seems to work more or less perfectly on Direct3D games and newer games. So if you have another game you want to enhance then this is definitely a step in the right direction. However for us KOTOR users what I have done is basically as good as it gets.

 

NVidia users have an alternate method of game enhancement for KOTOR however. I am going to link a few alternate(non ReShade) post processing enhancements. I myself only use ReShade because... well it is better than what i'm about to link but if you are just tired of trying to tweak it to work with NVidia and want something that will enhance the game and 'should' work better on NVidia systems then I may have a solution for you. There are several OpenGL ENBs available that you may not be aware of. I use them myself on old OpenGL games where ReShade simply refuses to work or is too unstable to work. Star Trek Elite Force 1&2 are good examples of games I use OpenGL ENBs on and it makes them look really damned nice.

 

So here are two of the best i'm aware of:

 

Here is the OpenGL (Direct3D to OpenGL conversion Wrapper)

Basically it's the whole generic ENB package(San Andreas 0.74g) Direct3D package slightly enhanced and converted to OpenGL. It is more or less stable for most games. No guarantees though.

 

and this is the OpenGL ENBish packages: (The second one is just a slight enhancement of the first)

 

https://code.google.com/p/qeffects-gl/

http://jkhub.org/files/file/1484-qeffects-pro/

 

So give em a try and see if they help you. Remember you must open there config files and manually configure them and change the apply effects settings yourself.

[3dmember 6]

So good news for those who are able to use my ReShade+SweetFX Preset Setup. I have managed to tweak the DoF so that it should never screw with or blur text without loss of DoF quality(actually I think I've improved it). In addition I have tweaked the double ambient occlusion values and settings so that the quality should be higher without any real performance loss and without the shader cutoff that some people messaged me about.

 

Here is the link to my final version of my preset:

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4l5q0d426mm73ji/3Dmember%20ReShade%2BSweetFX%20Preset%20Final%20Ver.7z?dl=0

 

Make sure you view the README and follow the instructions carefully.

 

Enjoy!

 

 

Also make sure you tell me if there are any further issues with the DoF. I would really like to know. As obviously I haven't played an entire play-through to make sure every conversation/combat scenario isn't affected. I only tested it for a few hours and the improvement seemed flawless.

 

 

I guess later I will make my own post for this instead of hi-jacking this one but not today haha.

[Todd Hellid 16]

Ok I finally got it to work without crashing but the colors are all off. Everything is too dark. Nevermind got it to work almost perfectly when I downloaded the version that is final. But how do I get rid of the grain?

[Kampher 0]

Hey 3dmember,

 

Great work on this. I know I haven't replied in like a month, but I'm still going back and forth to Kotor, and I was stoked to see your new version.

 

It turns out that Raymarch AO is causing the framerate to dip to about 5, and I run on a GTX 770 4GB edition on a core i5 computer, so something must be wrong there.

 

Also, I can't seem to notice DoF working, which is a bummer because it's the one feature I would LOVE to see work when in conversations.

 

Besides that, though, it really makes a large difference in both Kotor 1 and 2. All the textures really pop, great bloom, and colors are vibrant!

 

Thanks again for all your hard work on this.

[3dmember 6]

Sorry been busy. To answer Todds question. Just open up ReShade.fx and press crtl-f and paste in #define USE_GRAIN. You'll see a 1 beside this. Change it to a 0. Sorry for the late reply.

[3dmember 6]

To answer Kampfer's question. The Issue with DoF seems to be driver related and there's nothing I can do about it. You can try to tweak the values yourself to see if you can make it work for your NVidia card. As I said before all the issues people are having are non ATi related. You must understand i'm playing this on an ATi unfortunately. So for ATi users and some NVidia's(maybe) this will work perfectly. Others will have to tweak the values themselves. In this post further down I will post the DoF values and what they relate to so that you can tweak it yourself to make it work for your card. As far as Raymarch not working, that's also an known Nvidia issue which is to be expected really since ATi has a known problem with SSAO. Some ATi users can't get SSAO to work either. For some reason a great many users and myself can get both to work simultaneously so I don't know what's going on there, haha. You could try to reduce the sampling of Raymarch and SSAO together to see if it makes Raymarch playable.

 

Okay as far as DoF values, Here's an explanation on how they work and what they will do. This should allow you to tweak it so it can become visible for your NVidia Card.

 

fFocusBias = 0.04;     // high values cause the image to be blurred less (lens focal point distance)
fApertureScale = 0.003;     // governs image blur scale (the bigger value, the stronger blur)

fApertureCutoff = 0.19;        // manages the smoothness of the DoF (bigger value results in wider depth of field)
fApertureBias = 0.01;        // distance not taken into account in DoF (try out sub-zero values)

 

I hope this helps.

[therevan789 7]

Ok I finally got it to work without crashing but the colors are all off. Everything is too dark. Nevermind got it to work almost perfectly when I downloaded the version that is final. But how do I get rid of the grain?

I'm having the same problem you had, how did you solve it?

[Antizimex 0]

Thank you so much for this, this looks absolutely fantastic! Also having problems with the Raymarch AO as an nvidia user though.

After playing some more I noticed some more text bluring with DoF, specifically when I met HK-50 for the first time on Peragus.

It appears to blur out parts of the text when a character in the foreground isn't strictly behind the actual text.

(I'm using the final preset you linked earlier, 3dmember)

EDIT: Played some more, I've come to the conclusion that there's something wrong the focus whenever Kreia is speaking. Every time she's talking, the focus gets messed up and blurs all the text that isn't in front of her character. With other characters the focus can be a little bit iffy as well, but it's definitely worse with close-ups of Kreia.