[Patch] Terrible post effects must be disableable (lense flares & dirt, chromatic, vignette, blur, dof, etc)

[v00d00m4n]

While game itself looks very good, someone who responsible for post processing of game just really screwed it so badly so it became ugly and annoying, and worst part of story that there are no separate options for each effect to make it gone and get clear realistic picture that does not annoy you by stupid overused and out of place effects.


When it just started game i notticed that corners of screen not just darker and vignetted, they are unfocused with chromatic abberation which split 1 solid color point into 3, and not just this, corners also blured and unfocused on top of this. This just looks awful, and not just looks - these effects that does not make graphics better at all, does not make it realistic or artistic, giving this game a huge performance hit for no reason, and we all know that Dreamfall has problems with performance on top machines.

EVERYTHING BEYOND ELLIPSE CENTER OF SCREEN IS TERRIBLY WASHED OUT AND UNFOCUSED IN EVERY SCENE OF GAMEPLAY, DIALOGS AND CUTSCENES!

But thats not all! When Zoe 1st exit her doctor and we are on a street, game starts to annoy us with TERRIBLE SCREEN DIRT, and on top of this VERRY TERRIBLE LENSE FLARES, you just cant do a single step without this crap flashing all around screen and ruining well crafted artistic scene of game.

On top of this anything in background IS VERY BLURED WITH DOF!
CONSTANT AND HEAVY DOF IS BAD, PERIOD! DOF may serve well in some cuscenes where you need to focus one object and unfocus another, but constant distance dof just not realistic and does not work, it ruins sharp and crisp game look.

There is also bloom, which is old thing, but in some places it just OVERBLOOMED, when face of Zoe starts to shne like supernova!

I remember one game that had so many issues with such effects - Hitman Absolution, where bold head of 47 shines like supernova explosiion to blind everyone from truth about how terrible that game was. I wonder, did you hire same colorsist\ lihgting\post processing artist that ruined Hitman Absolution look?
Anyway, no matter who did this, this person has no taste and no understanding of what makes graphics looking good and should be fired for a good.

If someone makes your game look like typical "JJ Abrams" uglinesse, this person deserves to be fired.

There are only options that includes sets of options like "low, med, high, ultra" and with such settings we can not disalbe these effects without disabling something else that actually makes graphics better.

So how about REMOVING THESE UGLY EFFECTS or at least giving us FINE and DETAILED controls over each of such effect for performance and graphics reasons?


And really, if there is anyone in your studios who think these effects looking good. just google and see how many people hates such effects in so many games and movies, and how much JJ Abrams who started it all, is criticized and how people laught on him for use of such effects and ruining look of movies he does. Damn, even the man himself, JJ Abrams already gave appology to Star Trek fans and promised that tthis would not be an issue in an new movies such Star Trek 3 and Star Wars 7.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/30/4788758/j-j-abrams-apologizes-for-his-overusing-lens-flares

J.J. Abrams is proud of the last two Star Trek films, Super 8, and Mission: Impossible III — all of which he directed. However, he is sorry for the rampant lens flares streaking across the screen in each of those films. In an interview with Crave Online, the man who will helm Star Wars: Episode VII confessed that there were so many lens flares in early cuts of Star Trek Into Darkness that he hired special effects house Industrial Light & Magic to erase some of his signature embellishments from the film.

"I'M SO AWARE OF IT NOW." "I know I get a lot of grief for that," Abrams admitted. "But I'll tell you, there are times when I'm working on a shot, I think, 'Oh this would be really cool… with a lens flare.' But I know it's too much, and I apologize. I'm so aware of it now." The director tells Crave that he showed his wife an early cut of Star Trek Into Darkness, "and there was this one scene where she was literally like, 'I just can't see what's going on. I don't understand what that is.' I was like, 'Yeah, I went too nuts on this.'"

"This is how stupid it was," Abrams said. "But I think admitting you're an addict is the first step towards recovery." While it's nice to hear the filmmaker own up to his faults, there are still plenty of major pitfalls he should avoid in the next Star Wars film. But at least the next lightsaber duel to hit the big screen will have a better chance of actually being watchable.

Even if one tasteless man who started it all already admited this looks aint good for people, why you still repeating his mistakes?

Please, give us clear, realistic, good looking and not annoying pictrure!



Now look at these terrible shots:

This is how game meets us, while everythng in a middle is good, when you look at the corners you will se that rock and ground are so freagin blured, oberrated and darkned like it was show with a ♥♥♥♥ty lense:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=341034677

But 1st shot was not so bad, now look at this, look at talisman he wears, lower part of it, which is out of focused ellipse is so damn blured as well as his hand
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=341036782


Now this - anything besides upper part of character bodes and area above fire is absolutely blured, dofed, vigneted etc, it should not look like this to look good:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=341036943

Let go to the city already and look what do we have here - oh hello terrible lense flares, lense dirt and overblown bloom and absolutely dofed off blury backgrounds!
Just look at Zoe face, why does it shine like this? Why does her arm and shirt shines?
And look at this terrible green squares at bottom-right part of screen! Its a lense flare, square lense flare yeah, and it looks like malfunction of videocard when you overclock it too much, like textures of lense dirt was not even loaded and instead you have some placeholder with solid color.
And look at umbrella at top-right corner - you see how dark it is? It has problems with normal representation of luminance thanks to vignette, its blured thanks to vig dof, its unfocused with not solid colors thanks to chromatic oberration, and it has ugly boubles of lense dirt!
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=341029139


And look at this, all of same problems as above, but now left corner is totally cover with red squares and we also have set of red cirlce lense flares/
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=341029126

And now this, dont pay attention to square flares, look at the top of screen and left and right top corners - SOOOOOOOO BLURED, SOOO DIMED!
What kind of eye desease may force any person to think this does look good???
It looks and feels like if motion blur during speed run (mostly in racing games but even there its overused and criticized) that distort and blurs corners like this to gain sense of speed movements, but the problem is that Zoe does not even move and it always looks like this.
Hands of zoe, that we have bellow of ellipse are totally blured as well!
And we have a light on top, this light SHOULD BE WHITE, but WHITE POINT IS GREY! and light is grey like if you watching it wearing a sun glasses! It does not look right at all!
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=341029203

And looks at how overblured backgrouns are! Like instead of 3d models we have low res texture of skybox from 90th era. And there is something new - horisontal and vertical lense flare stripts, like squre and circle lense flares was not enough.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=341029217

And these shots, should i even explaint whats wrong with them?
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=341029087
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=341029070


Oh, and absolutely hilarious shots of lense flares which i cant even desribe by words, maybe a infograph lense flares, lol? And this lense ditt and all the other effects on umbrella!
Aaaaa, this makes me feel RAAAAAAAAAAAGEEEEEEEE!
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=341029185
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=341029171
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=341029155

And these are only still shots, when you walk and run and all of this crap flashing like a cristmass tree its absolutely annoying, so annoying so i rage quit this game and cant even play it until options that will turn of this annoying uglyness will be added with patch, and if they would not be adde, i swear, i will demand refund for this game despite ive been waiting for it 7 freaking years.
I just cant stand how dissapointing it is in every aspect, story is now explained to idiots to the point which ruins cliffhangers of 1st dreamfall from very begining of this game, voice actors changed for worse, faces of main characters are so different and so older and so less disney and charming they was in previous game, game gone Telltale ,and annoys me with "CHARACTER WILL REMEMBER THIS" and "BALANCE SHIFTED" and huge circle of UI and counter intutive controls. and popups i cant even turn off, gameplay is dumbed down comparing to Dreamfall TLJ and not is more about talking and less about solving things, and on top of this we have such a ruined and annoying look of graphics, so game i was waiting more than any other in entire decade, turned out be big dissapointment.

Red thread - fix graphics at least, undo at least some damage you did to game by using all these ugly and bad modern trends of industry!

Oh btw, before you aks - i own GOG version, not Steam one, i wish to have option pay once, get game on every platform, but sadly i wanted goodies that does not go with steam version and i dont want to pay twice to get steam version, but steam forums are more usefull to talk with devs, than GOG forums.

Update:

As temporary solution i created set of EyeCandy patches for this game, that allows to disable mentioned effects one by one.

You can keep eye on my mods and patches (i have some plans besides this patch) for Dreamfall Chapters here:

http://www.sendspace.com/folder/42js6x


EyeCandy patches can be found here:
http://www.sendspace.com/folder/ifznog

You can keep an eye on new versions via RSS here:
http://www.sendspace.com/folder/ifznog/rss.xml

Latest version (at the moment of post update at 2014.11.20 ) here:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/go2w7f

Latest package includes patches that allows to disable\restore next effects (names match names in a game):

• Bloom
  Disables both bloom glow and lense flares. This is number one effect you should disable.
  
• Bloom and lens flares
  Disables nothing, i think. Included just in case.
  
• Lens Dirtiness
  Disables bloom and lens dirt. If you want keep some bloom, i suggest you to apply bloom patch and do not apply dirt patch - thats a temporary solution until i found a way to keep bloom while lens flares disabled and without keeping lens dirt.
  
• Vignetting
  Disables dark and unfocused corners of screen, also makes center a little more vibrant and colorfull. Number two effect you should disable.
  
• Desaturate Effect
  Disables desaturation (less colors) in some ocassions, unfortunately not the one that happens in every dialog. Also included just in case.

You can find Some videos in a 1-3 pages to see game with and without such effects.

[v00d00m4n]

Forgot to upload patches and paste link yesterday, fixed that, here they are:

https://www.sendspace.com/file/liqh3c

Please keep in mind that patch that says only Bloom in file name is actually the one that disables lense flares and unfortunatelly glow of light sources.

[dubigrasu]

Thanks man, that's really great.
I've only applied the "Bloom" patch here for removing the Lens Flares.
Waiting for the final version but it is already looking great while keeping the dreamy atmosphere intact.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFgAxbRHLNM&list=UUcK6Lh6_zj-IVzxbS9Dm6Qw

[v00d00m4n]

I see you also applied vignette patch, its also recommended thing, since vignette adds nothing but darkens corners and even center, making them less visible. So you just kep lens dirt that compensates lack of bloom.

Actually there is no such "dream atmosphere" the only reason why previous version was looking not so good and kinda flat was the fact that i killed accidentallt few more effects which i should not, and lack of glow aroun light sources, since glow connected to len flare shader.
So, all you need to make this "dream atmosphere" is glow but glow without lens dirt and flares.

Im porting a good glow shader from Retro Wars game for gedosato that will add glow to well-lit areas, to compensate lack of it when both dirt and flares of lense are disabled.

thanks for video, gonna update 1st post and include your videos.

[v00d00m4n]

Updated EyeCandy patches, now restation patches included for every effect.

Update OP with links to latest version of patch, see botton of original post in thread.

[LeonhartGR]

Ok mate... I devoted sometime to compile a nice video for each one of this mod. You will be helping me a lot if you conclude this video in your mod description. Please open with chrome for 1920x1080 HD 60fps. It might need sometime for YouTube to render @1920x1080 so bare with that a bit! Thank you so much for the actual mod!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olUzbUGRNMg&list=PL-KwZHVzVmO6x9u7GkEAcbB4usTRefRQS&index=1

[Dreamfall71 (AJ)]

>.> I prefer the official look of the game..some games shouldn't be modded and this is one of them. There's a reason Red Thread have certain effects in these areas and removing them kills the atmosphere for me at least..but hey more power to anyone who wants to use em.

[dubigrasu]

@LeonhartGR
Nice, I think the "Bloom" one is the most effective, it really cleans the on screen mess.

[v00d00m4n]

Oh here we go again - glitches and dark corners that takes 1/4 of your sceen has nothing to do with atmosphere, visual part of Atmosphere created by visual style of environemnt, characters and ui, and you have see almost about half of that thatnks to these post process effects, which ruins atmosphere because you cant see clearly wha realy makes and because something annoying is always in front of you. Dreamfall TLJ has a lot of atmosphere without any of this.

[v00d00m4n]

Originally posted by dubigrasu:

@LeonhartGR
Nice, I think the "Bloom" one is the most effective, it really cleans the on screen mess.

Bloom and vignetting, since last one really ruins a lot of screen space.

[LeonhartGR]

I greatly apologize for not showcasing the Bloom and lens flares patch and the vignette or desaturation patch correctly since they are doing nothing at this part of the game but I wasn't aware of any of that. A read me file would be quite helpful to avoid any incorrect use of the patches. Now I know that you can combine the patches, another fact that I wasn't aware of before! I'm definitely going to be posting a new detailed video like the previous one as soon as I receive detailed instructions to avoid making any mistakes.

update: I included the latest instructions as annotations in the video and in the video description below. I will be posting a different video with combining the patches soon!

I highly appreciate Voodooman for his patience and his support! :)

[v00d00m4n]

You got it wrong again :-)

"Bloom & lens flare" and "desaturation" doing nothing in this part of game and included just in case.
But "Bloom" - takes out lens flare and bloom, "Lens dirt" takes out lens dirt and bloom, Vignetting takes out vignetting and vignetting blur (in this game in addition to darkening corners, lower, upper and side parts of screen this effect adds really ugly blur to same areas).

ANd there is a catch, if you will use Bloom (which removes Lens Flares) and Lens Dirt together - they will remove bloom as wel, but if you will use only one of them, bloom will remain. Vignetting does not affect bloom it only makes screen clear of dark and blury corners and sides.

So with current version of patches for fully crisp and clear picture you have to combine
Bloom
Lend dirt
Vignetting
(other 2 optional in case they used later in a game)

In case someone wants to have glowing bloom around light casters and recievers, you should use next combo:
Bloom
Vignetting
(other 2 optional)

And should not use Lens dirt because using it with Bloom will remove bloom completely.

At the moment im working on separation of bloom shader from lense flare and lense dirty shaders, but i have not yet found exact shader file that does lens flares and lens dirty, there are few files which names suggest they do that, but i cant yet say which one exactly does it and which is unused. Also i notticed that depending from area there is different texture used for lens dirty and different lens flares applies, not sure if this all in single shader.

I wish devs to give tip at least in which of shader and assets files they have lens dirt and flare code, because im really tired of dumping, editing, injecting shaders and restarting game over and over again :-(

[LeonhartGR]

Originally posted by Voodooman:

I wish devs to give tip at least in which of shader and assets files they have lens dirt and flare code, because im really tired of dumping, editing, injecting shaders and restarting game over and over again :-(

I can understand what you mean.

Also thank you for the instructions! They were extremely helpful to let me understand how those patches work!

Since this is still a work in progress I would suggest for someone to make a gui version and compile those patches together, for the final version, so as we can chose out of certain options instead of combining the patches ourselves.

As far as the "showcasing video" is concerned it's ok if I got some things wrong at first place. It was a nice chance for all those questions to come up and help create a final and more optimized version of this mod. Also to trigger people to get involved with it. I have also tagged my video as a "work in progress" project and I will try to create another one with combining those patches in the way you instructed me or just wait for a final gui version of this mod with all cool stuff like different options to chose from and then post a final video!

I can also try and find some help, if you wish, for someone to help you compile your mods into a gui version. I'm an active member into the qhimm forums for some years now. There are some pretty cool programmers down there that are dealing with modding the Final Fantasy games.

Let me know what you think!

[v00d00m4n]

Thanks, i can do it myself, but thats a waste of time, and you are mistaken - patches has GUI, you probably mean shared single UI for all of them? Well that impossible to do with dUP patch engine i use, its one of not so many patch engines that allows heuristic scan of value instead of patching at fixed offset, and this allows patch to be universal and work with theoretically any version of file. Writing patch engine from scratch would take a lot of time and not necessary.

Well, i consider these patches a final version. But final in my case does not mean im not going to improve them, it just mean fully tested and 100% working release.
For release that separates (or to be correct skips) lens effects from bloom that would be just another extra patch added to set of these patches. Biggest problem for me now is to find exact file and somehow identify shader with heuristics, without exact offset. Most likely shader code will change with game patches, and i will have to make this exact patch per version of game.

Also i still expect official game to add same toggle of these effects, but devs did not confirm if they are going to do it, but yet judging by how many people complain on official forums about this they must add such options, so its 50\50 case and wasting too much time on something that may be officialy implemented soon is waste of effort, so no shared gui (which i actually wanted to do before your suggestion), they work fine without it, sorry.

[LeonhartGR]

So it's still a work in progress as far as minor improvements are concerned, until all those features get sorted out either by the devs or yourself. Of course the work that's been done so far is tested and working ok! I'll be posting another video when I find some free time with how the game looks when combining the patches.

Thanks for all the time you devoted on explaining and working! This is an awesome work and I'm looking forward for any updates.

[8-bit_gaming]

Originally posted by Voodooman:

Originally posted by Red Thread Games:

We're definitely not following a trend here. In fact, we can't recall seeing another game with similar effects. We understand that the lens effects won't appeal to everyone, but they are an important part of the Europolis aesthetic, and they're there for a reason. 'Clean' and 'crisp' were not elements we were going for.

As for depth-of-field and vignetting, we use those effects in dialogues, during Decision Points and in cinematic sequences to focus the player's attention.

We welcome feedback, but in this case we do stand by our artistic intentions!

Do you realise that this game is enstablished franchise with enstablished fanbase and that you cant just do everything you want with it, because there are expectaction fans have and because once you making a sequel to original game you cant make it just for yourself, you do it for fans?

By this i mean that many "artistic intensions" and other "choices" that clearly contradicts existing games in franchise, ruins expectaction of fans and simply annoy us - are bad.

I dont remember who of writers of filmmakers exactly said this and dont rember it word by word, but he said very wise thing - "once you published your creation, it is not yours anymore, it belongs to everyone who loved it, and if you ever have to continue it, you cant do anything you want with it, you have to follow the rules you set before and have to follow opinion of those who accepted these rules."

So you cant just push any 'artistic decision" you want, especially if it was not present in previos games and if its annoyin and ugly as hell for QUITE A LOT OF PEOPLE.

Have you ever tried to at least DO SOME RESEARCH about such "artisitic intensions" before implementing them? GOOGLE WILL EXPLODE SOON due of HUGE AMOUNT OF COMPLAINS and HATE about overuse of LENSE FLARES, DOF, BLUR, VIGNETTE (and hate to chromatic oberation starting to grow as well, every new game has this quite notticable shift of separated RGB colors like on old crappy tvs ). And yet despite all the hate and cryies of people for options to turn all of this off, you pushing this.

I am sorry, but i dont buy this "its artistic, not a trend" excuse, when its obviosly a TREND.
Right now you are lying to all of us, just to defend wrong decision that was made to make game more "mainstream, modern and cool" (in theory, in practice there are not too many people who think this is cool).

Im working in gamedev since 2007 (and back then i worked in company that published Dreamfall TLJ in russia, an i was so excited about having some involvment into this game, even not the 1st party one) myself and for many years ive seen a lot of demands from martketing divisions to add this crappy trend and that in game, and i saw a lot how our PR|Community managers guys was defendand and lying on public when these marketing-driven decisions was ruining the game, and i always hated this thing in big and old gamedev companies, thats why i quit them and gone lonely indie and freelance outsource path, i just cant stand these typical gamedev lies and exuses.

I prefer transparent and sincere relationships between developers and gamers, when devolpers can say in a gamers face the truth:

"Yeah we did this crap because its popular and our marketing guy was dumb enough to think if we will add this thing we saw in many games before, it will help to appeal to more people and sell game better, unfortunately he never realised that presence of popular trend in many games is not what sells them, and he never did a research that indicates that people actually hate this trend despite its constanst presense in so many games.
So we are sorry for doing it wrong, we will fix it in a next patch by giving you an option to turn off this crap"

But instead most of developers prefer to play it cool like nothing was done wrong, defend every wrong decision and 2 most common lies i always here:
1) "this is design decision"
2) "this is articistic decision"

and there goes (sometimes) list of fake and unconvincing reasons which clearly contradicts facts, logic and statistics, explaining"why this artisitic\design decision is so important and will not be fixed", and they also loves to lock and delete threads like this one, to keep it cool and prevent other to see that something is wrong with game and peeople complain about it.

I was working for companies who behaved like that, i know how this works and why, so it may work on other fans, but it does not work on me, so please, save me from these generic gamedev excuses, which i (to my great shame) a whilte ago was wrtting myself to dissapointed customers on official forums as well as you do now.

Well... maybe i am wrong, if this is trully an artistic decision, may we all please hear some detailed explaination written by men who made such decision, WHY WE CANT HAVE PATCH WITH OPTIONS TO DISABLE ANY OF SUCH EFFECTS, AND WHY IT IS SO IMPORTANT to keep all of mentioned, ugly and annoying effects, despite so many hate from people over internets?
And also it would be really nice too if you will provide some solid prove and explain HOW IS THIS NOT A TREND AT ALL IF 90% OF MODERN AAA GAMES doing the same ugly thing?

Meanwhile...
You want me to post here list and screenshots of FEW DOZENS games and movies of last years that has PRETTY SAME "ARTISTIC" EFFECTS, and shows clear indication of BLINDLY AND OBSESSIVELY OVERUSED TREND? You want me to post here many links to gaming and movie forums, where people discuss this ugly and annoying trend? Want me to post artilces from magazines and popular sites that nailed this trend and shows that people hate and want it be gone and gives some tips that artist who make such "artistic" decisions have no taste?

An "artist" - J J Abram's confession about how stupid and addicted he was when used lense flares to make his movie more "artistic", and all the hate from Star Trek fans was not enough yet?

Ok, while im waiting for official explaination and official prove of importance and validity of decision from artistic standpoint and excuse of why cant simply get an option to turn it all off, i will do this to prove that your argument is invalid and that this game just as many other games that fell victim of such trend definetly requires a graphical option to turn such effects off.

P.S. - but what bothers me a lot about this official reply, is the fact that while you admit that some part of fans may hate it, you show no indication of urge to please these fans by promising to add option to turn such effects off, despite doing it would be quite easy, just about 5-6 extra functions with if-else blocks for graphics options .

Oh, this makes me think about options we already have - FILM GRAIN and MOTION BLUR, arent those effects "ARTISTIC" AS WELL and give game "an artistic feel of motion, that makes every move smoother and way more realistic" and "artistic sense that you not just playing a game, but watching pre digital era movie with granular deffects"? Why we have them is they are in game to turn off "SUPER NECESSARY ARTISTIC POST EFFECTS"? And why we have such a doulbe standards for other effects?

Do you really think that obtrusive immersion breaking effects makes this game more immersive and improves its perception? Do you think this looks cinematographic?

Oh Darwin. It looks cinemadefective, cant you just see that?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ubl2j97qbk&list=FL08JzNI_gp-XWiUs2NYBjqQ&index=294