Tales of Zestiria Tweak - Configuration Editor - v 1.0.1 (11/28/2015)

[Kaldaien]

NOTE:

If you were linked here as a fix for stuttering, please see this other project instead.

Problem Description

If your game is crashing at application start, before the audio language dialog comes up, you may need to generate your game's configuration file manually. Tales of Zestiria Tweak automates this on first-run and can edit all graphics-related settings from outside the game.

Download

Grab the latest version of the "Configuration Utility" here:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=542500356

Installation

Run this from the directory where Tales of Zestiria is installed. To edit RTSS settings (part of the community patch) it will be necessary to run this as Administrator, but for all other functionality no special permissions are required.

Usage

If you are using this tool to correct crashes immediately at startup, before even the Namco logo comes up, it is suggested that you do a FULL configuration file reset. This can be accomplished by double-clicking the empty space between the Save and Cancel buttons and then clicking the "Delete All Config Files" button.

After confirming that you want to delete your configuration files (they store graphics settings and button mappings), run the tool one more time to generate a high compatibility set of default values that will probably resolve the crash. You will need to change your controller settings after doing this if you are using a gamepad, because it will revert you back to keyboard as default input device for player1.

Version History

v 1.0.1 (11/28/2015)[github.com]
OSD Configuration for TZFix
Adds RTSS Installation and Configuration
Compatible with TZFix 1.1.0
v 0.6.3 (11/4/2015)[github.com]
Compatibility update for NVIDIA systems
The Driver Tweaks tool no longer mistakenly flags driver profiles it creates as pre-defined
This bug was responsible for changes sometimes requiring system restarts to take affect.
v 0.6.2 (10/25/2015)[github.com]
Corrects end-of-file corruption from processing an ANSI file internally as Unicode and then converting back to ANSI
Delete All Config Files now includes the pesky XML file that stores windowed mode resolution (WinData.xml)
Updates initial values to reflect the latest patch
No longer warns about driver version (NVIDIA) - do make a point of updating your drivers though
No longer warns about audio settings since I have fixed 7.1 audio
That fix is a separate project, see here for more details.
v 0.6.1 (10/23/2015)[github.com]
Re-enables Batman Tweak's Configuration Backup/Restore Tools
Double click the space in-between the Save and Cancel buttons to access these utilities
v 0.6.0 (10/23/2015)[github.com]
Adds NVIDIA Optimus Tweaks to Driver Tweaks (only enabled on laptops)
Select "Dynamic Switching" for proper performance
Changing the Async Present option may resolve black / flickering screen problems
Overriding App settings will force your shim mode rather than the game's preference (undefined in ToZ)
Ignoring OEM settings will prevent 3rd party software from interfering with Optimus
Priority Inversion may help if GPU VRAM or names are reported incorrectly in a game (not this one)
v 0.5.0 (10/22/2015)[github.com]
Merged Tales of Zestiria Fix with Tales of Zestiria Tweak
One tool to rule them all, and it looks suspiciously like Batman Tweak!

[Half-Tomato]

This is brilliant.

[Rayyen]

This still hasn't resolved my problem. The CMD prompt shows up and says it failed.

[(P2D)SlugNut]

Don't know what it did but it's still crashing on start sadly. I get the title box, screen goes black like it's gonna start, then the usual crash error. If it helps, my setup is as follows: My monitor's native resolution is 1920x1080 though (60 hertz). I am running Windows 10. I have a secondary monitor which supports 1600x900. Three speakers (a left, a right, and a sub, all share one 3.5mm connection). Intel Core i7-4930K @ 3.4 GHz (6-core). 16gb Corsair RAM. 2tb WD HDD.

Thanks for working on this in your freetime, we really appreciate it! Looking forward to the updates.

[Kaldaien]

Originally posted by Maetharn Vanadess Fireheart:

This still hasn't resolved my problem. The CMD prompt shows up and says it failed.

That in its own right is your problem. If it cannot write that configuration file, you've got big problems.

What is the path that it says it tried to write to?

[Snipy_Stream]

This fix is for 60 fps also or not ?

[Saladien]

the community is doing the developers job again? GREAT

[firefistus]

Originally posted by Maetharn Vanadess Fireheart:

This still hasn't resolved my problem. The CMD prompt shows up and says it failed.

Try right-clicking and run as administrator.

[Kaldaien]

Originally posted by (P2D)SlugNut:

Don't know what it did but it's still crashing on start sadly. I get the title box, screen goes black like it's gonna start, then the usual crash error. If it helps, my setup is as follows: My monitor's native resolution is 1920x1080 though (60 hertz). I am running Windows 10. I have a secondary monitor which supports 1600x900. Three speakers (a left, a right, and a sub, all share one 3.5mm connection). Intel Core i7-4930K @ 3.4 GHz (6-core). 16gb Corsair RAM. 2tb WD HDD.

Thanks for working on this in your freetime, we really appreciate it! Looking forward to the updates.

Can you follow the discussion here: http://steamcommunity.com/app/351970/discussions/0/490123727974191497/#c490123727975127989 ?

The DLL I wrote for Batman Akrham Knight spits out 2 detailed debug logs, that I used to diagnose the original problem tzf currently fixes. Your problem is apparently unrelated, but if it's related to graphics I can probably pick that out of the log pretty easily.

[Kaldaien]

Originally posted by Grunchimera:

This fix is for 60 fps also or not ?

No, I have not attempted to uncap the game. I hear from the developers themselves that it will break things. I may look into this in the future, after I finish the game, but 30 FPS is fine for me personally.

To uncap the framerate in this game is going to require either patching the game itself or using something like my Batman Fix DLL does, and injecting code at runtime. Either way, it's not even remotely simple. It will take a LOT of work.

[WildHuntinBrac]

does it do borderless windowed?

[Kaldaien]

Originally posted by Mr.BracTJones:

does it do borderless windowed?

Yes, windowed mode in this game is a borderless window. So, if you set it to match your desktop resolution, you have a fullscreen borderless window.

About the only benefit you get in THIS game to borderless windows is instant application switching. It stays pretty close to 30 FPS at all times, so tearing's not a big deal (usually). But if tearing is a problem for you, then a fullscreen borderless window will fix that right up.

[Prawn of Creation]

Excuse me, Kaldaien, I see you're a pretty techy guy, could you help me with something not topic-related?

You see, game has TOZ.cfg file. There is a line there, saying by default: refreshRateHz=60
If I play with it like that the camera movement is pretty laggy (sample video). IF I change it to 30, however, camera is smooth, but I'm getting artifacts, like small patches of image are distorted when in motion, sometimes it stutters heavily for 1-2 sec, and the menus are less responsive. Can you, possibly, give some advice how to make camera smooth, but cut the downside? Again, I'm sorry to cut into discussion like that :(

[Kaldaien]

Originally posted by Supa-Troopa:

Excuse me, Kaldaien, I see you're a pretty techy guy, could you help me with something not topic-related?

You see, game has TOZ.cfg file. There is a line there, saying by default: refreshRateHz=60
If I play with it like that the camera movement is pretty laggy (sample video). IF I change it to 30, however, camera is smooth, but I'm getting artifacts, like small patches of image are distorted when in motion, sometimes it stutters heavily for 1-2 sec, and the menus are less responsive. Can you, possibly, give some advice how to make camera smooth, but cut the downside? Again, I'm sorry to cut into discussion like that :(

Yeah, don't worry about it. I discuss exactly this kind of stuff all the time in my development threads.

A lot of these problems can be due to frame pacing. With the game artificially capping framerate to 30 FPS through software means and the driver capping to 60 because that is your refresh rate, you can get some weird problems. You'd think that 30 Hz refresh rate would solve that, but it generally doesn't.

What I use is 1/2 refresh rate VSYNC. The technical term is presentation interval: 2. It makes it so that if your refresh rate is 60 Hz the game is only allowed to draw a frame on every other refresh. This works beautifully as long as you avoid window mode, if you engage window mode then VSYNC stuff like this doesn't work anymore.

Half-Refresh Adaptive V-Sync is the easiest way to engage this mode. That can be done from the NVIDIA graphics driver settings. You can also use it with normal V-SYNC but that would require something like NVIDIA Inspector.

[Kaldaien]

Oh, also if your goal is smooth camera movement, I would suggest setting your pre-rendered frame limit (NVIDIA's terminology) or flip queue size (AMD's) to 1. That is usually discouraged because it can hurt peak performance, but this game is capped to 30 FPS already and no GPUs manufactured during this decade should be struggling to stay at 30 FPS =P

Setting that value to 1 will get you the most consistent frame timings possible. Do both of these things in your driver's settings for Tales of Zestiria.exe only rather than setting them in the global settings, because they will make most other games unplayable.

[Prawn of Creation]

Thanks. Tried to set adaptive vsync (half refresh), but it only adds screen tearing on top, sadly. Did it on both 60 and 30 framerate in ini, with in-game vsync off and on. Max per-rendered frames was on one already, I made it my default setting for all games sometime ago. I have gtx970, sorry, forgot to say from the beginning. So, no dice. Devs spoke that they plan to address some stuttering issue in coming 1.0.4 patch, wonder if that helps...

Thanks for trying to help, anyway!