Mods and Tweaks to improve the game

[TemplarGFX]

Hey All,

I love this game. Only after ive made all of these changes however does the game really feel like an Aliens game. I found it difficult to get a concise set of instructions on what to change and where to get all of this done, so I thought I would write out what I came up with for others to follow.


You will want to head to here and download my Overhaul mod. It does everything you see below, plus a million other things!

TemplarGFX's ACM Overhaul
Experience Aliens: Colonial Marines how it should have been when it came out. New AI, Gun Play, Materials/Lighting, Bug Fixes and More! Xenomorph's have seen the most work fixing their behavior and mechanics to make them truly terrifying foes to face, dramatically shifting the tone of the entire campaign. This State of the Bad-A** Art modification for ACM reworks, reprograms and rebalances Xeno AI, Human AI, Weapon Mechanics, Ballistics, Animations, Shaders, Particles, Decals, Lighting, and engine features to get the best out of the game possible.

http://www.moddb.com/mods/templargfxs-acm-overhaul









-------------EDIT This is old now, but I will keep it here for reference EDIT---------------
Mods!
Only 1 mod is needed, the Survival Mod v2 : http://www.moddb.com/mods/aliens-survival-experience
This mod gives you the Pulse Rifle from the movie, sets their statistics to the movie, and greatly increases the damage done by aliens


Graphics Upgrade
1986 Aliens SweetFX settings : http://www.gamewatcher.com/mods/aliens-colonial-marines-mod/1986-s-aliens-sweetfx
This may not be for all, but it adjusts gamma, color grading and sharpness to approach a style more in line with the aliens movie


Tweaks (these files are found in My Documents\My Games\Aliens Colonial Marines\PecanGame\Config\

PecanEngine.ini - This file is huge, so I will just post the section, and the changed values. DO NOT completely replace a section with what I have below. manually edit the values!

[MemoryPools]
SparkLeviathanEventBufferSizeBytes=51200
SparkLeviathanStatBufferSizeBytes=8192
SparkLeviathanAtomTableBufferSizeBytes=2048

Here the memory pools have been doubled to accommodate the Memory Budget changes

[SystemSettings]
DecalCullDistanceScale=3.000000
MotionBlur=True
MaxShadowDistance=9000.000000
MaxFocusLightDistance=740.000000
bAllowBetterModulatedShadows=True
bEnableForegroundShadowsOnWorld=True
bEnableForegroundSelfShadowing=True
bAllowWholeSceneDominantShadows=True

These Changes increase shadow quality and distance, as well as increase lighting fidelity

[MemoryBudgets]
EngineCoreMB=2
StackMB=2
CodeMB=40
BehaviorsMB=2

More memory to the AI related streams increases the amount of active calculations that the AI can do per unit. This in turn increases the reaction speed of the AI and gives them more opportunities to make decisions


PecanGame.ini - This file is huge, so I will just post the section, and the changed values. DO NOT completely replace a section with what I have below. manually edit the values!

[PecanGame.PecanPawn]
SecondsBeforeConsideringRagdollRemoval=60.0
SecondsBeforeVisibleRagdollRemoval=60.0
MaximumNumberOfCorpses=30

[PecanGame.PecanPawnMarine]
SecondsBeforeVisibleRagdollRemoval=120

Greatly increases the number of bodies and the length of time they stay around


Graphics Card Compatability - This is a big one, if you don't do this, your awesome graphics card is getting downgraded to medium settings instead of max! Unfortunately this is a little more complicated.

First, start up the game, get to the menu, and then exit (if you have just installed)
Go to My Document\My Games\Aliens Colonial Marines\PecanGame\Logs and open the launch.log file

Find this section :

[000.49]  Log:  GPU Stats:
[000.49]  Log:   VendorID:  00008086
[000.49]  Log:   DeviceID:  00000A16

Take the device ID (here 00000A16, and remove the first four 0's, replacing them with 0x. So mine becomes 0x0A16) and keep a note of it

Open PecanCompat.ini Search "VenderName" (it exists twice) and find ATI or NVIDIA (whichever is your card) and scroll to the very bottom of that section. Add a new line using your Device ID. and make it Equal 5. The name you put after doesn't really matter. EG
0x0A16=5,My Card

This tells the engine that your card should use the settings in Batch 5. Which is the maximum. If your card is not found in this file, it will use batch 4, regardless of its power.


I will come back and post screenies once I get home and run it again on my gaming rig


http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=395224029
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=395224134
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=395223998
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=395224100
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=395224223
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=395224259
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=395224190
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=395223968

[KUKRER]

wowowow this is great job dude. I'm totally new to CM, couldn't played once lol but I'll try these for sure. THX!

[TemplarGFX]

I remember this hallway!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=396215468

Originally posted by Jagg:

wowowow this is great job dude. I'm totally new to CM, couldn't played once lol but I'll try these for sure. THX!

Enjoy! This game is ALOT better than when it came out lol

[Sor NOOB of The Magic ♥♥♥♥]

Awesome guide dude, thanks a million. I´ve added the dx11 enable line and it worked as well, also for my personal taste i like to use the sweet 16 cyan mod.
Please make it as a guide so we can all check it for future references.
Best wishes!

[ThreadUnsafe]

I just got the "Ultimate Bad Ass" achievement, so now I am going back and earning minor Achievements and taking some 2560x1080 HD screenshots. Thanks for this!

[Marioeh]

Only achi i'm missing is the multiplayer ones -.-

[Super Novi]

Thank you so much for this. The game honestly looks amazing now.

[Simu_Fan]

Thank you TemplarGFX!

[sOIIOs]

How do I install 1986 Aliens SweetFX? The README.TXT file is bit unclear for me. It says and I quote,
''Simply copy everything to your steamapps\common\Aliens Colonial Marines\Binaries\Win32 folder and start game normaly.)''

Wich leads to my question, what do you mean with everything?

[Atratus]

Originally posted by Soljack:

Wich leads to my question, what do you mean with everything?

Make a guess......

Copy everything of that file to that folder. That's it...

[PRAET0R1AN™]

Originally posted by Lgd | Sir NOObE- o SENSSUAL:

I´ve added the dx11 enable line and it worked as well

Placebo, The game doesn't ship with DX11 support I'm afraid.

I had originally debunked this DX11 parameter on the Original Gearbox forums which have since been closed as Gearbox made a new Forum and none of the prior content carried over.

Anyway, How I debunked it was by enabling the DX11 line and disabling DX9, DX10 and DX10.1 and then ran the game with MSI afterburner enabled complete with the Overlay, And the renderer was showing as DX9 consistently regardless of which "DX" I enabled / disabled.

[TemplarGFX]

Originally posted by PRAET0R1AN™ ︻デ┳=ー:

Originally posted by Lgd | Sir NOObE- o SENSSUAL:

I´ve added the dx11 enable line and it worked as well

Placebo, The game doesn't ship with DX11 support I'm afraid.

I had originally debunked this DX11 parameter on the Original Gearbox forums which have since been closed as Gearbox made a new Forum and none of the prior content carried over.

Anyway, How I debunked it was by enabling the DX11 line and disabling DX9, DX10 and DX10.1 and then ran the game with MSI afterburner enabled complete with the Overlay, And the renderer was showing as DX9 consistently regardless of which "DX" I enabled / disabled.

Spot on! Reshade uses seperate DLL's for DX9 (d3d9.dll) and DX10/11 (dxgi.dll) and ACM always uses DX9

[masp1911]

The Logs file is not appearing when i go to search it up. I unfortunately have the game modded with the ACM Overhaul mod which does change up the places in which files are at.