Arise-SDK v29 - Skit resolution/NPC distance fix (supports new update)

[Havoc]

v29 released with support for 7th April 2022 game update!

Hopefully all the Arise-SDK features should be working fine, what I've tested seems to be working without issues at least (and I've double-checked that all the offsets to patch seem correct), there's always a chance something might have changed which stops one of the fixes from working though - if anyone finds something broken please let me know about it!

(eg. the EnableResolutionFix setting seems to prevent game from changing resolution itself now, so it's no longer enabled by default, if you want to enable it make sure to add a r.SetRes line to your Engine.ini, inside a [SystemSettings] section - I'm not sure if this fix is even needed anymore really, maybe can be removed in a later update)

v29 has only been tested with the 7th April 2022 update, earlier updates might also still work, but I haven't tried them myself.

---

(Now includes a fix to make 30/60FPS cutscenes run at your native refresh rate!)

Latest download can be found on NexusMods: https://www.nexusmods.com/talesofarise/mods/5

(would appreciate if you can update your links to point there instead!)

This should help fix the NPC distance issue by changing the fadeout/despawn distances - if you have any problems with it please let me know!

Cutscene resolution can also be changed to be closer to your actual in-game resolution, should improve quality & reduce aliasing of them a lot!

This'll also automatically unlock the dev-console for you, and allow loading in loose cooked files, without them needing to be pak'd (also allows files to be hot-swapped at runtime without a relaunch needed, should be useful for modders testing their changes)

The issue with screen resolution being changed on startup should also be fixed too (if the fix doesn't work straight away, try setting the Engine.ini cvar as detailed in the readme)

Achievements aren't affected by this DLL at all, so no need to worry about that!

For test builds & source code check my github: https://github.com/emoose/Arise-SDK/releases/latest

Check out my similar fixes for other games too: Automata-LodMod[www.nexusmods.com] for NieR Automata, and DQXIS-SDK[github.com] for Dragon Quest XI S.

Support

If Arise-SDK helped you out and you'd like to help support development in some way, please consider donating a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/emoose - I'm grateful for anything you could help with!

[forcefield]

Thank you! If you would find the time, it would me much appreciated!

[HProtagVtuber-TTV]

Btw curious with something like this plus if we can also somehow adjust the other LOD/pop in stuff (like some environment textures and shiz that literally flicker between 3 different quality models and shadowing), will the performance get much changed?

Like the game runs pretty well (friend gets 1440p 144hz flawless) but wondering if that's literally from the aggressive LOD and pop in tho.

[Havoc]

Originally posted by TechaNinja:

Btw curious with something like this plus if we can also somehow adjust the other LOD/pop in stuff (like some environment textures and shiz that literally flicker between 3 different quality models and shadowing), will the performance get much changed?

Like the game runs pretty well (friend gets 1440p 144hz flawless) but wondering if that's literally from the aggressive LOD and pop in tho.

A lot of the model flicker issue seems to be caused by shadowing, I think when part of a model doesn't have shadow applied to it then it makes that bit kinda pop-out weirdly, hard to describe, guessing it could be to do with the "special shader" they added.

Adding r.Shadow.DistanceScale=3.0 to Engine.ini seemed to get rid of it for me, at least inside Ulzebek it helped a lot.

E: this maybe helps show it, this is with DistanceScale = 0.1: https://i.imgur.com/sqJQXem.jpeg
The small triangle part of the building is where the shadowing is applied, see how much difference there is between that & the rest of the building?
When you're running around and stuff changes between those two it almost looks like LOD levels are being changed, but it's actually just caused by the games weird shadowing.
(of course the game does use LODs & view-distances etc to change models too, but IMO this shadow issue is probably the most noticeable thing out of all of them)

[HProtagVtuber-TTV]

Originally posted by Havoc:

Originally posted by TechaNinja:

Btw curious with something like this plus if we can also somehow adjust the other LOD/pop in stuff (like some environment textures and shiz that literally flicker between 3 different quality models and shadowing), will the performance get much changed?

Like the game runs pretty well (friend gets 1440p 144hz flawless) but wondering if that's literally from the aggressive LOD and pop in tho.

A lot of the model flicker issue seems to be caused by shadowing, I think when part of a model doesn't have shadow applied to it then it makes that bit kinda pop-out weirdly, hard to describe, guessing it could be to do with the "special shader" they added.

Adding r.Shadow.DistanceScale=3.0 to Engine.ini seemed to get rid of it for me, at least inside Ulzebek it helped a lot.

E: this maybe helps show it, this is with DistanceScale = 0.1: https://i.imgur.com/sqJQXem.jpeg
The small triangle part of the building is where the shadowing is applied, see how much difference there is between that & the rest of the building?
When you're running around and stuff changes between those two it almost looks like LOD levels are being changed, but it's actually just caused by the games weird shadowing.
(of course the game does use LODs & view-distances etc to change models too, but IMO this shadow issue is probably the most noticeable thing out of all of them)

Fair fair.

So with tweaks to that plus NPC pop in and stuff, how's the performance once you fix those? Like was that stuff why the game runs so well on 144hz based screens or is it like even if you fix those the performance barely gets any worse? Just wanna know before I make any commitments to tweaking the graphics further.

[Randy28CR]

Hello Havoc!
I don't know that much about programing, so I would like to know a couple of things:

1) What do you recommend to put in engine.ini to tweak the game?
I saw some people sharing a lot of stuff, but I would like to know which of those are really useful.

2) I am curious about something, which is that most of the times I try to access a new area or exit from it, I get a bit of stutter/hitches when I get close to it.
Like I want to get out of Ulzebek and when I get close to the gates to leave it hitches. This is happening to me even in Cysloden, every time I move between the maps. It is weird.
Can can possibly be the reason for it and Is there a way it can be fixed by tweaking anything?
Thank you before hand!

[HProtagVtuber-TTV]

Originally posted by Joker28CR:

Hello Havoc!
I don't know that much about programing, so I would like to know a couple of things:

1) What do you recommend to put in engine.ini to tweak the game?
I saw some people sharing a lot of stuff, but I would like to know which of those are really useful.

2) I am curious about something, which is that most of the times I try to access a new area or exit from it, I get a bit of stutter/hitches when I get close to it.
Like I want to get out of Ulzebek and when I get close to the gates to leave it hitches. This is happening to me even in Cysloden, every time I move between the maps. It is weird.
Can can possibly be the reason for it and Is there a way it can be fixed by tweaking anything?
Thank you before hand!

Maybe it's just that little bit of loading when you are about to get to a new place as well as once u enter it. You running the game on a HDD or SSD?

[Havoc]

Originally posted by Joker28CR:

Hello Havoc!
I don't know that much about programing, so I would like to know a couple of things:

1) What do you recommend to put in engine.ini to tweak the game?
I saw some people sharing a lot of stuff, but I would like to know which of those are really useful.

Yeah there's a ton of different ones going around right now, seen lots of them that are actually making the quality of things worse, or just going crazy changing things for no reason...
Hopefully in the next week or so it'll get ironed out eventually, now more people are getting access to console etc.

This is my current minimal INI, seems to improve the quality pretty well without too much perf hit:

[SystemSettings]
grass.DensityScale=3
foliage.DensityScale=7
foliage.LODDistanceScale=10
r.LightMaxDrawDistanceScale=3
r.LandscapeLODDistributionScale=3
r.LandscapeLOD0DistributionScale=3
r.ViewDistanceScale=5
r.SkeletalMeshLODBias=-2
r.StaticMeshLODDistanceScale=0.25
r.Tonemapper.Sharpen=0.25
r.MipMapLodBias=-1
r.MaxAnisotropy=16
r.Shadow.DistanceScale=3.0

If wanted you could go even more bare-bones than that though, really the only essential thing I'd say is the "r.Shadow.DistanceScale=3.0" line, that's all you need to pretty much fix the games pop-in issue (you'll still see pop-in if you scan for it ofc, but the awful pop-in issue it has right now should go away with it)

I'm not really sure about the stutters, doesn't really seem to happen for me... When I had issues with Code Vein stuttering there were a few cvars that seemed to help, haven't tried any of them with this yet though, but you can find those in the "Improved Visuals & Performance" CV mod (stuff like changing streaming strategy, increasing RAM usage, etc)

[HProtagVtuber-TTV]

Originally posted by Havoc:

This is my current minimal INI, seems to improve the quality pretty well without too much perf hit:

[SystemSettings]
grass.DensityScale=10
foliage.DensityScale=10
foliage.LODDistanceScale=10
r.LightMaxDrawDistanceScale=3
r.LandscapeLODDistributionScale=3
r.LandscapeLOD0DistributionScale=3
r.ViewDistanceScale=5
r.SkeletalMeshLODBias=-2
r.StaticMeshLODDistanceScale=0.25
r.Tonemapper.Sharpen=0.25
r.MipMapLodBias=-1
r.MaxAnisotropy=16
r.Shadow.DistanceScale=3.0

Aight so just copy paste that into my engine.ini under the Core.System and it's all gucci?

[Havoc]

Originally posted by TechaNinja:

Originally posted by Havoc:

This is my current minimal INI, seems to improve the quality pretty well without too much perf hit:

[SystemSettings]
grass.DensityScale=10
foliage.DensityScale=10
foliage.LODDistanceScale=10
r.LightMaxDrawDistanceScale=3
r.LandscapeLODDistributionScale=3
r.LandscapeLOD0DistributionScale=3
r.ViewDistanceScale=5
r.SkeletalMeshLODBias=-2
r.StaticMeshLODDistanceScale=0.25
r.Tonemapper.Sharpen=0.25
r.MipMapLodBias=-1
r.MaxAnisotropy=16
r.Shadow.DistanceScale=3.0

Aight so just copy paste that into my engine.ini under the Core.System and it's all gucci?

Yup, maybe set Engine.ini to read-only after saving it too.

r.Shadow.MaxCSMResolution=8192 improves shadow quality pretty nicely too, but right now you can't set that from INI file, will hopefully have a new Arise-SDK release soon that can fix that.

E:

Arise-SDK 0.1.6 test-release

Uploaded Arise-SDK 0.1.6 to https://github.com/emoose/Arise-SDK/releases/tag/v0.1.6

This adds a configurable Arise-SDK.ini file, and two new patches: StopMaxCSMResolutionOverwrite & StopScreenPercentageOverwrite
Enabling those patches allows you to set their respective cvar inside your Engine.ini without the game trying to overwrite it (the two cvars being r.Shadow.MaxCSMResolution & r.ScreenPercentage)

With this you should be able to set r.Shadow.MaxCSMResolution=8192 inside your Engine.ini fine (provided Arise-SDK.ini's StopMaxCSMResolutionOverwrite is enabled), giving your shadows a nice quality boost - you can confirm that the INI change was applied via the games dev-console.

This is a test release right now, if you try it out please let me know how it goes!

[HProtagVtuber-TTV]

Aight sweet. So these changes so far are a little subtle but I like it. Like in the snow town I like how the lightning / shadowing where the ground is and where the lamps project the light looks better now. Gives it a more natural look.

Also now the clothing and sword also look a bit nicer too, mainly the swords lighting.

[HProtagVtuber-TTV]

Btw is there anyway to force the resolution scale to something else? I can set it to 100 or 200 but 200 does cause noticable drop which is why I was hoping to go compromize and try 150 or 130. Cause 100 to 200 is noticeably cleaner but can easily get it to look nearly as good as 200 without the fps drop if i was able to lower it to said values between 100 and 200.

[Havoc]

Originally posted by TechaNinja:

Btw is there anyway to force the resolution scale to something else? I can set it to 100 or 200 but 200 does cause noticable drop which is why I was hoping to go compromize and try 150 or 130. Cause 100 to 200 is noticeably cleaner but can easily get it to look nearly as good as 200 without the fps drop if i was able to lower it to said values between 100 and 200.

Yep, with SDK 0.1.6 you can enable StopScreenPercentageOverwrite, then inside Engine.ini you can just put r.ScreenPercentage=120, or whatever you like.

Or if you're using older SDK you can change it thru dev console like "r.ScreenPercentage 120", but it won't stick that way

[HassanAlhajry]

Originally posted by Havoc:

Originally posted by Joker28CR:

Hello Havoc!
I don't know that much about programing, so I would like to know a couple of things:

1) What do you recommend to put in engine.ini to tweak the game?
I saw some people sharing a lot of stuff, but I would like to know which of those are really useful.

Yeah there's a ton of different ones going around right now, seen lots of them that are actually making the quality of things worse, or just going crazy changing things for no reason...
Hopefully in the next week or so it'll get ironed out eventually, now more people are getting access to console etc.

This is my current minimal INI, seems to improve the quality pretty well without too much perf hit:

[SystemSettings]
grass.DensityScale=10
foliage.DensityScale=10
foliage.LODDistanceScale=10
r.LightMaxDrawDistanceScale=3
r.LandscapeLODDistributionScale=3
r.LandscapeLOD0DistributionScale=3
r.ViewDistanceScale=5
r.SkeletalMeshLODBias=-2
r.StaticMeshLODDistanceScale=0.25
r.Tonemapper.Sharpen=0.25
r.MipMapLodBias=-1
r.MaxAnisotropy=16
r.Shadow.DistanceScale=3.0

If wanted you could go even more bare-bones than that though, really the only essential thing I'd say is the "r.Shadow.DistanceScale=3.0" line, that's all you need to pretty much fix the games pop-in issue (you'll still see pop-in if you scan for it ofc, but the awful pop-in issue it has right now should go away with it)

I'm not really sure about the stutters, doesn't really seem to happen for me... When I had issues with Code Vein stuttering there were a few cvars that seemed to help, haven't tried any of them with this yet though, but you can find those in the "Improved Visuals & Performance" CV mod (stuff like changing streaming strategy, increasing RAM usage, etc)

I'm currently using these are they bad? found them in another post, which should i use? i mostly only care about better draw distance specially grass/trees etc

[SystemSettings]
r.LightMaxDrawDistanceScale=3
r.StaticMeshLODDistanceScale=0.001
r.SkeletalMeshLODBias=-2
r.ViewDistanceScale=3
foliage.DensityScale=10
grass.DensityScale=10
foliage.LODDistanceScale=10
r.fog=0
r.Shadow.DistanceScale=3.0
r.LandscapeLODDistributionScale=3
r.LandscapeLOD0DistributionScale=3
r.DepthOfFieldQuality=0
r.ShadowQuality=5
r.Shadow.CSM.MaxCascades=3
r.Shadow.MaxResolution=2048
r.Shadow.MaxCSMResolution=2048
r.Shadow.RadiusThreshold=0.001
r.Shadow.CSM.TransitionScale=6.0

Would be great if someone give us tiny info what these settings does so we chose lol cuz i got no clue what do they do each

[Havoc]

Originally posted by HassanAlhajry:

I'm currently using these are they bad? found them in another post, which should i use? i mostly only care about better draw distance specially grass/trees etc

[SystemSettings]
(edited out the ones that were same in my iNI)
r.fog=0
r.DepthOfFieldQuality=0
r.ShadowQuality=5
r.Shadow.CSM.MaxCascades=3
r.Shadow.MaxResolution=2048
r.Shadow.MaxCSMResolution=2048
r.Shadow.RadiusThreshold=0.001
r.Shadow.CSM.TransitionScale=6.0

Would be great if someone give us tiny info what these settings does so we chose lol cuz i got no clue what do they do each

Think I saw that post too, weird thing is that it has r.Shadow.MaxResolution=2048 & r.Shadow.MaxCSMResolution=2048, but the games default is 4096 when shadow quality is highest...
Doesn't change much though since game only uses CSMResolution (and also ignores CSMResolution inside INI, which SDK 0.1.6 fixes), so those two will get ignored anyway.

Tried changing the others in-game with dev-console and didn't really notice any difference from them, except maybe RadiusThreshold, just seemed to be taking up room in my INI so I took them out, up to you if you want to keep them or not, I'd get rid of the MaxResolution ones at least though.

[Coinwarangel]

The grass density scale at 10 kills about 80fps when you get to the fields of elda mencia. I would recommend putting the grass density at 3 or 2, and foliage can be at 10 without any huge hits. The grass density is killer in that area though, went from 110 to 40 fps.

I'm running a 3060ti and 5600x, 32gb of 3600mgz ram.