2550 réponses à ce sujet

[McRileyW]

Is it possible to make the texture pack as another DLC, or let masseffect.exe thinks the pack is a DLC?

In this way it would be easier to add textures to the game. And peopel don't have to back up the original folder. They can just rename the "DLC"'s folder when they prefer old textures.

[CuraeL]

For the game to recognize this as a DLC I would expect some serious rewriting in how the ME1 binaries work. Often a DLC would only put in the additions of new armour packs and so if there were any required in said DLC, the rest of the DLC would really be relying on textures alrdy cooked into the PC folder. Sorry, I said that wrong, but I can't help thinking about CookedPC that way, lol.

Anyways.. I don't know enuff to say this, but I rly don't think it's possible. Anyways you'd still need the DLC to withdraw all the stuff from the cookedPC folder.. Therefore replacing stuff anyways. I don't think a new DLC comes with repacked textures for stuff already in the game. This way you'd have two folders with two different things for the same thing.. Besides.. How would one make the DLC override textures already in the game? It just seems like a serious hassle for something that can be done replacing a few files within a folder. Also, removing the DLC or replacing your cooked folder would result in the same thing, there's not even more steps in one or the other of the solutions. I dunno man, I see your point.. But I think the steps you take for this route is the same as for replacing your cooked folder. A backup or a delete, same thing to me rly. Depends on HDD space I suppose.

But creating a DLC that's recognizable for ME1 and then make all the new textures refer to old texturepaths.. Seems like a lot of trouble.

And sry, this isn't my thread. I'm just thinking out loud.

[Frostbyrne]

McRileyW wrote...

Is it possible to make the texture pack as another DLC, or let masseffect.exe thinks the pack is a DLC?

In this way it would be easier to add textures to the game. And peopel don't have to back up the original folder. They can just rename the "DLC"'s folder when they prefer old textures.

CDAMJC is working on something that works similarly to your idea, where he is going to create an installer and replace the textures inside the game, removing texmod from the equation and speeding up loads (I believe it also fixes texture errors)

[Darziak]

I decided to change the most ugliest gun in the game.

[TheDarkMantle437]

Downloaded this last night and everything looks great, except for the N7 armor. I downloaded the file twice now and it installs smoothly, but the textures don't look right. The armor looks more weathered and the front lights are now on and strobing. But for some reason there's none of that rough texture look on the main pieces, the upper arm lights aren't appearing, and the N7 logo doesn't have the black box around it.

[Gogo1]

Does anyone have decent settings for the FXAA injector? I've never used it before and I don't want to completely ruin the look of my game, so I'd appreciate if someone would share the settings they use that kind of subtly improve the game without changing anything too much.

[CuraeL]

Gogo1 wrote...

Does anyone have decent settings for the FXAA injector? I've never used it before and I don't want to completely ruin the look of my game, so I'd appreciate if someone would share the settings they use that kind of subtly improve the game without changing anything too much.

Just stay away from the bloom and the HDR and color stuffs. Other than that.. Just switch it on and off on F11, alt tab and move the dialers around. I'd send you my config but I just reinstalled my PC the other day and it appears I forgot to back up that one. Sry about that.

[saltisgood]

Hello everyone, I believe this is the first time I've posted in this thread. If you haven't heard from me before then let me introduce myself, I'm saltisgood, a developer on ME3Explorer among other things. CDAMJC's mentioned ME3Explorer before but the idea is that whilst TexMod only modifies the game in memory and needs to be applied every time the game is launched, ME3Explorer directly mods the game files, removing the startup load time and giving better performance in general. (Note that the program was originally for ME3 hence the name, but certain parts have been ported over to ME1 and ME2)

We've got a system in place where you can create and share .mod files that can be installed with one click in the program and that's what I'm about to share with you all today. I've gone through and converted almost all of the mods in CDAMJC's last (23/3/13) full res release to these .mod files, available at these download links:

(Links have been edited with fixed mod files)
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
(Note that these are separate archives, you can download any or all of them)

Inside each of the archives are a bunch of these .mod files that I've mostly named to show what's in them, some of them might be generically named if I couldn't work out exactly what it was for. With the reupload there's only 1 mod in each of the archives for simplicity. Once again, they're all separate; you can install any one or all of them.

Install instructions:
1. Download ME3Explorer. You can get the standard copy from sourceforge, or you can get the latest copy via SVN. I'd recommend SVN because the program gets updated all the time on that, whereas the SF releases are slower. Details on SVN are here.
2. Extract the contents of the mod archives from the above download links.
3. BACK-UP YOUR GAME FILES!!! If something goes wrong, not that it should, or you wish to revert your files to the stock version you WILL NEED your original files!
4. Open the ME3Explorer program and click on Tools/Mod Maker. Then click on TOC.bin/Automatic Updating Enabled (this is just a shortcut thing, since we're modding ME1, the program doesn't need to do ME3 specific fixes).
5. Click File/Load Jobs, then select some of the .mod files. You're better off only selecting one or a few at once so as not to tie up your computer if it takes a while to install.
6. Click Run/Run All.

The program will then run through and install all of the mods in the list. You can see the progress in the progress bar at the bottom, or in the debug window. Once it finishes it will pop-up a message to inform you of that. Once finished if you want to install more mods you should first clear the current list (File/Clear Jobs) then you can load some more in. And that's it!

If there are any issues with installation or bugs you find in the program you can post on the ME3Explorer forums. I'll do my best to answer any questions here, but I don't want to clog up the thread with long discussions, so that should go on the other forum. Happy modding.

Modifié par saltisgood, 04 juillet 2013 - 08:30 .

[Taki17]

<Captain Proton gives saltisgood and CDAMJC a glass of fine beer and shakes their hand in order to say them thanks for all the amazing and hard work they've done>

Modifié par Captain Proton, 27 juin 2013 - 03:20 .

[cjgames233]

Ditto times infinity. This is what the rest of my day will be all about.

Modifié par cjgames233, 28 juin 2013 - 01:47 .

[MrRich76]

And this is why I love gaming on PC. Thank you saltisgood, awesome work. I'm trying out the mods on ME1 now.

[Progman Omega]

CuraeL wrote...

Gogo1 wrote...

Does anyone have decent settings for the FXAA injector? I've never used it before and I don't want to completely ruin the look of my game, so I'd appreciate if someone would share the settings they use that kind of subtly improve the game without changing anything too much.

Just stay away from the bloom and the HDR and color stuffs. Other than that.. Just switch it on and off on F11, alt tab and move the dialers around. I'd send you my config but I just reinstalled my PC the other day and it appears I forgot to back up that one. Sry about that.

Personally, I've found that SweetFX is a far better system.  For that, I disable in-game AA and just use the tool's SMAA, since it's far better quality.  Additionally, since I'm SO SICK AND TIRED OF EVERY FREAKING GAME HAVING DESATURATED COLORS, I up the color saturation and vibrance anywhere from .25 to .5.   Those little tweaks have all of the Mass Effects looking beautiful, even without mods.

[pigosso]

my me3explorer is stuck in the installation (run all with a single mod loaded). cpu usage is nearly 0% and hdd isn't working
http://i.imgur.com/cBNBKcn.jpg

i'm using latest svn version and i (suppose to) have followed the guide above


@saltisgood: ps next time if you use 7zip compression you could save 15% bandwidth over rar one

Modifié par pigosso, 28 juin 2013 - 05:12 .

[saltisgood]

Hmm... It's not something I've encountered before and I can confirm that it definitely works for me with that same svn version (v446). The first thing I'd say is try it again and see if it definitely keeps doing that each time. Second, try running a different mod and see if the same thing happens.

Third, make sure that the program can see where your ME1 install is. The program uses your registry to find the game location, so if you don't have it in your registry you might run into issues. For this one, open ME1Explorer and go into the Texplorer. Then click on Start Multi-file mode. This will start a scan of your files. If it just goes on its merry way and scans them then that's not the issue, if it requires you to find your executable then that could be a problem.

Those are the only things that come to mind at the moment. Let me know how it goes.

[pigosso]

oh, i think you are right
i navigate into the registry and i found that
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Wow6432Node\\Electronic Arts\\Electronic Arts\\Mass Effect ™
is empty (could it be since i have steam version?)

what's the string name i should add with the path?

[saltisgood]

By default the program checks:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\BioWare\\Mass Effect
and
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWAREWow6432Node\\BioWare\\Mass Effect

and looks for the key: Path
Path should be set to the root folder of your install. So for me that value is: C:\\Games\\Mass Effect

[Darziak]

My current WIP

Not sure if I should continue on this, need people's opinions.

[MrRich76]

Saltisgood, I installed the mods you posted above and must say I'm impressed. The install procedure took a little time (installed then all at once) but having high red textures without texmod is awesome. Two questions though...

1) After installing the mods I got the default mass effect 1 blurry faced Garrus back, any idea why when this didn't happen with texmod?
2) seems that the film grain texture remained at default too even though a cleaner grain texture was included with the texture pack this is based on. Is this an intentional omission or have I missed something?

Thanks for all the hard work.

[saltisgood]

^Double check that you've installed the GarrusHead mod. If that didn't work then you should check whether the program thinks you've installed it (i.e. if it's present in the game files). You can do that by opening ME1Explorer and going to the Texplorer. Then you can open:
[InstallDirectory]\\BioGame\\CookedPC\\Packages\\GameObjects\\Characters\\Humanoids\\Turian\\BIOG_TUR_HED_PROMorph_R.upk
Inside this file should be a texture called: TUR_HED_PROGarrus_Diff_Stack
Click on that and click on Properties/View Properties. If the dimensions are 4096x4096 and the LODGroup is TEXTUREGROUP_LightAndShadowMap (the ShadowMap gets cut off, I need to fix that), then it should be installed correctly.

Either way you can try installing it again. There's no problem with doing that, the files just get a little bigger.

And I forgot to mention this but there's a couple of textures from CDAMJC's pack that aren't in the mods. Primarily it's the light maps. There's no problem with doing them in the program it's just that I personally don't see the improvement. I'm more focused on characters rather than environments. But the film grain is also not included because I can't locate it in the game files.

So I'd recommend you do what a lot of people do and install as many permanent mods as possible and then just use TexMod for a select few that you either can't do with ME3Explorer or want to swap out frequently. That way you get the best of both worlds.

[CuraeL]

So wait.. I got the SVN downloaded alright, and I compiled via Visual Studio and all. I then got ME1 explorer to map out all the textures from my Cooked folder.. Are you saying I should use ME3explorer to regularly "Add jobs" as I would in ME3? Will it find out what game I'm talking about and not just.. Spit random ME1 textures all over my ME3 folder? I checked ME1 explorer and I don't see an "Add mods" or anything in there? I feel rather stupid atm. I tried just installing the keeper skin in ME3E just to check, however I'm not sure if it installed it, tbh.

I maybe overthinking this problem tho.. I just don't see how ME3 explorer would change it's install path when I don't tell it to.. Sigh. :/

Thanks for these btw. It's pretty cool to get rid of TexMod.

Modifié par CuraeL, 29 juin 2013 - 07:29 .

[Catechrism]

Thanks for compiling and posting the .mods saltisgood. I have a question about the lightmaps, I know you said you didn't see a difference, my guess is because when adding them with Texplorer you re-formated with DXT compression? In texmod I keep these files uncompressed .dds so maintain prevent artifacting. My question to you is: Can I keep the uncompressed format using Texplorer or do I need to upscale them larger and do DXT to try and preserve the uncompressed quality? The latter being a bit more work

Thanks in advance

[pigosso]

@saltisgood
thanks for the help. i solved

[Fog.Gene]

Ho... this thread is moving faster than usual. I guess this is what happens when saltisgood decides to come visit us at the ME1 forums

K, just so it doesn't seem like I'm spamming around, I'll try do something useful with this post...

@CuraeL, you create the mods using ME1Texplorer, but install them using ME3Texplorer. The mods created with ME1Tex have a different script. Not sure if that's what you were asking? You seem to know your way around ME3Ex, if you want to check the base scripts they are in the ME3Ex exec folder, names are TexScript.txt and TexScriptME1.txt. In short, it is fine to install mods using ME3Tex.

@CDAMJC, told you some modder would do the packaging for ya, didn't I? Of course I wasn't expecting saltisgood to code a TPF-to-MOD tool lol.

Modifié par Fog.Gene, 29 juin 2013 - 09:39 .

[saltisgood]

CuraeL wrote...

So wait.. I got the SVN downloaded alright, and I compiled via Visual Studio and all. I then got ME1 explorer to map out all the textures from my Cooked folder.. Are you saying I should use ME3explorer to regularly "Add jobs" as I would in ME3? Will it find out what game I'm talking about and not just.. Spit random ME1 textures all over my ME3 folder? I checked ME1 explorer and I don't see an "Add mods" or anything in there? I feel rather stupid atm. I tried just installing the keeper skin in ME3E just to check, however I'm not sure if it installed it, tbh.

I maybe overthinking this problem tho.. I just don't see how ME3 explorer would change it's install path when I don't tell it to.. Sigh. :/

Thanks for these btw. It's pretty cool to get rid of TexMod.

The deal is that you install .MODs using ME3Explorer and create .MODs using ME1Explorer (or just mod your game manually). I'm sorry if it's a bit confusing but it saves a lot of duplicate code and lets you unify the install experience between games.

As for how does the program get the right folder, as Fog said it's all in the scripts
If you look at the script for any of the ME1 .mods and compare it to the ME3 versions (which you can do by right-clicking on the mod job in ME3Explorer modmaker) then you'll see that the ME3 versions explicitly call on the ME3Texplorer, whereas the ME1 versions call the ME1Texplorer. Each version of the Texplorer automatically finds your install location, either from the registry or from user-defined locations. In an open source project like this there's nothing to hide, so just go through the code if you're curious.

CDAMJC wrote...

Thanks for compiling and posting the .mods
saltisgood. I have a question about the lightmaps, I know you said you
didn't see a difference, my guess is because when adding them with
Texplorer you re-formated with DXT compression? In texmod I keep these
files uncompressed .dds so maintain prevent artifacting. My question to
you is: Can I keep the uncompressed format using Texplorer or do I
need to upscale them larger and do DXT to try and preserve the
uncompressed quality? The latter being a bit more work

Thanks in advance

I'll admit my approach for looking at the lightmaps was a bit more pragmatic. I just compared a few from the pack in their original format to a few in the game files. And whether it's true or not if there isn't a resolution increase I don't typically consider there to be an increase in quality. If I were you I'd do all of your modding work in the original format because you'll always be looking at the finished product. Not to mention it saves a lot of time when it comes to getting it ready for permanent modding.

As far as converting your existing stuff to the required formats, you are probably better off upscaling and then compressing. The memory use of DXT compression is so much less than the uncompressed formats you can easily get away with the extra resolution. For example, a fully mipmapped DXT1 texture at 1Kpx is 60% of the size of an uncompressed single-level 24-bit texture at 512px. When doing the conversions for these mods I just performed straight format switches without upscaling so you will get a better appearance by upscaling your files first. Just my opinion.

Edit: Almost forgot. I'll probably be bringing out the auto-TPF-to-MOD later tonight (Aussie time) for ME1 on the SVN. Seems to be working pretty well at the moment. Once it's out I'll be writing a full guide on its use, and perhaps a video later.

Modifié par saltisgood, 29 juin 2013 - 11:12 .

[CuraeL]

Fog.Gene wrote...

Ho... this thread is moving faster than usual. I guess this is what happens when saltisgood decides to come visit us at the ME1 forums

K, just so it doesn't seem like I'm spamming around, I'll try do something useful with this post...

@CuraeL, you create the mods using ME1Texplorer, but install them using ME3Texplorer. The mods created with ME1Tex have a different script. Not sure if that's what you were asking? You seem to know your way around ME3Ex, if you want to check the base scripts they are in the ME3Ex exec folder, names are TexScript.txt and TexScriptME1.txt. In short, it is fine to install mods using ME3Tex.

@CDAMJC, told you some modder would do the packaging for ya, didn't I? Of course I wasn't expecting saltisgood to code a TPF-to-MOD tool lol.

saltisgood wrote...

CuraeL wrote...

So wait.. I got the SVN downloaded alright, and I compiled via Visual Studio and all. I then got ME1 explorer to map out all the textures from my Cooked folder.. Are you saying I should use ME3explorer to regularly "Add jobs" as I would in ME3? Will it find out what game I'm talking about and not just.. Spit random ME1 textures all over my ME3 folder? I checked ME1 explorer and I don't see an "Add mods" or anything in there? I feel rather stupid atm. I tried just installing the keeper skin in ME3E just to check, however I'm not sure if it installed it, tbh.

I maybe overthinking this problem tho.. I just don't see how ME3 explorer would change it's install path when I don't tell it to.. Sigh. :/

Thanks for these btw. It's pretty cool to get rid of TexMod.

The deal is that you install .MODs using ME3Explorer and create .MODs using ME1Explorer (or just mod your game manually). I'm sorry if it's a bit confusing but it saves a lot of duplicate code and lets you unify the install experience between games.

As for how does the program get the right folder, as Fog said it's all in the scripts
If you look at the script for any of the ME1 .mods and compare it to the ME3 versions (which you can do by right-clicking on the mod job in ME3Explorer modmaker) then you'll see that the ME3 versions explicitly call on the ME3Texplorer, whereas the ME1 versions call the ME1Texplorer. Each version of the Texplorer automatically finds your install location, either from the registry or from user-defined locations. In an open source project like this there's nothing to hide, so just go through the code if you're curious.

God damnit, that makes sense! And I do recall this now, I remember having to actually remove a _ITA thingy from Andersons ME3 highres uniform script in order to not crash ME3explorer from it, I'd just actually forgotten about the fact that the scripts were made individually for the .mod packages. Thanks for reminding me, it all makes sense in my brain now.

And it's clever, it's clever. It's just me.. Being me. Thanks again. I'll get to the installing now that I know it won't be in vain, lol.

Modifié par CuraeL, 29 juin 2013 - 12:37 .