[Watch Dogs] Disable flashing objects, and excessive brightness?

I enjoy this game quite a bit, seemingly against what everyone else thinks of it. However, there are two graphical features of the game that bother me to no end, and I want to disable them.
Most importantly, I want to disable the flashing that those hackable objects do. It's especially annoying with bridges and trains...

i419.photobucket.com/albums/pp276/dummiesboy/Watch_Dogs2014-11-2-1-20-44_zps16f4d0f7.jpg

Secondly, it would be nice if it didn't look an atomic bomb is going off any time I visit downtown, go under a bridge, inside a box, etc. Completely ruins the aesthetics of the game, in my opinion.

i419.photobucket.com/albums/pp276/dummiesboy/Watch_Dogs2014-11-2-1-27-20_zps373e2937.jpg


I'm an experienced modder with other games, and have some light experience with browsing and packaging different mods together in this game, but I'm having no luck so far. Does anyone know where to start with this?

 

i believe i saw something like hackableobject.lib and some setting about it on environment lighting libs xml files, but am not totally sure, i didnt pay attention to that, i just disable the UI with lua script personally

i think there was a similar mod for far cry 3, maybe you could look at it and see if ther's any similar settings since its nearly the same engine

 

Could an LUA script be designed to remove the flashing only?

 

maybe since ther's a script to disable the UI completely, ther's a crapload of lua scripts command in the game someone from another forum dumped them, some work some dont, testing everything would take a lot of time and good understanding of scripting with lua

 

I remember some textures in the ui folder, but dont remember the right place, dont finished edit them.

terms the lua, i edit the lua, to make it empty and recompile it but, the highlighning is always there.

Also the Also highlighning =0 in gamerprofile.xml has none effect....

actual no time to edit something...

but it is in my to do list

 

I doubt any textures would be used. As far as I can tell, it just creates a white copy of the entire model, inverts the polygons, and makes it slightly bigger.

What about the HDR-like effect while you're in a shadowy area?

 

The white flashing is really abysmal. It really looks horrific and rips you out of the immersion.

Removing it would be great. But I bet it is only possible via tweaking the *.exe, which worked in Far Cry for removing the flashing for all the objects (plants etc.). So someone with the tools and knowledge would need to hex edit the watchdogs.exe and try to find the corresponding values.

Any volunteers?

 

It was accomplished in FC3 by editing a dll. I tried using the same method in Disrupt_b64.dll, but couldn't find the string or any like it. Haven't looked in the EXE yet. Reverse engineering isn't something I'm good at though.

This is the FC3 topic: forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/736304-MOD-Stop-object-blinking-Forums

 

Edit,wrong thread

 

I try it with the exe but didnt find anything who solve it.

Also tried it by editing this

ui\fire\sources\textures\nexus_ugc\ugcpda\highlight_1x_side.xbt
ui\fire\sources\textures\nexus_ugc\ugcpda\highlight_1x_stretch.xbt
ui\fire\sources\textures\nexus_ugc\ugcpda\highlight_2x_side.xbt
ui\fire\sources\textures\nexus_ugc\ugcpda\highlight_2x_stretch.xbt
ui\fire\sources\textures\nexus_ugc\ugcpda\highlight_3x_side.xbt
ui\fire\sources\textures\nexus_ugc\ugcpda\highlight_3x_stretch.xbt


but it seems that wasnt the right

also this luas havent influence
domino\system\xinteractionhighlightcontroller.lua
hudindicatorcontroller.lua

editing this, let the game not start
engine\shaders\materialdescriptors\highlight.xml

only thing to try is this for me,

domino\system\entityhighlightcontroller.lua

....

 

Tried editing all of those files myself. Never crashed, although nothing changed either. I even edited the common and shader files directly, but no difference.

There has to be more to this...

 

use gimp and find the textures in the fat or dat.im still trieing to get gibbed tools to quit crashing.but i used the extracter tool to locate these textures i can guarantee you if you can unpack the textures"hud icons and prompts"what you do is open the texture in gimp or photo shop and erase texture so it is invisible or delete texture"but replace texture with a new layer"cause the texture still has to load or the game will probly crash.you can also change the transperency of texures with gimp.the hacking tool will still work with invisible textures cause of eye point physics.i been wanting to do this myself for awhile but gibbed crashs.i want to get rid of all hud completely.

 

use gimp and find the textures in the fat or dat.im still trieing to get gibbed tools to quit crashing.but i used the extracter tool to locate these textures i can guarantee you if you can unpack the textures"hud icons and prompts"what you do is open the texture in gimp or photo shop and erase texture so it is invisible or delete texture"but replace texture with a new layer"cause the texture still has to load or the game will probly crash.you can also change the transperency of texures with gimp.the hacking tool will still work with invisible textures cause of eye point physics.i been wanting to do this myself for awhile but gibbed crashs.i want to get rid of all hud completely.the flashing has to be a white texture or mask specular.you will find it its in there!

 

I find it hard to believe that in this day and age, they would use a texture for something like that. However, I'll give it a look tomorrow.

 

dosnt look like a texture, more like a special render of the highlighted objects, it is also affected by bloom levels

 

just to add i would like to get rid of hud"all"cause i like to immerse in the natural eye candy of games and the ui distracts just that.any ui in a game when im absorbing the realistic open world is aggravating.i wish i can finally fix gibbed tools from crashing but i tried everything.ive never so far seen a modder come out with a no hud mod that made the ui icons transparent.but its guaranteed to get rid of completely.if i dont or anyone else dont get rid of hud im gonna delete wd off my os!if the glow is a special flash 3d object im pretty sure its in the packed file,the glow textures.it would be too hard and cause bugs to wright hud out it would conflict the ui actions the only way is to make the textures invisible all ui actions will act as normal by eye point physics or proximity and location.

 

you can disable the hud from your WD profile.xml, i dont exactly remember how since it was found as soon as the game was out, its pretty easy

or you can use lua injection , ther's a script to disable all the hud, however the injector only work with vanilla version of the game

 

C:\Users\UserName\Documents\MyGame*s\Watch_Dogs\*\GameProfile.xml"

Change "1" to "0":
UseCompassMiniMap="1" to "0"
UseRoadSignHilight="1" to "0"
UseSubtitles="1" to "0"
UseReticle="1" to "0"
UseWaypoint="1" to "0"
UseHintsAndTutorial="1" to "0"
UsePdaNotification="1" to "0"
UseMinimap="1" to "0
UseFelony="1" to "0"
UseEquipmentAndTools="1" to "0"

 

im talkin about the hack promps and holster weapon and blood hit damage.i would like to remove them and any other hud 100% gone.

 

they are not called "highlight", there is no universal name for such thing, name differs from game to game, dev to dev.

Search for all possible words that comes in mind.

iF you would not be able to do it via script is final resort there is way to look in shaders. If uncompilled shaders does not hav this, you have to use helix to disable and dump compilled realtime shaders, mostly likely some pixel or vertex shader will handle that. but you have to edit it in asm to disable one effect without screwing another.

This is what i did by editing dumped shaders in Deadly Premonitions, where i was basically doing same thing - removing itrusive hud elements, tips, highlightin and all that breaks immersion, realism, challeng and everything that annoying as hell:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/247660/discussions/0/613940477956873544/

I also did similar thing with Rising Dead 2 and removed ugly color grading as well.