Watch_Dogs - General moding

I think in WD there are global modifier and all the different lights have their own modifier. We just don't know where they are. In my E3 Lite v2 I only managed to dim the lensflares of the Street lights and the lights Under L-Train by editing the texture.

 

The real-time reflections can be modified in "defaultrenderconfig.xml".

The dynamic reflections that can be seen on cars & roads has been already maxed out by modders. You can modify them in <ParaboloidReflection> section.
In E3 demos they are sharper and reflect more objects. I have modified them many times but couldn't bring that E3 level of detail back, only the sharpness.
Also I managed to increase the Trees detail quality in reflections. It can be modified in <Geometry> section, just set two "RealtreeReflection..." settings to "1" - that's the highest quality.

The Water (except puddles and fountains) is using different type of reflections that already reflect everything. You can increase it's quality in <Water> section.

Also I'm working on road textures. I wanna increase the sharpness of reflections on roads when they wet, like in E3 2012 demo.
Right now you can use Essenthy's Sidewalk & Road reflections texture pack from my Variety Pack to make road reflections sharper during rain. But his textures have some drawbacks: they use more video memory and changing the look of sidewalk textures in some places. Also they don't have Relief Mapping. My textures will not have those drawbacks.

 

I remember there was some talk about that char35_flyerguy.xbg model...
Any updates on that?

 

I recently noticed that elbows never get wet by the rain:


Only get wet after swimming:



I wonder if someone could fix it. Maybe just copy some values from swimming wetnees to rain wetness?
Also I couldn't extend the drying duration of his coat. It's always too fast no matter how slow the TimeScale. Does anybody have any ideas?

 

There's no such thing like swimming wetness, the only common parameters are wetreflectance, wetspecularpower and wetdiffusemultiplier. I've examined the specific material of Aiden's coat and the only interesting parameter that maybe can do something related to what you described is LocalWetness, which is set to True. I don't have time to test it but here's the material with this parameter set to False, feel free to check if something is different: lsauvage-m-2012042560426378.material.bin

 

I'm looking at making a mash-up mod comprised of all the the mods made on this forum, basically I'll be taking all the best parts of each mod and shoving them in a patch.dat/.fat

To get started, I think I might start simple. Maybe TheWorse mod for starters...? So asking the forum, what do you guys think is the best part of TheWorse mod?

(I'm also asking if this okay with the developers of said mods, since I'll put credit where credits are due)

 

I'm gonna warn you - it will not be an easy task. Because in most cases the best parts is not just the files, the best parts could be written in different places inside those files and in most cases they are connected with other files. I'm talking about windy_city.game.xml file - it connects many visual parts of the game (EnvLighting, Bloom, Fog, Weather, Blackout etc.). It will take a lot of time to figure this all out.

 

Okay, so, for instance in the windy_city.game.xml; say if I wanted to add the envlighting from another mod (ex. Definitive, merged, E3 Lite v1/v2, etc.) I'd have to find the respective envlighting code from that from said mod(s); and put it in the respective area in the vanilla/whatever I use the base for file.

Alright I think I get the just of what I'm in for.

If it's more difficult than I expect it would be, what would be a good fall back plan if things don't go too swimmingly?

 

Ok, some mods like the ones in my Variety Pack can be merged with any other major mod and still look as the author intended.
But if you simply merge the base files of one major mod with another major mod or simply change the setting codes in windy_city.xml the results can be unexpected.
What I consider the "base" files is:
windy_city.game.xml
environmentlighting.lib
environmentfog.lib
bloom.lib
colorgrading.lib
windenvironmentsettings.lib
ssao.lib
lighteffectprefab.lib
dynamiclightprefab.lib
vehiclelamppreset.lib

+ some other libs and "unknown" files that I didn't modified.

Also the files in engine\settings folder like "default...something...config.xml" are important too but they safely can be exchanged between major mods.

And honestly I don't recommend to base your mashup mod on my E3 Lite v2.x or v1.31. Because there are many completely new xmls that I created myself and integrated into the game. So my major mod is completely not compatible with any other major mod unless you know what is where in there.

 

Yeah... Just merged TheWorse's bloom.lib and windycity.xml into you're E3 lite 2.1 mod for testing purposes, and things got pretty... Blue...

But this raises something else I stumbled on by accident. The daytime fog is really thick in this shot, and it makes the sky have a volumetric feel, and to me, looks waaay better than the current skybox (not the blue "filter").

(It seems the colorgrading is making everything very blue, can someone give some insight on how to counteract it?)

Spoiler

[EDIT]: I found that at night while there is stormy weather in TheWorse mod, there is fog! I'm looking at bringing this into the mashup mod, as well as the storm bloom.

Spoiler

 

I just checked his v1.0, and turns out for Clear weather he's using the fog from Alone DT and for Storm from Conspiracy DT. The fog preset from Conspiracy have the same intensity for Day and Night.

Also the fog preset (xml file inside environmentfog.lib) contains a lot of color settings for different time of day, for sun side/moon side and for upper/lower fog places. That's why it's too many blue in your screen.
Moreover the skybox you like is caused not only by the thin fog but also by fCloudy set to "0.5" or "0.3" in windycity.xml. I think on your screen it's not simple "Clear" preset is active, it's most likely "Clear_Rain0_Cloud0.4" or "Clear_Rain0_Cloud0.6".
I also noticed that he "assigned" wrong Threshold values in Weather settings. He clearly didn't realize what he was doing at the time. So his Environment Containers is not fully loaded when active and overlaps with the nearest ones.
You simply need to set default threshold values like this:

Code:

<WeatherPreset>
        <Settings>
          <WeatherSettings Name="Clear" EnvironmentSettingName="Clear" fThresholdValue="0" />
          <WeatherSettings Name="Clear_Rain0_Cloud0.4" EnvironmentSettingName="Clear_Rain0_Cloud0.4" fThresholdValue="0.2" />
          <WeatherSettings Name="Clear_Rain0_Cloud0.6" EnvironmentSettingName="Clear_Rain0_Cloud0.6" fThresholdValue="0.4" />
          <WeatherSettings Name="Clear_Rain0.01_Cloud0.9" EnvironmentSettingName="Clear_Rain0.01_Cloud0.9" fThresholdValue="0.6" />
          <WeatherSettings Name="Clear_Rain0.5_Cloud1" EnvironmentSettingName="Clear_Rain0.5_Cloud1" fThresholdValue="0.8" />
          <WeatherSettings Name="Storm" EnvironmentSettingName="Storm" fThresholdValue="1" />
        </Settings>
      </WeatherPreset>

You can add colorgrading.lib from Vanilla and replace his ColGr values in windy_city.xml with this default value "2641128788".

 

Currently, I'm using you're mod as a base (just to see if the chemistry of two heavily contrasting mods can mix); which means I'm using you're windy_city.xml.
As a temporary fix I'm using Theworse's colorgrading, and environmentfog.

I also found that when transferring elements from Theworse's bloom.lib makes E3 lite's colorgrading, and environmentfog somewhat incompatible. ***65288;hence the heavy fog and the blueness)

This, by it self, is very intresting...

Whatever is instigating this drastic colorgrading difference might spark its own investigation...

[EDIT:]

Just did the second half, everything looks alot less red and the streetlights are less brown.

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I would like to experiment with the storm bloom. Currently the storm bloom is very "transperent" (since on E3 lite, the streetlamp "bloom" texture was made less noticable); I would like to make the storm bloom stronger, whilst keeping it the size that it is (e.g. not huge like ThatGuys bloom)

Would I be able to change that in windy_city.xml or do I have to fiddle with bloom.lib?

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I also was able to get the "sky bloom" working, even though the the rest of the clear bloom was also intensified; it actually looked closer to the PS4 reveal demo, and the 14 minute gameplay trailer in my opinion.

Suprisingly, and fortunately the E3 lite sky was not desaturated while getting the bloom to work.

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Here is some what it looks like (note colorgrading not applied in this screen):

Spoiler

 

New "streetlight bloom" texture:

Spoiler

Woops, doublepost...

 

The what? Please elaborate.

 

I changed the texture light_lensflare_02.xbt (sorry if I got the name wrong)
I tried to make it a little more larger to match the look in the 2012 demo. I also changed the resolution from 256x256 to 512x512.

What I basically did is went into the sun lensflare texture and took the most left part in the texture, added a gaussian blur effect, and adjusted the white level.
Then I saved it as it's own standalone file; This makes the the bloom around the street lights more noticeable like in the 2012 demo, and the lensflare on the taillights and turn signals larger, like the 2012 demo

 

I wonder how the lights under L-train look now, they must be huge, not like in 2012 demo.

Also the taillights was anamorphic in 2012 demo:

 

Nope. Since lens_flare_02_d.xbt is a texture, and the lights lights under the L-train only use bloom rather than a texture to make its bloom, they're still intact (might need to make the bloom less intense though...).


Since the turn signals and taillights are using a stretched version of lens_flare_02_d.xbt the anamorphic lens flares are only larger.

Example of both:

Spoiler

 

Neither. You can try to pack a dummy file named "tunnel.xbt" in "patch_unpack\graphics\postfx" folder. If the game crashes you need edit this texture and decrease "Luminosity" completely in Paint.net (Adjustments -> Curves... -> drop down menu "Luminosity"). But there still will be some "vignette" left after that. To remove it you need to do the same with "impact_pierce_blood.xbt" and it's "high" version. But this will also remove the bloody screen effects when Aiden takes a hit. Though I think the Luminosity trick might not work with it.

 

Yep, so this way it's easier to achieve the requested result but it have those downsides, the other way would be to actually use some edited "blank" .cseq files that would perfectly remove the slowmotion effect without bugs, but then it have the downside of being significantly harder to do.
IMHO the best solution is to simply use the E3 adrenaline mod from TXGT's Variety Pack.

 

Okay, now I understand.

Never really went into researching dummy files... Might have to do some homework.