Dark Souls II - GeDoSa Mod

Peter "Durante" Thoman the modder who made the DSfix mod for Dark Souls: Prepare to Die has released his next mod called GeDoSa for Dark Souls II.

GeDoSaTo Dark Souls 2 Edition 0.3 ALPHA Release

This release is entirely dedicated to fixing the issues of the previous ambient occlusion implementation interacting with fog and alpha blended effects such as when you rest at a bonfire or fog walls. It also updates the AO shader to a new version by Asmodean.

When I set out to do this I expected it to take about an hour – it ended up at around 5. I first tried to apply the ambient occlusion in the game’s shadow buffer, and got that to work, but sadly there isn’t any shadow buffer in some areas! So I had to throw that away and start from scratch. Now the AO is applied in the base (linear color) HDR pass before alpha effects are rendered. A few shader-level tweaks might still be necessary, but at least the basics are now solid.

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More information.

Why didn't they just hire this Durante guy to work on the game ?

GothicGothicness said:

Why didn't they just hire this Durante guy to work on the game ?

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Ha, good one. Maybe because he doesn't speak Japanese, but it would make sense for some studio to hire him as a consultant at least.

Also- can someone explain what this is to me, a guy who is computer game graphics semi-illiterate?

GothicGothicness said:

Why didn't they just hire this Durante guy to work on the game ?

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Maybe they've tried. He probably already has a job and just does this for the fun of it. Wish I could have either been a 'hot blonde' or a rocket scientist. Life would have been more interesting.

GothicGothicness said:

Why didn't they just hire this Durante guy to work on the game ?

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It's like asking why B didn't hire Malukah to do her music magic in a game.
Or why SqE didn't hire Monty Oum.

The answer is simple.
Because they all suck.

ambient occlusion is kinda like shadows where one object meets another. If someone is standing up against a wall it can kinda look like a black glow. I guess this mod is just this guys superior implementation.

Personally, I'm just running the game with no mods in max settings. I'm too busy playing the game to notice the graphics, really. All I know is it shits all over the graphics on 360 and that's good enough! No crashes, no issues at all. Super fast SSD load times, instant summon. It's all been perfect.

Anyone have any PC impressions to share? Wheres Jonnik? How are you finding it?

PS. I called my 1st character SirJames in game in the hope one of you would know it was me killing you. Though I'm playing sunbro for the time being.

It runs perfectly on my OK machine with everything turned on and up. Really crisp, less fuzzy and more contrast and saturation than the 360 version I tried. I use a controller.

Seems like enemy AI is a little more aggressive on PC. Can't prove it, but for instance, the firebomb thrower on the corner wall near Cardinal tower would often not attack me at all on 360, where he behaves more normally on PC. Also, the halberd guy below him is much quicker to react on PC. Again, no proof, just impressions.

SirJames said:

Anyone have any PC impressions to share? Wheres Jonnik? How are you finding it?

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Love it and although I agree that it is not quite as good as #1 for me, the drop in quality is nowhere near as much as some people were griping.

They need to fix and rebalance some things imo though, hitboxes can definitely be improved maybe nerf poise a little less etc.

Actually my main complaint by the game is how its core mechanics are geared to try and make me play coop by being stingy with the effigies, not happening though
(I have about 7 right now)


So I may reevaluate upwards, I don't see downwards happening tbh…

I'm loving it so far, as I loved the prior two games. I also highly recommend the mod. It makes the game look much closer to the previews. Lighting is much more important. Without the mod, everything looks like it's the same shade of light, which really takes away from art design and the mood they go for. With it, seriously, it looks great.

Ovenall said:

Seems like enemy AI is a little more aggressive on PC. Can't prove it, but for instance, the firebomb thrower on the corner wall near Cardinal tower would often not attack me at all on 360, where he behaves more normally on PC. Also, the halberd guy below him is much quicker to react on PC. Again, no proof, just impressions.

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I haven't noticed this. I always used him to One explanation might be that on 360 at the time you were wearing metal boots then on PC perhaps even naked at this point? I think the metal armour makes more noise when you walk.

JonNik said:

Actually my main complaint by the game is how its core mechanics are geared to try and make me play coop by being stingy with the effigies, not happening though

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I prefer multiplayer games in general so I've always been very interested in the multiplayer side of the Souls games. It's very unique! In dks1 the summoning hardly ever worked, the invasions hardly ever worked. I'd find myself stuck in an area because people were trying to invade but couldn't connect. Lagstabs were a thing. The issues were endless. I wanted to play lots of PVP at endgame but before long I'd usually quit out in frustration because of the awful peer2peer system.

I'd agree that some of the areas in dks1 have been some of the best in the series, but also some of the later areas have been some of the worst! Dks2 might not peak quite as high, but it also doesn't trough quite as low. However, when multiplayer is important there's no doubt that Dks2 is not just the superior game, but makes dks1 pretty much obsolete. After having multiplayer working as intended there's no way I could go back to dks1's exercise in frustration!

I've actually had a LOT of success playing co-op with a friend using the Name-Engraved Ring. It seems like the normal summon range is 25% of ones "soul memory", but with the ring its about 50%. Also, the time you stay in the others world seems extended. We messed around a lot and fully explored the areas without running out of summon time. And with bonfire travel being around from the start we had no trouble picking meeting places. I've been quite pleasantly surprised about this as I was expecting meeting up with a friend to be almost as difficult as it was in dks1.

killias2 said:

I'm loving it so far, as I loved the prior two games. I also highly recommend the mod. It makes the game look much closer to the previews. Lighting is much more important. Without the mod, everything looks like it's the same shade of light, which really takes away from art design and the mood they go for. With it, seriously, it looks great.

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I've found that just turning down the brightness makes it look like the previews! I think the issue might be everyone is playing with brightness at default or even turned up because they want to see clearly, then they forget what they've done and run off to complain about how its not dark enough!

It really seems like people enjoy complaining. The noise some KB+mouse players are making about bad controls is just showing they don't get it. The controls are not bad - they're just deep. They expect no learning curve, but there's a lot of controls to remember just as there's a lot of buttons on the controller - and they're all used at least once. These players are OK at WASD to move, but then they press E or F trying Talk and Use and freak out that its not CoD or WoW. The mate I'm playing co-op with is using KB+mouse and it took him a while to learn the ropes, but now he's playing like a champ!

SirJames said:

I've found that just turning down the brightness makes it look like the previews! I think the issue might be everyone is playing with brightness at default or even turned up because they want to see clearly, then they forget what they've done and run off to complain about how its not dark enough!

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Not even close

Try the sweetFX settings in this article (I also keep brightness to 1 or 2 ticks on my already not too brightly set monitor) and you will see the difference, both in visual fidelity and the need to use a torch (practically everywhere there are things to light with one).

Anyways the artistic value, emotional impact and overall design and art direction of #1 is definitely superior imo, Lost Izalith non withstanding, just not by miles or anything and still head and shoulders above all the genero Arpg sea of mediocrity out there.
(can't even see a vid without my eyes glazing over for most of them )


P.S. Seems the game rewards inquisitiveness and creative thinking at least as much as #1. A few hours later I am at least at 16 effigies… I have found as many as 5 in one go!

SirJames said:

It really seems like people enjoy complaining. The noise some KB+mouse players are making about bad controls is just showing they don't get it. The controls are not bad - they're just deep.

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They really need to fix the keyboard input cutting off the mouse input. i.e. keeping say block pressed on a key makes either the mouse wheel or buttons not work, kinda silly…

OT: NVIDIA's HBAO+ >> anything else for the purpose of visual fidelity really, imo, not to mention sgssaa… This mod I am sure will turn out great but it is still early days and my game looks great and plays fine so I will give Durante time to work on it and look into it at some future point. Very interested in its application for other possibly older games though…

JonNik said:

N
OT: NVIDIA's HBAO+ >> anything else for the purpose of visual fidelity really, imo, not to mention sgssaa… This mod I am sure will turn out great but it is still early days and my game looks great and plays fine so I will give Durante time to work on it and look into it at some future point. Very interested in its application for other possibly older games though…

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Yeah, I'd be happy to use HBAO+ over SSAO for sure. However, I can't seem to get it working.

Take a look this screenshot of my settings... http://i.imgur.com/nBlqcN1.jpg

I loaded up nvidia inspector and followed the tweak guide and it made a profile in my normal nvidia profiles menu (as seen on the righthand side of the screenshot), but when I run the game, via steam or the exe, it does nothing? I turned off in game SSAO and AA to make the difference easy to spot and I can clearly see NO AA at all and no AO.

I'm probably overlooking something? Any ideas? I've never made a profile for a game before. Does it need to be turned on somehow or...?

The main issue with the keyboard and mouse setting is just that the defaults are awful, and the tooltips and tutorial all refer to non existent x-box controls. Rebinding the keys was hard because the commands to do that are also given in form of xbox controller buttons and it took me awhile to learn what conformed to what. There are still a couple of maneuvers that I'm not sure how to do.

Once I figured everything out and rebound everything, I didn't have a big problem with k&m. But figuring everything out took at least an hour. This is a better port then DS1, but the developers should still be ashamed of themselves for not even taking the time to change the tooltips to reflect the keyboard and for having incredibly impractical default controls.

SirJames said:

Yeah, I'd be happy to use HBAO+ over SSAO for sure. However, I can't seem to get it working.

Take a look this screenshot of my settings… http://i.imgur.com/nBlqcN1.jpg

I loaded up nvidia inspector and followed the tweak guide and it made a profile in my normal nvidia profiles menu (as seen on the righthand side of the screenshot), but when I run the game, via steam or the exe, it does nothing? I turned off in game SSAO and AA to make the difference easy to spot and I can clearly see NO AA at all and no AO.

I'm probably overlooking something? Any ideas? I've never made a profile for a game before. Does it need to be turned on somehow or…?

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Seems correct but try something for me, keep in game AA and AO enabled then run the game and take a screen or go in the place the article notes (i.e those shelves or the grasses etc). Then shutdown the game go to inspector, remove the executable from the profile and run the game again and compare. Does it look different/worst ?

NVIDIA's HBAO is subtle i.e. if you see AO and not that drop shadow effect, its on. Also if you see the grasses almost perfectly antialiased (ofcourse I also Downsample from 1620p) aa is on etc..

P.S. Using drivers: 331.82 iirc. let me check(edit: yep 331.82 in case it makes any difference)

Oh and remove the control panel profile. Its not necessary (although I am not sure it creates any conflicts but it most certainly does nothing)

Edit: Actually definitely remove the control panel profile, just tested it and it overrides the inspector settings. Disregard the stuff about keeping the ingame ones enabled for testing as this was your issue apparently. I would not go more than 2x sgssaa though if you are also downsampling… (2x works great for me. If you notice any blurring, especially if you don't downsample, you can set LodBias to allow and the texture value to -0.5 I also have it on with no visible shimmering etc)

Edit 2: If someone cannot afford the performance cost though, SweetFX + 1620p + ingame AO + AA looks very very nice indeed as an alternative…

Edit 3: And just in case you did not catch it in the article, expect some GUI element weirdness (def. no problem for me). Forgot about it, a certain indication that the inspector effects are on