Gothic 3 Going to give Gothic 3 another try.

JDR13

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Well, after 6 months of collecting dust, Gothic 3 just got reinstalled on my system.

I was one of those suckers that held out in hopes of that uber patch that was going to transform the game. Now that I've come to terms with the fact that it's never going to happen, I'm ready to finally play G3 with the community patch.

Couple of questions.(North American version)

Should I just install patch 1.12 and then the latest community patch, or should I also install previous patches? I would normally just install the latest patch for any game, but I've seen people talking about installing 1.09 first for some reason.

I remember there was a program that created a front-end GUI for G3 that allowed you to change anything that was in the .ini file without having to go to the .ini file. I can't remember what the program was called. Can anyone tell me the name of that program and where I can find it?

Opinions on the best visual tweaks would also be greatly appreciated.
 
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A few people had problems when they only installed the last patch. So maybe you should find out which patch level the US version has and install everything from there.

The other infos can probably be found in the wiki.
 
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Thanks Gorath, I actually forgot about the Gothic 3 wiki.

The program I wanted was the "Gothic 3 Tuning Utility".
 
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IIRC the Aspyr (NA) version was released at 1.09 and the 1.12 patch does work on it, but I don't believe that Aspyr has anything posted about or linked to it.

There are also the "community" patches which are supposed to fix some quests and things, which requires the 1.12 patch. I haven't tried any of the community patches, myself, so YMMV.
 
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Some visual tweaks that I like:

//Increases the level of detail for many meshes
Render.GlobalVisualLoDFactor=1.00

//Vegetation visibility
VegetationAdmin.ViewRange=7000.0

//Increases distant terrain visibility
DistanceHigh.fFarClippingPlane_High=15000.0
DistanceHigh.fFarClippingPlane_Medium=13000.0
DistanceHigh.fFarClippingPlane_Low=11000.0

DistanceLow.fFarClippingPlaneLowPolyMesh_High=100000.0
DistanceLow.fFarClippingPlaneLowPolyMesh_Medium=45000.0
DistanceLow.fFarClippingPlaneLowPolyMesh_Low=20000.0

Render.PrefetchGridCellSize=12000

//Note : I cannot remember
//which values actually work probably, the _high ones
//Take particular note of the PrefetchGridCellSize value
//it will preload a larger part of the world at any given
//time making distant lands visible but also introduce
//a sizable performane hit. Also the values above
//may introduce visual glitches and may need some
//tuning but I think they make the game look good


// pushes DOF further back (works well with the above
//in making the foreground sharper)
Render.DOFStart=5000.0
Render.DOFEnd=12000.0


//pushes actor fading further back
Entity.ROI=6000.0

I recall you have a decent system so you can experiment with greater values...
The game should look even better then. Also I suggest setting AF at 16x HQ
from the ATI driver panel (It looks significantly better than choosing 16x from
inside the game settings with just a minor performance hit)...
 
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Thanks for the tips JonNik(and HiddenX). It has been so long since I messed with Gothic 3 that I've forgotten which .ini values have any effect. The first thing I did was change the Vegetation and Entity levels to 7000.0 and 5000.0 respectively. I don't like going much higher than 5000 for Entity.ROI because it causes npc's\monsters to start fighting each other at a greater distance from me, sometimes before I would want them to.

Do you remember which variable affects inanimate objects like rocks, tables, signpost, etc? I can notice things like that popping into view and it's kind of annoying.

Also, do you know if there's any way to push the water\waves effect back further? I hate how the ocean water looks so good close to shore, but then turns into a plain black surface soon after that.
 
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Do you remember which variable affects inanimate objects like rocks, tables, signpost, etc? I can notice things like that popping into view and it's kind of annoying.

ObjectDetails.fScreenObjectDistanceCulling_High=0.006
ObjectDetails.fProcessingRangeFadeOutRange_High=100.0
ObjectDetails.fRangedBaseLoDOffset_High=600.0

I didnt post them because I am not so certain about them (They seem to work
but need further tweaking). I have also changed the _medium and _low
corresponding values. At least one of this set seems to have an inverse bias
(lower is better) if you check their original transition from low->medium->high
(unless its a bug).

I may have gotten it wrong though and fProcessingRangeFadeOutRange should
be a lot more... If you check this I'd appreciate if you post back your findings (for
future reference).

Also, do you know if there's any way to push the water\waves effect back further? I hate how the ocean water looks so good close to shore, but then turns into a plain black surface soon after that.

Unfortunately no. The values I posted for distant terrain should be doing it
but they instead introduce a visual glitch with the sea (Like I said it is totally
worth it imo because together with the pushed back DOF its the most satisfying
LODing scheme I've tried. in any game I've played so far actually !). I was
wondering if larger values of: DistanceHigh.fFarClippingPlane_High and Render.PrefetchGridCellSize would do the job. But then I decided I 've spent'
enough time doodling and started playing :)
 
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ObjectDetails.fScreenObjectDistanceCulling_High=0.016
ObjectDetails.fProcessingRangeFadeOutRange_High=600.0
ObjectDetails.fRangedBaseLoDOffset_High=5000.0

This is what has been suggested and it seems to work well for me. I'm not sure about ObjectDistanceCulling though. I would think that lower would be better for that setting but I haven't had time to really test it yet. fRangedBaseLoDOffset_ seems to have the greatest impact, with a larger number making items fade in at further distances.


The thing that is really annoying me is the way you can see objects(trees, mountains, etc) change from low detail to high detail at a fairly close distance. Like if you're approaching a mountain you can see part of the mountain in high detail and then watch that area spread outward over the low detail area as you move closer to it. Do you know how to affect that?
 
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The thing that is really annoying me is the way you can see objects(trees, mountains, etc) change from low detail to high detail at a fairly close distance. Like if you're approaching a mountain you can see part of the mountain in high detail and then watch that area spread outward over the low detail area as you move closer to it. Do you know how to affect that?

Did you try tweaking the values under : //Increases distant terrain visibility
in my initial post ? Thats what they are supposed to do. Especially the
prefetchgridcellsize and farclippingplane_high.

Also fFarClippingPlaneLowPolyMesh_High should push the low poly meshes
away if I dont have my facts mixed.

Note: Some values that I have not yet tried tweaking but may be relevant:

Render.ScreenObjectDistanceCulling=0.01
Render.LowPolyObjectDistanceCulling=0.01
Render.ProcessingRangeFadeOutRange=400
Render.RangedBaseLoDOffset=0.0 //i.e I wonder what a greater value here
//does ?
 
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Are you sure prefetchgridcellsize has an effect on viewable area? I increased mine from 1000 to 1200 but saw no changes that I could discern.

farclippingplane_high definitely has the effect of pushing the higher textures further out. Unfortunately, I can't seem to increase it past 13000.0 without getting really annoying visual glitches. A large transparent gap in the ocean, and sometimes in hills\mountains as well, starts to show up if I go any higher.

As far as fFarClippingPlaneLowPolyMesh_High is concerned, does that value need to be raised or lowered to have a positive effect?

I've been wondering about Render.ProcessingRangeFadeOutRange=400 as well. I'm definitely going to experiment with that setting later today, I'll let you know what I find.
 
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Well its been a few months since I last fiddled with the ini :)
but what I distinctly remember for prefetchgridcellsize is that
increasing it to 12000 seemed to minimize the exact glitches
you describe .

I had them concistently in several places that were rendered
correctly after this tweak, i.e outside ardea... it still happens,
very rarely, perhaps a greater value would help. Also It seems
that certain distant effects like waterfalls etc display from a
greater distance with this one.

fFarClippingPlaneLowPolyMesh_High should be increased if I recall correctly.
How much of an impact it has though...

Anyway, rirht now I am satisfied with how the game looks and performs.
I'll revisit the ini I think on my next upgrade (since my current system has
reached its limits ;) )
 
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Messed around with the settings for about 4 hours today and finally ended up frustrated. No matter what combination of changes I use, I can't get rid of that graphic corruption in the water when I increase the farclippingplane setting. I have it set at 13000 and would like to go higher but I really hate seeing that gap in the ocean. Changing prefetchgridcellsize definitely doesn't help.

Another thing that really annoys me is how some rocks\boulders on the ground won't fade into view until I'm very close to them while others can be seen from a great distance. I don't understand this because they are objects of the same type and I would think that they should all fade in at the same distance.

Maybe the engine is programmed to allow more miscellaneous objects to be viewable in a closer proximity to the player? Either that or some objects of the same type are tied to different variables, but I don't understand why the devs would make it like that.

Some trees also do the same thing. One thing I find interesting is that I can see certain trees pop into view simply by turning the camera to the left or right while standing in place.

Overall, even with the object and view distances tweaked, the Genome engine suffers from some of the worst pop-up that I've ever seen.

As beautiful as Genome is, it's also very frustrating for a perfectionist like me to work with. It also doesn't help that the devs left very few comments in the .ini file describing what the variables affect.
 
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No matter what combination of changes I use, I can't get rid of that graphic corruption in the water when I increase the farclippingplane setting. I have it set at 13000 and would like to go higher but I really hate seeing that gap in the ocean. Changing prefetchgridcellsize definitely doesn't help.

Yep. like I said in a previous post, I havent found a way to get rid of this either.
(prefetchgridcellsize works for the dissapearing hills effect like I said though)

Seeing the ocean after you leave the ardea/cape dun area takes about 5% of
the game. So the game is looking significantly better for most of its
duration with a higher setting, at the cost of this glitch... It is worth the trade
imo, but it boils down to personal preference in the end.
 
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Ok, I see what you mean about prefetchgridcellsize now. I cranked farclippingplane all the way up to 20000.0 and had major holes in the hills. I then pushed prefetchgridcellsize up to 20000 and the holes disappeared. I wish I knew why this works for land but not for water.

I almost have the game the way I want it now. If I could fix the ocean glitch and the pop-ups it would be perfect. I'm going to keep fiddling with the settings while I wait for the next community patch. I'm going to start a real game with the release of patch 1.4, which is being worked on now.


*edit* How long are you supposed to be immortal at the start of the game? I've been messing around for over an hour in my test run and nothing can kill me. I don't remember it being this way before.
 
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Does your messed up ocean look like this? Just follow the link and scroll down to my post with screenies of the ocean and a small "guide" on how to fix it. I also have the problem that rivers do not get rendered at all. This happens every time I start the game, with different drivers and I now even have a different gfx card than the one I used at the time I made the screenies in that post. My water display is permanently broken until I fix it via the way described in the post. I could live with the broken ocean display but the rivers not getting rendered is unacceptable. Just sucks that I have to go through two long loading sessions every time I want to play the game but it's the only way to fix this issue it seems.
 
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*edit* How long are you supposed to be immortal at the start of the game? I've been messing around for over an hour in my test run and nothing can kill me. I don't remember it being this way before.

I think it's... 1) until the first time you get killed outside of the village (needs to be a certain distance from it, too) or ... 2) until you have followed Gorn to Reddock or until you (w/o Gorn) have come close enough to Reddock to trigger the rebel spawn in Ardea (this should happen if you come close to the stairs that are leading down to Reddock).
 
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@ Moriendor: The water problem we are discussing is not a bug per se.
More of an ugly glitch introduced by fiddling with the .ini values that goes
away when restoring the defaults.

@JDR13: 20000 and 20000 eh ? How much of a performance drop would you say?
I'm starting to think I was far more conservative with my values than I should
have been (though my sys specs are somewhat lower than yours)...
 
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I think it's... 1) until the first time you get killed outside of the village (needs to be a certain distance from it, too) or ... 2) until you have followed Gorn to Reddock or until you (w/o Gorn) have come close enough to Reddock to trigger the rebel spawn in Ardea (this should happen if you come close to the stairs that are leading down to Reddock).

Well I know it's not the first suggestion because I used the console to warp to Gotha and was trying out the zombies and skeletons there.

*edit* I wonder how long someone could take advantage of this? I wonder if it's possible to level up a few times before activating the trigger that makes you mortal.
 
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@JDR13: 20000 and 20000 eh ? How much of a performance drop would you say?
I'm starting to think I was far more conservative with my values than I should
have been (though my sys specs are somewhat lower than yours)...

It's kind of hard for me to tell because I've never spent that much time actually playing the game yet. I'm keeping the farclippingplane at 20000, but I've lowered the prefetchgridcellsize to 15000 because it doesn't seem necessary to have it any higher. (No visible glitches)

Try pushing the the farclippingplane up to 20000, but leave prefetchgridcellsize at 12000 and let me know if you see any holes.


Hey, have either of you guys ever tried that trick where you use an unpacking tool to unzip the .pak files into folders in the Data directory? Just curious, I've seen many people talk about it and claim performance gains as well as fixing some bugs\glitches. I'm thinking about trying it.
 
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