mod Lucky Strike's Mods: Hedgerow Hell - it's here!

[Vacillator]

2 hours ago, Lucky_Strike said:

Do you have Anti Aliasing on or off? Or are you letting the GPU control that?

Ermmm, good question.  I'm more used to running flight sims like Il2 (very good by the way) which allowed much more tweaking.  I need to do some digging...

[Warts 'n' all]

@Lucky_Strike Personally I don't think the boy from Woking would actually consider himself the "Mod God". From talking to his long time drummer on a number of occasions I think that he left the ego tripping to others. So you should be pretty safe.

Edited November 12, 2020 by Warts 'n' all

[Lucky_Strike]

1 hour ago, Warts 'n' all said:

@Lucky_Strike Personally I don't think the boy from Woking would actually consider himself the "Mod God". From talking to his long time drummer on a number of occasions I think that he left the ego tripping to others. So you should be pretty safe.

I guess in retrospect Mr Daltry and his motley crew should have that title.

[Vacillator]

20 hours ago, Lucky_Strike said:

Do you have Anti Aliasing on or off? Or are you letting the GPU control that?

I was a bit slow on that question, now realised I missed jotting it down when I originally posted.  Yes it's on in the in-game settings.  My Nvidia software doesn't seem to show any BFC games (or quite a few others).

[Lucky_Strike]

51 minutes ago, Vacilllator said:

I was a bit slow on that question, now realised I missed jotting it down when I originally posted.  Yes it's on in the in-game settings.  My Nvidia software doesn't seem to show any BFC games (or quite a few others).

If the game is handling it then the nVidia drivers ought to respect that.

I don’t know what difference it makes to have the nVidia GPU control the AAA or whatever else it can do, personally I’ve futzed about with all those settings so many times but can’t say that I noticed any difference other than garbled text or slow downs, so I just leave it to the game to handle it with ReShade doing it’s magic. On the Mac there are no direct controls for the GPU so the game is always fully in charge. The biggest thing I notice on the Mac is how the Bocage renders, it’s better on the PC with nVidia card than on the Mac with a more powerful AMD Radeon ...

For custom per game setting using the nVidia controls one has to add a custom setup as none of BFs games are listed. Can’t remember off the top of my head how that works but it’s something like make all your setting choices then assign it to run whenever the game .exe is launched and save.

[Vacillator]

Thanks, might have a play with the Nvidia software at some point as I vaguely recall doing what you describe for other games.

[Erwin]

Noticed that I have Antialiasing - FXAA OFF; AA Gamma Correction ON; Mode OFF, Setting in grayed out NONE; and Transparency is OFF.   

What are your recommended nVidia settings?

Actually, would be very helpful to have a complete list of recommended nVidia settings for best graphics appearance.

 

 

 

[Warts 'n' all]

14 hours ago, Lucky_Strike said:

I guess in retrospect Mr Daltry and his motley crew should have that title.

"You want this bottle round yer 'ead? Furts up, it ain't the trout farmer's band, it's mine. 'n' secund we ain't motley."   ...   

[Lucky_Strike]

26 minutes ago, Vacilllator said:

Thanks, might have a play with the Nvidia software at some point as I vaguely recall doing what you describe for other games.

I mess about with the settings every now and then and immediately forget why I did what I did, so set them back to default. I figure that the game is best left to deal with them, especially as the game's graphics engine is so old, it can't really use much of what the GPU settings offer these days. 

4 minutes ago, Erwin said:

Noticed that I have Antialiasing - FXAA OFF; AA Gamma Correction ON; Mode OFF, Setting in grayed out NONE; and Transparency is OFF.   

What are your recommended nVidia settings?

Actually, would be very helpful to have a complete list of recommended nVidia settings for best graphics appearance.

@Erwin When I get a chance I'll have a look at what all my settings are and post a screen shot or something on here for you. But I have to say in the past I've just followed advice from others who seem more knowledgeable of this stuff. For sure you need to keep that FXAA off - I'm pretty certain that's the setting that makes text go wonky.

These pages were most helpful, though I think the threads are quite long and a bit old. Also, annoyingly, nVidia keep adding to and changing stuff on their control panels.

 

If you're anything like me you've probably messed about with your graphics setting umpteen times and have never been 100% satisfied or sure of what's happening. I think graphics performance and the CM games are a bit like an itch you can't scratch!

 

[Lucky_Strike]

9 minutes ago, Warts 'n' all said:

"You want this bottle round yer 'ead? Furts up, it ain't the trout farmer's band, it's mine. 'n' secund we ain't motley."   ...   

Okay, okay - Mr Townshend and his bunch of fish farmers ...

This looks like a personal pic of himself?

Edited November 13, 2020 by Lucky_Strike
Corrected it before he whacked me some more

[Warts 'n' all]

It's one of my favourites from my younger days. It was taken in Brixton in 1982 when he was fronting his own band. And a pure fluke that he seems to be looking straight at me. 

[Erwin]

1 hour ago, Lucky_Strike said:

I think graphics performance and the CM games are a bit like an itch you can't scratch!

Yup.  100% correct (unfortunately).  Must have spent dozens of hours messing with the nVidia options.  That's why am hoping someone who is knowledgeable and who has a good nVidia options set-up can let us all know the optimal settings for your mod.

[Vacillator]

16 minutes ago, Erwin said:

Yup.  100% correct (unfortunately).  Must have spent dozens of hours messing with the nVidia options.  That's why am hoping someone who is knowledgeable and who has a good nVidia options set-up can let us all know the optimal settings for your mod.

Just fired up the Nvidia Control Panel (by right-clicking on desktop if anyone happens to wonder) and added CMBN for seperate control.  Changed to settings in one of the threads shown above although I see there were issues even then.  I got flickering trees, which is not good so have removed CMBN from the Panel for now as I have a campaign to get on with.  Might try again later...

[Lucky_Strike]

1 hour ago, Warts 'n' all said:

It's one of my favourites from my younger days. It was taken in Brixton in 1982 when he was fronting his own band. And a pure fluke that he seems to be looking straight at me. 

 ... and drinking straight from a bottle of VSOP by the looks of it! Think I've seen a bootleg of that somewhere - doubtless there'll be one out there. Expect we'll hear himself telling the bouncers to remove that rowdy Puritan before I come down there an' sort 'im owt!

[Lucky_Strike]

55 minutes ago, Erwin said:

Yup.  100% correct (unfortunately).  Must have spent dozens of hours messing with the nVidia options.  That's why am hoping someone who is knowledgeable and who has a good nVidia options set-up can let us all know the optimal settings for your mod.

I'll post the best I can, but there are so many variables ... it'll be something.

[Lucky_Strike]

38 minutes ago, Vacilllator said:

Just fired up the Nvidia Control Panel (by right-clicking on desktop if anyone happens to wonder) and added CMBN for seperate control.  Changed to settings in one of the threads shown above although I see there were issues even then.  I got flickering trees, which is not good so have removed CMBN from the Panel for now as I have a campaign to get on with.  Might try again later...

I get semi-flickering trees sometimes. Depends partly on resolution I think, goodness knows why. Interesting that it's the nVidia controls that instigated it on your system, I'll have to see what I have set in there.

Edited November 13, 2020 by Lucky_Strike

[Vacillator]

Yes it's not a game-stopper but distracting nevertheless. 

Liking the flowers by the way.  Never thought I'd say that to a gentleman .

[Lucky_Strike]

@Erwin @Vacilllator Okay. for what they're worth here are the current settings I'm using.

The CM panels are actually from my iMac but they are the same excepting the screen res and ATI left-click thing. My iMac has a 27inch 5K screen and a Radeon Pro 575X 4 GB GPU, with no extra controls over the GPU, running CM at a resolution of 3200 x 1800. I tried 5K for CM but all the dialogues were tiny, though the rest of the graphics were fine, 3200 x 1800 is the highest I could manage before it gave me headaches trying to read stuff. On my Windows 10 PC I have a GTX 1660 OC 6GB which I run at 2560 x 1440 resolution. This also runs through the Mac's monitor and again I did try higher resolutions but 2560 x 1440 is comfortable, I may try 3200 x 1800 but the feed from the PC to the Mac is a bit convoluted so I prefer to just leave it alone 'cos it works. I only use the PC for CM, no other games or apps, so it stays pretty much as is.

 

The nVidia control panel global settings are:

The per game settings for BN are:

There are more things set (bold in the per game settings) than I thought, but I really don't know why they're set. Some are bold but still show the same as the global settings, so they are things I have tinkered with then reset to the global settings again. I may try turning each one off to see if I notice any difference. The way I see it the less the GPU is processing for very little noticeable gain then the more I can squeeze out of it for ReShade.

[Lucky_Strike]

35 minutes ago, Vacilllator said:

Yes it's not a game-stopper but distracting nevertheless. 

Yes, I think I've just become accustomed to it. If I load something like Bois de Baugin with quite a few large wooded areas I can get a little bit of flickering, whereas I can load a small quick battle with a smattering of trees and see loads of flickering. I wonder if it's connected to which tree models are appearing or possibly the LOD thing. I see it on both rigs so it's not an nVidia or Radeon thing, at least not for me. The only thing I will say about it is that it's less obvious scooting around at ground level.

40 minutes ago, Vacilllator said:

Liking the flowers by the way.  Never thought I'd say that to a gentleman .

 I think it's fine to complement a fella on his flowers - sure it happens to Monty Don all the time!

[Lucky_Strike]

On 11/9/2020 at 8:56 PM, Lethaface said:

Only reshade seems not making much difference on or off even though I got your setup loaded and all updated etc. Not expecting support, just curious if it looks different for others. I made a new install on CMBN as I hadn't setup reshade for it. Perhaps I'll try to overwrite the ini and shaders from the .rar again. Anyway that's a small detail. 

@Lethaface So I installed ReShade 4.8.2, the latest version. There were a couple of errors, I noticed straightaway that the LUT effect in the sunny preset was not working as expected. This is because the designer of that fx has changed how he groups and apply LUTs. I have corrected that and now things should work as expected. I suggest installing all the fx packs when installing ReShade, this way you won't be missing any of the fx when you load my presets. You can always cull the unused fx later. 

I am attaching my latest presets to this message. They are:

CMBN Hot dusty sunny summer day 04 ReShade 4.8.2.ini - A hot, dusty, parched day with emphasis on oranges and leached out colours, high contrast, deep shadows and some haze in the distance

CMBN Damp light rain mist summer day 04 ReShade 4.8.2.ini - A suitably dreary wet day with emphasis on greens, lower contrast and mist around tree tops and in the distance

There are some screen shots below of these in action.

You will need to make your own UI Mask of course. And if you haven't set the depth masking you won't benefit from depth related effects so switch those off (DOF, MXAO, Bloom), though it's a shame not to have at least bloom effects working as they are quite important in creating the look of the presets. IMHO it's worth investing a bit of time setting up ReShade to work with depth related fx correctly.

Wet day with Reshade

Wet day without Reshade

Wet day with Reshade

Wet day without Reshade

Hot day with Reshade

Hot day without Reshade

Hot day with Reshade

Hot day without Reshade

Let me know how you get on with these.

Hedgerow_Hell_ReShade_presets_v2.zip

Edited November 15, 2020 by Lucky_Strike

[Falaise]

waow
You will eventually convince me to test reshade !!!!
I want my evolution month by month and the reshade version give really August impress
even without it is really good what you achieved
I also like the possibility of customizing the mod with the options
again well done and thank you for that

[Lethaface]

3 hours ago, Lucky_Strike said:

@Lethaface So I installed ReShade 4.8.2, the latest version. There were a couple of errors, I noticed straightaway that the LUT effect in the sunny preset was not working as expected. This is because the designer of that fx has changed how he groups and apply LUTs. I have corrected that and now things should work as expected. I suggest installing all the fx packs when installing ReShade, this way you won't be missing any of the fx when you load my presets. You can always cull the unused fx later. 

I am attaching my latest presets to this message. They are:

CMBN Hot dusty sunny summer day 04 ReShade 4.8.2.ini - A hot, dusty, parched day with emphasis on oranges and leached out colours, high contrast, deep shadows and some haze in the distance

CMBN Damp light rain mist summer day 04 ReShade 4.8.2.ini - A suitably dreary wet day with emphasis on greens, lower contrast and mist around tree tops and in the distance

There are some screen shots below of these in action.

You will need to make your own UI Mask of course. And if you haven't set the depth masking you won't benefit from depth related effects so switch those off (DOF, MXAO, Bloom), though it's a shame not to have at least bloom effects working as they are quite important in creating the look of the presets. IMHO it's worth investing a bit of time setting up ReShade to work with depth related fx correctly.

Wet day with Reshade

Wet day without Reshade

Wet day with Reshade

Wet day without Reshade

Hot day with Reshade

Hot day without Reshade

Hot day with Reshade

Hot day without Reshade

Let me know how you get on with these.

Hedgerow_Hell_ReShade_presets_v2.zip 22.69 kB · 1 download

Thanks!

It is working now

Even the depth effects seem to sort of work, focusing exactly on where the camera is pointing. So guess it can make nice screenshots. Although like you say it maybe a good idea to dive a bit deeper into the inner workings of all those and set it up properly.

I did get one error when loading the presets: "Some textures failed to load:  'V__PandaFX__NoiseTex'", tried updating all shaders again but that didn't fix it.

Anyway, it does look great already! So, again massive thanks! It is time to see it in action 

 

 

[Lethaface]

Some shots from a game:

 

[Erwin]

I have to try this so have downloaded latest 4.8.2.exe.

Need some reassurance.  If this screws up my machine (or there are weird effects like with earlier versions) is it easy to uninstall completely?  

 

[Lethaface]

8 minutes ago, Erwin said:

I have to try this so have downloaded latest 4.8.2.exe.

Need some reassurance.  If this screws up my machine (or there are weird effects like with earlier versions) is it easy to uninstall completely?  

 

yes. Same way to install/uninstall.