How to fix/disable shaders in games(DLL,guide and fixes).
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It does thank you. I was hoping there was an easy way for both. I will try what you said about altering projection matrix because fixing by texture is a bit pain staking in most games and is impossible as far as I know for UE3[Been trying to figure out how to do it in Borderlands 2 for quite some time, it doesnt work out as easily as source engine games]. Was just hoping for an easy approach. And my other idea is way too many shaders that its ever likely to work out. I was hoping there was global or something. Helix does have the function though but order does matter. Its what he uses for dynamic crosshairs. He passes depth from pixel shader[not sure if its always shadows but as far as I know] to hudP[Its easier to read if you look at mana84's mass effect 2 fix. look at dx9settings] but again, its probably way too many shaders [Every model/effect in game] and it would have to load after hud. It doesnt sound realistically possible. I was just looking at LA Noire and was kind of hoping it was possible. They kind of get to be able to do it the easy way though.
It does thank you. I was hoping there was an easy way for both. I will try what you said about altering projection matrix because fixing by texture is a bit pain staking in most games and is impossible as far as I know for UE3[Been trying to figure out how to do it in Borderlands 2 for quite some time, it doesnt work out as easily as source engine games]. Was just hoping for an easy approach.

And my other idea is way too many shaders that its ever likely to work out. I was hoping there was global or something. Helix does have the function though but order does matter. Its what he uses for dynamic crosshairs. He passes depth from pixel shader[not sure if its always shadows but as far as I know] to hudP[Its easier to read if you look at mana84's mass effect 2 fix. look at dx9settings] but again, its probably way too many shaders [Every model/effect in game] and it would have to load after hud. It doesnt sound realistically possible. I was just looking at LA Noire and was kind of hoping it was possible. They kind of get to be able to do it the easy way though.

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Posted 05/21/2013 08:15 AM   
Forum ate my post. That HL2 fix didn't work - didn't seem to change anything at all.
Forum ate my post. That HL2 fix didn't work - didn't seem to change anything at all.

Posted 05/21/2013 08:41 AM   
L4D2 - Water Fix. In case anyone else is working on this, I have made good progress. See attached screenshot from the "Swamp" level. I need to go through levels and check water, since I suspect I might need to make the same fix shaders in different places (I've had to fix almost identical VS and PS pairs for the case of having the flashlight on and off). I'll post the shaderoverride later. EDIT - change the extension of the shaderoverride jpg attachment to be .zip, then it can be unzipped. EDIT2 - Fix works for many levels, but not all. Cold Stream - Memorial Bridge does not work, so I will apply the fix to separate shaders.
L4D2 - Water Fix.

In case anyone else is working on this, I have made good progress. See attached screenshot from the "Swamp" level. I need to go through levels and check water, since I suspect I might need to make the same fix shaders in different places (I've had to fix almost identical VS and PS pairs for the case of having the flashlight on and off). I'll post the shaderoverride later.

EDIT - change the extension of the shaderoverride jpg attachment to be .zip, then it can be unzipped.

EDIT2 - Fix works for many levels, but not all. Cold Stream - Memorial Bridge does not work, so I will apply the fix to separate shaders.

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Posted 05/23/2013 06:16 PM   
Call of Juarez: Gunslinger I've used Helix to find the shader used for the border\overlay. I can disable it by toggling vertex shaders until I get to 41. It saves to the dump folder just fine. I move the shader file to "\CoJ Gunslinger\shaderoverride\vertexshaders\" and rename it to "BE30AD17.txt" as instructed. I then delete all the text in the file and replace it with "vs_3_0" and save. When I launch the game now, my screen flickers on and off and my display driver crashes. [url="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9739867/LOG.txt"]Here is the log file.[/url]
Call of Juarez: Gunslinger

I've used Helix to find the shader used for the border\overlay. I can disable it by toggling vertex shaders until I get to 41. It saves to the dump folder just fine.

I move the shader file to "\CoJ Gunslinger\shaderoverride\vertexshaders\" and rename it to "BE30AD17.txt" as instructed.

I then delete all the text in the file and replace it with "vs_3_0" and save.

When I launch the game now, my screen flickers on and off and my display driver crashes.

Here is the log file.

Posted 05/23/2013 10:15 PM   
Follow this guide. [url]http://helixmod.blogspot.com/2012/04/how-to-guide-remove-effects-from-game.html[/url] Open BE30AD17.txt paste vs_3_0 dcl_position v0 dcl_position o0 @mike_ar69 Its up to you but you can use ftp. Whatevers more convenient. I dont mind if people use it for personal space as long as they dont go nuts.
Follow this guide.
http://helixmod.blogspot.com/2012/04/how-to-guide-remove-effects-from-game.html

Open
BE30AD17.txt

paste
vs_3_0
dcl_position v0
dcl_position o0


@mike_ar69
Its up to you but you can use ftp. Whatevers more convenient. I dont mind if people use it for personal space as long as they dont go nuts.

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Posted 05/23/2013 10:17 PM   
[quote="eqzitara"]Follow this guide. [url]http://helixmod.blogspot.com/2012/04/how-to-guide-remove-effects-from-game.html[/url] Open BE30AD17.txt paste vs_3_0 dcl_position v0 dcl_position o0 [/quote] That's the guide I followed originally. Pasting that in the shader file has the same result. The game causes my monitor to turn on and off, the display driver crashes, and the game locks up. If I revert the file back to what was in there originally, it works fine. Original contents of the shader file: [code]// // Generated by Microsoft (R) HLSL Shader Compiler 9.29.952.3111 vs_3_0 def c0, 0.000244140625, 0.125, 1, 0 dcl_position v0 dcl_texcoord v1 dcl_position o0 dcl_texcoord o1.xy mul o1.xy, c0.x, v1 mul o0, c0.yyyz, v0 // approximately 2 instruction slots used [/code]
eqzitara said:Follow this guide.
http://helixmod.blogspot.com/2012/04/how-to-guide-remove-effects-from-game.html

Open
BE30AD17.txt

paste
vs_3_0
dcl_position v0
dcl_position o0

That's the guide I followed originally. Pasting that in the shader file has the same result. The game causes my monitor to turn on and off, the display driver crashes, and the game locks up. If I revert the file back to what was in there originally, it works fine.

Original contents of the shader file:
//
// Generated by Microsoft (R) HLSL Shader Compiler 9.29.952.3111
vs_3_0
def c0, 0.000244140625, 0.125, 1, 0
dcl_position v0
dcl_texcoord v1
dcl_position o0
dcl_texcoord o1.xy
mul o1.xy, c0.x, v1
mul o0, c0.yyyz, v0

// approximately 2 instruction slots used

Posted 05/23/2013 10:24 PM   
vs_3_0 def c0, 0.000244140625, 0.125, 1, 0 dcl_position v0 dcl_texcoord v1 dcl_position o0 dcl_texcoord o1.xy mul o1.xy, c0.x, v1 //mul o0, c0.yyyz, v0
vs_3_0
def c0, 0.000244140625, 0.125, 1, 0
dcl_position v0
dcl_texcoord v1
dcl_position o0
dcl_texcoord o1.xy
mul o1.xy, c0.x, v1
//mul o0, c0.yyyz, v0

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Posted 05/23/2013 10:33 PM   
Amazing. Commenting that one line worked :) Thanks! Now, does anyone know a way of using this and SweetFX at the same time? They both require d3d9.dll =(
Amazing. Commenting that one line worked :) Thanks!

Now, does anyone know a way of using this and SweetFX at the same time? They both require d3d9.dll =(

Posted 05/23/2013 10:52 PM   
http://helixmod.blogspot.com/2012/08/guidehow-to-install-helixmod-game-fixes.html

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Posted 05/23/2013 10:57 PM   
[quote="eqzitara"] @mike_ar69 It's up to you but you can use ftp. Whatevers more convenient. I dont mind if people use it for personal space as long as they dont go nuts.[/quote] Thanks, I think I should be OK for now, the zipped up shaderoverride is only 300k or so, so I can attach it here. As for L4D2 - I believe I have fixed water refraction/reflection everywhere now. It wasn't entirely straightforward either, required fixes to both VS and PS, and passing texcoords from the VS to the PS. And it all had to be done twice to cover the situation that the flashlight was turned on or off lol. Good learning experience though. Still, it looks fantastic in places, really makes a massive difference on the levels that have water. The main outstanding thing for this game is to fix the skybox issues. These are just wierd combinations of sky and closeup objects that may not be easy to separate. But I intend to have a go, getting the water fixed has given me impetus to complete this game. Also there are lots of double imaging issues with certain objects against the sky, which is just as nasty to look at as the water was (and its quite common), I plan on looking at that too. I know that DHR has worked previously on the HUD for this game. I personally don't have any issue with the HUD (I know that is heresy talk in a 3D forum...) because the cross-hair is dynamic and that's the main thing. I might push the names tags into depth, but honestly I prefer to play without them on. I am off camping this weekend, so won't be completing this any time soon, so I will attach the latest shaderoveride, DX9Settings and DLL here as a .jpg. Change the extension to .zip once downloaded.
eqzitara said:
@mike_ar69
It's up to you but you can use ftp. Whatevers more convenient. I dont mind if people use it for personal space as long as they dont go nuts.


Thanks, I think I should be OK for now, the zipped up shaderoverride is only 300k or so, so I can attach it here.

As for L4D2 - I believe I have fixed water refraction/reflection everywhere now. It wasn't entirely straightforward either, required fixes to both VS and PS, and passing texcoords from the VS to the PS. And it all had to be done twice to cover the situation that the flashlight was turned on or off lol. Good learning experience though. Still, it looks fantastic in places, really makes a massive difference on the levels that have water.
The main outstanding thing for this game is to fix the skybox issues. These are just wierd combinations of sky and closeup objects that may not be easy to separate. But I intend to have a go, getting the water fixed has given me impetus to complete this game. Also there are lots of double imaging issues with certain objects against the sky, which is just as nasty to look at as the water was (and its quite common), I plan on looking at that too.
I know that DHR has worked previously on the HUD for this game. I personally don't have any issue with the HUD (I know that is heresy talk in a 3D forum...) because the cross-hair is dynamic and that's the main thing. I might push the names tags into depth, but honestly I prefer to play without them on. I am off camping this weekend, so won't be completing this any time soon, so I will attach the latest shaderoveride, DX9Settings and DLL here as a .jpg. Change the extension to .zip once downloaded.

Rig: Intel i7-8700K @4.7GHz, 16Gb Ram, SSD, GTX 1080Ti, Win10x64, Asus VG278

Posted 05/24/2013 05:18 AM   
Alright, I am not sure what this command is. [I really need to read/understand best practices more] But I saw it then I had a feeling it was what I needed and checked. SkipSetScissorRect = true It fixed blood clipping in Lord of the Rings War of the North. [It was at correct depth but it cuts off with depth/convergence so its not the full image in either eye] *Shrug* Just saying in case it helps anyone.
Alright, I am not sure what this command is. [I really need to read/understand best practices more] But I saw it then I had a feeling it was what I needed and checked.

SkipSetScissorRect = true

It fixed blood clipping in Lord of the Rings War of the North. [It was at correct depth but it cuts off with depth/convergence so its not the full image in either eye] *Shrug* Just saying in case it helps anyone.

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Posted 05/24/2013 07:00 AM   
[quote="mike_ar69"]As for L4D2 - I believe I have fixed water refraction/reflection everywhere now. It wasn't entirely straightforward either, required fixes to both VS and PS, and passing texcoords from the VS to the PS. And it all had to be done twice to cover the situation that the flashlight was turned on or off lol. Good learning experience though. Still, it looks fantastic in places, really makes a massive difference on the levels that have water. The main outstanding thing for this game is to fix the skybox issues. These are just wierd combinations of sky and closeup objects that may not be easy to separate. But I intend to have a go, getting the water fixed has given me impetus to complete this game. Also there are lots of double imaging issues with certain objects against the sky, which is just as nasty to look at as the water was (and its quite common), I plan on looking at that too. I know that DHR has worked previously on the HUD for this game. I personally don't have any issue with the HUD (I know that is heresy talk in a 3D forum...) because the cross-hair is dynamic and that's the main thing. I might push the names tags into depth, but honestly I prefer to play without them on. I am off camping this weekend, so won't be completing this any time soon, so I will attach the latest shaderoveride, DX9Settings and DLL here as a .jpg. Change the extension to .zip once downloaded.[/quote]Awesome! Glad to hear you are making good progress. If you want a nicely documented example of fixing skybox problems where the shaders are also used for up close items- Psychonauts is your game. The clouds and stars were too close, and the same shader is used for the crowns of the trees and the floor of the cabins. I made some decent release notes, and documented the DX9Settings.ini so it should be clear, but I can answer any questions you might have. The skybox problems were the only serious problem in Psychonauts.
mike_ar69 said:As for L4D2 - I believe I have fixed water refraction/reflection everywhere now. It wasn't entirely straightforward either, required fixes to both VS and PS, and passing texcoords from the VS to the PS. And it all had to be done twice to cover the situation that the flashlight was turned on or off lol. Good learning experience though. Still, it looks fantastic in places, really makes a massive difference on the levels that have water.
The main outstanding thing for this game is to fix the skybox issues. These are just wierd combinations of sky and closeup objects that may not be easy to separate. But I intend to have a go, getting the water fixed has given me impetus to complete this game. Also there are lots of double imaging issues with certain objects against the sky, which is just as nasty to look at as the water was (and its quite common), I plan on looking at that too.
I know that DHR has worked previously on the HUD for this game. I personally don't have any issue with the HUD (I know that is heresy talk in a 3D forum...) because the cross-hair is dynamic and that's the main thing. I might push the names tags into depth, but honestly I prefer to play without them on. I am off camping this weekend, so won't be completing this any time soon, so I will attach the latest shaderoveride, DX9Settings and DLL here as a .jpg. Change the extension to .zip once downloaded.
Awesome! Glad to hear you are making good progress.

If you want a nicely documented example of fixing skybox problems where the shaders are also used for up close items- Psychonauts is your game. The clouds and stars were too close, and the same shader is used for the crowns of the trees and the floor of the cabins.

I made some decent release notes, and documented the DX9Settings.ini so it should be clear, but I can answer any questions you might have. The skybox problems were the only serious problem in Psychonauts.

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Posted 05/24/2013 11:42 AM   
@mike_ar69 Fantastic work!! some programmer skills are always welcome. The HUD is ok, only nameplates/object icons are 2D, trying to push further....but you're alright better without them. The skybox and background buildings that are to close (shared with closeup objects)....in the zip i attach i fix a couple of shaders that fortunately don't share any closeup objects....the bad news is those shaders are 1 shader/1 texture....so we can separate the skybox from the close objects by texture. @bo3b I see your Psychonauts fix....is the first fix i saw with a lot of explanation, list of textures, etc.. very nice!!.....a lot of work involve.....separate texture is not that hard, but involve a LOT of time (ALT+TAB plus F8...jeje).
@mike_ar69
Fantastic work!! some programmer skills are always welcome.

The HUD is ok, only nameplates/object icons are 2D, trying to push further....but you're alright better without them. The skybox and background buildings that are to close (shared with closeup objects)....in the zip i attach i fix a couple of shaders that fortunately don't share any closeup objects....the bad news is those shaders are 1 shader/1 texture....so we can separate the skybox from the close objects by texture.

@bo3b
I see your Psychonauts fix....is the first fix i saw with a lot of explanation, list of textures, etc.. very nice!!.....a lot of work involve.....separate texture is not that hard, but involve a LOT of time (ALT+TAB plus F8...jeje).

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Posted 05/24/2013 03:34 PM   
Thanks Bo3b. I looked at your Psychonauts fix when you posted it to the Helixsite, I'll have a look at it more closely. I know how to do the mechanics of the texture separation stuff, but I noted that you added a feature to make unaffected textures pink or something and that sounds very useful. I'll report back next week :-)
Thanks Bo3b. I looked at your Psychonauts fix when you posted it to the Helixsite, I'll have a look at it more closely. I know how to do the mechanics of the texture separation stuff, but I noted that you added a feature to make unaffected textures pink or something and that sounds very useful. I'll report back next week :-)

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Posted 05/24/2013 03:29 PM   
I'm sorry for not being so active lately but I'm on a very busy period... I should (hopefully) take my degree by the 15th of July, so I can't be of much help actually.. I'll do what I can tought. Scissor testing is a tecnique used to improve drawing performance by only drawing poligons that are contained within a ScissorRectangle that is a rectangular shaped clipping region. This causes issues with stereo render targets becouse the masking region remains 2d and textures are clipped out in the left side of the left eye and in the right side of the right eye along with separation. So SkipSetScissorRect = true will skip this test and solves those 3d issues. I noticed this issue in ME2 and Bioshock, but probably we could set this in dx9settings of darksiders1 too (increasing crosshair depth causes clipping issues). I agree with bo3b about MVP matrix thing... 'c' registers are read only registers that are created in the game engine and used in shaders as constant float registers. Of course you can always copy those values into temporary registers and manipulate them as you like, but I don't see why you should tbh... just to be clear, a vertex shader that instances weapon models, will be called for each vertex the actual model is made by. In particular, this shader will get a single vertex position (at a time) into a 'v' register and will transform its position coords into screen space by using the WVP matrix. That is to explain that at shader's level, we don't have control on what is the weapon we are currently rendering nor we can move vertexes belonging to a specific 3d model if all the weapons are rendered by the same vertex shader. We can only move all of those vertex at once, or eventually, the only whay to separate them is to guess on the position of output vertex coords if they are different for weapons (pretty rare). Another thing we could do is to make all weapons to appear 2D by normalizing vertex positions by w... they would appear flat at screen depth (or at constant depth with a rescaling) but you could increase convergence as much as you like and won't have to bother with weapons at different depths. In hl2 water looks fine at first, then all messup (reflections, reflactions, transparency etc) after going and returning from underwater. I'm almost sure it's related to nvidia automatic heuristic, I could probably get rid of this by editing dx9settins with new dlls functionalities but I'll give it a look when I get the time. With my old "wip fix" water should look nice after going and returning from underwater, otherwise the water looks a little "shifted" when it should be normal. I could just put a key to switch water fix on/off but I'd like to fix this game properly when I get the time since other issues (skyboxes, crosshair, other ghosting effects) still would need to be fixed aswell.
I'm sorry for not being so active lately but I'm on a very busy period... I should (hopefully) take my degree by the 15th of July, so I can't be of much help actually.. I'll do what I can tought.

Scissor testing is a tecnique used to improve drawing performance by only drawing poligons that are contained within a ScissorRectangle that is a rectangular shaped clipping region. This causes issues with stereo render targets becouse the masking region remains 2d and textures are clipped out in the left side of the left eye and in the right side of the right eye along with separation.
So SkipSetScissorRect = true will skip this test and solves those 3d issues. I noticed this issue in ME2 and Bioshock, but probably we could set this in dx9settings of darksiders1 too (increasing crosshair depth causes clipping issues).

I agree with bo3b about MVP matrix thing... 'c' registers are read only registers that are created in the game engine and used in shaders as constant float registers. Of course you can always copy those values into temporary registers and manipulate them as you like, but I don't see why you should tbh...
just to be clear, a vertex shader that instances weapon models, will be called for each vertex the actual model is made by. In particular, this shader will get a single vertex position (at a time) into a 'v' register and will transform its position coords into screen space by using the WVP matrix. That is to explain that at shader's level, we don't have control on what is the weapon we are currently rendering nor we can move vertexes belonging to a specific 3d model if all the weapons are rendered by the same vertex shader. We can only move all of those vertex at once, or eventually, the only whay to separate them is to guess on the position of output vertex coords if they are different for weapons (pretty rare). Another thing we could do is to make all weapons to appear 2D by normalizing vertex positions by w... they would appear flat at screen depth (or at constant depth with a rescaling) but you could increase convergence as much as you like and won't have to bother with weapons at different depths.

In hl2 water looks fine at first, then all messup (reflections, reflactions, transparency etc) after going and returning from underwater. I'm almost sure it's related to nvidia automatic heuristic, I could probably get rid of this by editing dx9settins with new dlls functionalities but I'll give it a look when I get the time. With my old "wip fix" water should look nice after going and returning from underwater, otherwise the water looks a little "shifted" when it should be normal. I could just put a key to switch water fix on/off but I'd like to fix this game properly when I get the time since other issues (skyboxes, crosshair, other ghosting effects) still would need to be fixed aswell.

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Posted 05/24/2013 11:01 PM   
  127 / 167    
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