How to fix/disable shaders in games(DLL,guide and fixes).
124 / 167
It seems like you are pretty close. The most important thing is having the d3d9.dll actually effect changes. From there, there are a lot of parameters to try.
That looks like [i]maybe [/i]it's related to frustrum. Clipping on the alternate edges, or things not being drawn on alternate edges.
Seems like you have advanced settings enabled in 3D Nvidia control panel for keyboard shortcuts, so try using Ctrl-F11 to move the frustum. This is usually used for edges of the screen, not items mid-screen, but maybe.
Last thing that occurs to me is you can try SkipScissorRect=true in DX9Settings.ini. The ScissorRect can sometimes both stereoized shaders. Not sure it's available in your dll variant, but worth a look.
It seems like you are pretty close. The most important thing is having the d3d9.dll actually effect changes. From there, there are a lot of parameters to try.
That looks like maybe it's related to frustrum. Clipping on the alternate edges, or things not being drawn on alternate edges.
Seems like you have advanced settings enabled in 3D Nvidia control panel for keyboard shortcuts, so try using Ctrl-F11 to move the frustum. This is usually used for edges of the screen, not items mid-screen, but maybe.
Last thing that occurs to me is you can try SkipScissorRect=true in DX9Settings.ini. The ScissorRect can sometimes both stereoized shaders. Not sure it's available in your dll variant, but worth a look.
Acer H5360 (1280x720@120Hz) - ASUS VG248QE with GSync mod - 3D Vision 1&2 - Driver 372.54
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Something else I noticed with the newest DLL looking at FEAR2. Changing shaderoverride (which can be either 0, 1 or 2) affected how things were rendered as well. With one of the values (I can't remember, I've not looked at it much since I started last week) some light effects render 'through' other objects (like walls). I think bo3b is right, try the newsest DLL with some of the different options (look in Helix's own newest game fixes to see what they are, and ask here if you are not clear what they are).
Looking at your screen shot looks similar to a problem common with lights and shading where the further back you are from the object (or the higher its depth) the more it gets clipped at both edges, and I think this is because the final rendering is looking at the area of what would be the 2D unstereoizied image to render points, and not the actual steroized areas - imagine a Venn diagram of three circles in a row, the middle one being the 2D object, the two to each side (and overlapping) being the two stereo objects, only the part on the left 3d object that overlaps with the 2d object is rendered, and the same for the other side, giving them the clipped look. I might be talking complete crap here of course and it might not be anything to do with it, but if it is then I think it will require a fix in a Pixel shader. This would be unusual for something like the hud though. Helix has fixed stuff like this, I think Mars War Logs had something a bit similar for the decals on the walls (the problem there was more extreme I think). Have a look at how he did that perhaps?
Something else I noticed with the newest DLL looking at FEAR2. Changing shaderoverride (which can be either 0, 1 or 2) affected how things were rendered as well. With one of the values (I can't remember, I've not looked at it much since I started last week) some light effects render 'through' other objects (like walls). I think bo3b is right, try the newsest DLL with some of the different options (look in Helix's own newest game fixes to see what they are, and ask here if you are not clear what they are).
Looking at your screen shot looks similar to a problem common with lights and shading where the further back you are from the object (or the higher its depth) the more it gets clipped at both edges, and I think this is because the final rendering is looking at the area of what would be the 2D unstereoizied image to render points, and not the actual steroized areas - imagine a Venn diagram of three circles in a row, the middle one being the 2D object, the two to each side (and overlapping) being the two stereo objects, only the part on the left 3d object that overlaps with the 2d object is rendered, and the same for the other side, giving them the clipped look. I might be talking complete crap here of course and it might not be anything to do with it, but if it is then I think it will require a fix in a Pixel shader. This would be unusual for something like the hud though. Helix has fixed stuff like this, I think Mars War Logs had something a bit similar for the decals on the walls (the problem there was more extreme I think). Have a look at how he did that perhaps?
I played around a bit and found that the SkipSetScissorsRect seems to be the difference between the older DLL versions and the new; in the latest version, it appears to be "true" by default. When I set it to false, I get the same behavior as the old version, where the bars update again, but don't render properly in stereo.
Here's a screenshot when SkipSetScissorsRect is set to true; everything is rendered properly, but the bars are always full, even when they shouldn't be.
While it would be cool to learn to fix this sort of thing, it's not a huge deal either. I spent an hour this morning playing without the Helix mod, and the crosshair doesn't seem to be all that important in this game. The HUD works fine in 2D.
I played around a bit and found that the SkipSetScissorsRect seems to be the difference between the older DLL versions and the new; in the latest version, it appears to be "true" by default. When I set it to false, I get the same behavior as the old version, where the bars update again, but don't render properly in stereo.
Here's a screenshot when SkipSetScissorsRect is set to true; everything is rendered properly, but the bars are always full, even when they shouldn't be.
While it would be cool to learn to fix this sort of thing, it's not a huge deal either. I spent an hour this morning playing without the Helix mod, and the crosshair doesn't seem to be all that important in this game. The HUD works fine in 2D.
[quote="dlwyatt"]..
..[/quote]
it looks "max size". Meaning it cant be stretched anymore. It happens with UI heavy games. It will start to look like crap. Dragon age/That mmo I did[forget name] ran into same issue.
If you want JUST crosshair 3D you should be able to define its texture.
There is an option if you want certain portion of screen, but its not fun.[You probably need multiple If's for that hud] I did it with borderlands 2. Define area you want changed. I am guessing you want everything but interface hud in depth.
Sorry Im a messy writer[I like writing it all out so I can easily read it]
[Code]
def c226, 0, 0, 0, 0
def c227, 35, -30, 20, -20
..
mov r7, c226 //R7 is disabled string. Replace with depth code if you want.
if_lt r6.x, c227.w //R6 is position.
mov r7, r10
endif
if_gt r6.x, c227.z
mov r7, r10
endif
if_lt r6.y, c227.y
mov r7, r10
endif
if_gt r6.y, c227.x
mov r7, r10
endif
mov r10.w, r7.w //This disables by forcing w = 0. Replace with move r10, r7 if using depth code
[/code]
it looks "max size". Meaning it cant be stretched anymore. It happens with UI heavy games. It will start to look like crap. Dragon age/That mmo I did[forget name] ran into same issue.
If you want JUST crosshair 3D you should be able to define its texture.
There is an option if you want certain portion of screen, but its not fun.[You probably need multiple If's for that hud] I did it with borderlands 2. Define area you want changed. I am guessing you want everything but interface hud in depth.
Sorry Im a messy writer[I like writing it all out so I can easily read it]
def c226, 0, 0, 0, 0
def c227, 35, -30, 20, -20
..
mov r7, c226 //R7 is disabled string. Replace with depth code if you want.
if_lt r6.x, c227.w //R6 is position.
mov r7, r10
endif
if_gt r6.x, c227.z
mov r7, r10
endif
if_lt r6.y, c227.y
mov r7, r10
endif
if_gt r6.y, c227.x
mov r7, r10
endif
mov r10.w, r7.w //This disables by forcing w = 0. Replace with move r10, r7 if using depth code
[quote="bo3b"][quote="Pirateguybrush"]This is probably a really stupid idea, but I don't know any better. DHR said he doesn't know how to convery a 2.0 pixelshader to a 3.0. What if you just identified a working water shader in Portal 2 (which I think works fine in 3d), and copied that? Or even one in a totally unrelated game, like an Unreal game. Are shaders tied to engines, or could you just drop one in that was "close enough"?[/quote]That's a really crazy idea, and I like it. There's a chance that would work. In general we are patching shaders to fix bugs, and in principle there is no reason not to replace the entire thing with something else.
The only tricky part will be matching the inputs and outputs. All shaders have some sort of input, like the v0 vertex location, and some output like the o0 output vertex. If the one you are replacing has different inputs/outputs you'd need to make them match. That's not necessarily a problem, because we can move stuff between registers.
There might be global constants that are just different though, in which case it wouldn't work. For example, a c50 parameter used in the good working shader, that doesn't exist in the broken one. We can't provide that extra, unknown, constant.
I've got both Portal and L4D 1 and 2, so give it a whirl. Hunt down the shaders with the debug dll, and save off copies of a working shader, and a broken shader. Either eqzitara or I can take a look and let you know if replacing will work.
Best to do that in the main Helix thread though, not here.[/quote]
Honestly I was expecting it would be a really stupid idea, but if you think it's worth a try, I'd love to see what happens. Could it even work with a totally different engine if you could fix the inputs/outputs?
I'm happy to hunt the shaders if you write up/point me in the direction of a simple guide.
Pirateguybrush said:This is probably a really stupid idea, but I don't know any better. DHR said he doesn't know how to convery a 2.0 pixelshader to a 3.0. What if you just identified a working water shader in Portal 2 (which I think works fine in 3d), and copied that? Or even one in a totally unrelated game, like an Unreal game. Are shaders tied to engines, or could you just drop one in that was "close enough"?
That's a really crazy idea, and I like it. There's a chance that would work. In general we are patching shaders to fix bugs, and in principle there is no reason not to replace the entire thing with something else.
The only tricky part will be matching the inputs and outputs. All shaders have some sort of input, like the v0 vertex location, and some output like the o0 output vertex. If the one you are replacing has different inputs/outputs you'd need to make them match. That's not necessarily a problem, because we can move stuff between registers.
There might be global constants that are just different though, in which case it wouldn't work. For example, a c50 parameter used in the good working shader, that doesn't exist in the broken one. We can't provide that extra, unknown, constant.
I've got both Portal and L4D 1 and 2, so give it a whirl. Hunt down the shaders with the debug dll, and save off copies of a working shader, and a broken shader. Either eqzitara or I can take a look and let you know if replacing will work.
Best to do that in the main Helix thread though, not here.
Honestly I was expecting it would be a really stupid idea, but if you think it's worth a try, I'd love to see what happens. Could it even work with a totally different engine if you could fix the inputs/outputs?
I'm happy to hunt the shaders if you write up/point me in the direction of a simple guide.
Cool. I'm curious too. I understand the underpinning well enough now to know that this is not an impossible task. It's just code, and how you write a subroutine like a shader doesn't matter, only the inputs and outputs.
Going cross engine from like Source to Unity is less likely to work, because of the problem of global variables, but it is also not impossible if they happen to pass everything in as parameters.
Use eqzitara's hunting guide, where you run the debug dll, and use the numeric keypad to cycle through all of the shaders looking for the faulty one to blink out. When it blinks out you can have the dll write it out, using a different key.
Take a look at the very first post by Helix in this thread, and read through that. There is a guide toward the end that describes the steps.
The better example is eqzitara's guide with pictures:
[url]http://helixmod.blogspot.com/2012/04/how-to-guide-remove-effects-from-game.html[/url]
Cool. I'm curious too. I understand the underpinning well enough now to know that this is not an impossible task. It's just code, and how you write a subroutine like a shader doesn't matter, only the inputs and outputs.
Going cross engine from like Source to Unity is less likely to work, because of the problem of global variables, but it is also not impossible if they happen to pass everything in as parameters.
Use eqzitara's hunting guide, where you run the debug dll, and use the numeric keypad to cycle through all of the shaders looking for the faulty one to blink out. When it blinks out you can have the dll write it out, using a different key.
Take a look at the very first post by Helix in this thread, and read through that. There is a guide toward the end that describes the steps.
Thanks! I fixed it!
Well...not quite. But I "un-broke" it. I identified the faulty one, and tried swapping it with the one from Portal 2. Didn't work. But then I picked a random L4D2 shader (no idea what it does), and replaced it with that. Now I have water that's a solid pale blue. Doesn't look much like water any more, but at least it doesn't have broken eye-bleeding reflections. So I guess all I have to do now is find a compatible water vertex shader, and try that? I'll post more details on which shaders I'm messing with soon.
Well...not quite. But I "un-broke" it. I identified the faulty one, and tried swapping it with the one from Portal 2. Didn't work. But then I picked a random L4D2 shader (no idea what it does), and replaced it with that. Now I have water that's a solid pale blue. Doesn't look much like water any more, but at least it doesn't have broken eye-bleeding reflections. So I guess all I have to do now is find a compatible water vertex shader, and try that? I'll post more details on which shaders I'm messing with soon.
@Pirateguybrush, i think you disable that shader. i think it's a low chance that work with a game....normally if shader can't be processed correctly it's disabled (or maybe sometimes crash the game). Disable effects or problematics shaders is always a good workaround (eqzitara's guides is very detailed)
L4D2 have one VS responsable for water (2.0 version) that manage multiple things + multiple PS for water (2.0 version)...i found the PS responsable for water halo only, but it's in 2.0 version...i know how to convert VS, but not PS..and i don't recall Helix posting something about it.
@Pirateguybrush, i think you disable that shader. i think it's a low chance that work with a game....normally if shader can't be processed correctly it's disabled (or maybe sometimes crash the game). Disable effects or problematics shaders is always a good workaround (eqzitara's guides is very detailed)
L4D2 have one VS responsable for water (2.0 version) that manage multiple things + multiple PS for water (2.0 version)...i found the PS responsable for water halo only, but it's in 2.0 version...i know how to convert VS, but not PS..and i don't recall Helix posting something about it.
Okay, so here's what I've found. There are both pixel and vertex shaders relating to water. I've found 3 vertex, and 4 pixel. I don't know how this works, but maybe that's an indication that I'm missing a pixel shader? Anyway, I only found one pixel and one vertex shader for water in Portal 2 - that said, I didn't look very hard. I also grabbed the shaders from Dear Esther (1 vertex, 1 pixel).
So the result? Not bad. The Dear Esther shaders produced worse effects than the originals, but using the Portal 2 pixel shader to replace all the originals worked pretty well. It's not a "proper" fix, but I'll take it. It kills reflections entirely, and causes the water to be a murky greenish colour. It also kills all bump mapping and reactions to torches, but it takes water sections from almost unplayable to perfectly acceptable. Not bad for a first attempt, if I do say so myself.
Aside from the above, the only other glitch is a weird rippling effect in the final mission of the Hard Rain campaign, where the spotlights shine - but only from certain angles. All up, it's not perfect, but it's a lot better than disabling the shaders entirely. I checked every water level I could think of.
Here's the fix, bundled with a fix that removes the floating (2d) names.
[url]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17425913/left%204%20dead%202.rar[/url]
Thanks so much to everyone who's helped me with this.
Okay, so here's what I've found. There are both pixel and vertex shaders relating to water. I've found 3 vertex, and 4 pixel. I don't know how this works, but maybe that's an indication that I'm missing a pixel shader? Anyway, I only found one pixel and one vertex shader for water in Portal 2 - that said, I didn't look very hard. I also grabbed the shaders from Dear Esther (1 vertex, 1 pixel).
So the result? Not bad. The Dear Esther shaders produced worse effects than the originals, but using the Portal 2 pixel shader to replace all the originals worked pretty well. It's not a "proper" fix, but I'll take it. It kills reflections entirely, and causes the water to be a murky greenish colour. It also kills all bump mapping and reactions to torches, but it takes water sections from almost unplayable to perfectly acceptable. Not bad for a first attempt, if I do say so myself.
Aside from the above, the only other glitch is a weird rippling effect in the final mission of the Hard Rain campaign, where the spotlights shine - but only from certain angles. All up, it's not perfect, but it's a lot better than disabling the shaders entirely. I checked every water level I could think of.
Here's the fix, bundled with a fix that removes the floating (2d) names.
[quote="Shinra358"]Resident Evil Revelations Demo has locked convergeance. I hope the game layout is designed so that this can fix it. My body is ready.[/quote]
Are you sure about that? I increased convergence last night when I tried it with no problems whatsoever. I'm still using 314.22 drivers, not sure if that'd have anything to do with it. Maybe try holding down the keys longer.
Shinra358 said:Resident Evil Revelations Demo has locked convergeance. I hope the game layout is designed so that this can fix it. My body is ready.
Are you sure about that? I increased convergence last night when I tried it with no problems whatsoever. I'm still using 314.22 drivers, not sure if that'd have anything to do with it. Maybe try holding down the keys longer.
[quote="TsaebehT"][quote="Shinra358"]Resident Evil Revelations Demo has locked convergeance. I hope the game layout is designed so that this can fix it. My body is ready.[/quote]
Are you sure about that? I increased convergence last night when I tried it with no problems whatsoever. I'm still using 314.22 drivers, not sure if that'd have anything to do with it. Maybe try holding down the keys longer.[/quote]
Works fine. Reinstall driver if holding down convergence doesnt work imo.
I posted something temporary for the game as well in a different thread. Something to just use for demo.
Shinra358 said:Resident Evil Revelations Demo has locked convergeance. I hope the game layout is designed so that this can fix it. My body is ready.
Are you sure about that? I increased convergence last night when I tried it with no problems whatsoever. I'm still using 314.22 drivers, not sure if that'd have anything to do with it. Maybe try holding down the keys longer.
Works fine. Reinstall driver if holding down convergence doesnt work imo.
I posted something temporary for the game as well in a different thread. Something to just use for demo.
[quote="Pirateguybrush"]Okay, so here's what I've found. There are both pixel and vertex shaders relating to water. I've found 3 vertex, and 4 pixel. I don't know how this works, but maybe that's an indication that I'm missing a pixel shader? Anyway, I only found one pixel and one vertex shader for water in Portal 2 - that said, I didn't look very hard. I also grabbed the shaders from Dear Esther (1 vertex, 1 pixel).
So the result? Not bad. The Dear Esther shaders produced worse effects than the originals, but using the Portal 2 pixel shader to replace all the originals worked pretty well. It's not a "proper" fix, but I'll take it. It kills reflections entirely, and causes the water to be a murky greenish colour. It also kills all bump mapping and reactions to torches, but it takes water sections from almost unplayable to perfectly acceptable. Not bad for a first attempt, if I do say so myself.
Aside from the above, the only other glitch is a weird rippling effect in the final mission of the Hard Rain campaign, where the spotlights shine - but only from certain angles. All up, it's not perfect, but it's a lot better than disabling the shaders entirely. I checked every water level I could think of.
Here's the fix, bundled with a fix that removes the floating (2d) names.
[url]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17425913/left%204%20dead%202.rar[/url]
Thanks so much to everyone who's helped me with this.[/quote]Haha! Awesome. I knew you could do it.
If you can, go ahead and upload your set of proto-shaders. The unmodified original shaders for broken ones, and your possible good working shaders. And a who's who guide, cuz numbers won't mean anything to me. Maybe just drop them into named folders and zip that.
I'd like to take a look at your original idea of plugging in working water shader, and will be able to see if they might work.
The reason it goes murky green is that water shaders usually have two layers, one for bottom and one for surface. The surface is usually transparent allowing reflections. What you've done so far is to make the top surface more opaque, which kills off reflections. A good enough plan, but we might be able to do better.
Pirateguybrush said:Okay, so here's what I've found. There are both pixel and vertex shaders relating to water. I've found 3 vertex, and 4 pixel. I don't know how this works, but maybe that's an indication that I'm missing a pixel shader? Anyway, I only found one pixel and one vertex shader for water in Portal 2 - that said, I didn't look very hard. I also grabbed the shaders from Dear Esther (1 vertex, 1 pixel).
So the result? Not bad. The Dear Esther shaders produced worse effects than the originals, but using the Portal 2 pixel shader to replace all the originals worked pretty well. It's not a "proper" fix, but I'll take it. It kills reflections entirely, and causes the water to be a murky greenish colour. It also kills all bump mapping and reactions to torches, but it takes water sections from almost unplayable to perfectly acceptable. Not bad for a first attempt, if I do say so myself.
Aside from the above, the only other glitch is a weird rippling effect in the final mission of the Hard Rain campaign, where the spotlights shine - but only from certain angles. All up, it's not perfect, but it's a lot better than disabling the shaders entirely. I checked every water level I could think of.
Here's the fix, bundled with a fix that removes the floating (2d) names.
Thanks so much to everyone who's helped me with this.
Haha! Awesome. I knew you could do it.
If you can, go ahead and upload your set of proto-shaders. The unmodified original shaders for broken ones, and your possible good working shaders. And a who's who guide, cuz numbers won't mean anything to me. Maybe just drop them into named folders and zip that.
I'd like to take a look at your original idea of plugging in working water shader, and will be able to see if they might work.
The reason it goes murky green is that water shaders usually have two layers, one for bottom and one for surface. The surface is usually transparent allowing reflections. What you've done so far is to make the top surface more opaque, which kills off reflections. A good enough plan, but we might be able to do better.
Acer H5360 (1280x720@120Hz) - ASUS VG248QE with GSync mod - 3D Vision 1&2 - Driver 372.54
GTX 970 - i5-4670K@4.2GHz - 12GB RAM - Win7x64+evilKB2670838 - 4 Disk X25 RAID
SAGER NP9870-S - GTX 980 - i7-6700K - Win10 Pro 1607 Latest 3Dmigoto Release Bo3b's School for ShaderHackers
I'll upload them tonight - there's only a few - one for with flashlight on, one with it off - and there's two different types of water. As for the layered thing...I'm not sure about that. Turning off the shaders I did seems to leave an empty space. Some areas have an extra shader for foam/crap floating on the water, but those weren't broken so I didn't touch them. I'll post the untouched shaders tonight.
I'll upload them tonight - there's only a few - one for with flashlight on, one with it off - and there's two different types of water. As for the layered thing...I'm not sure about that. Turning off the shaders I did seems to leave an empty space. Some areas have an extra shader for foam/crap floating on the water, but those weren't broken so I didn't touch them. I'll post the untouched shaders tonight.
Okay, here are the original shaders.
[url]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17425913/l4d2%20shaders.rar[/url]
Here are the Portal 2 shaders
[url]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17425913/portal%202%20shaders.rar[/url]
Here are the Dear Esther shaders
[url]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17425913/dear%20esther%20shaders.rar[/url]
Let me know how you go!
That looks like maybe it's related to frustrum. Clipping on the alternate edges, or things not being drawn on alternate edges.
Seems like you have advanced settings enabled in 3D Nvidia control panel for keyboard shortcuts, so try using Ctrl-F11 to move the frustum. This is usually used for edges of the screen, not items mid-screen, but maybe.
Last thing that occurs to me is you can try SkipScissorRect=true in DX9Settings.ini. The ScissorRect can sometimes both stereoized shaders. Not sure it's available in your dll variant, but worth a look.
Acer H5360 (1280x720@120Hz) - ASUS VG248QE with GSync mod - 3D Vision 1&2 - Driver 372.54
GTX 970 - i5-4670K@4.2GHz - 12GB RAM - Win7x64+evilKB2670838 - 4 Disk X25 RAID
SAGER NP9870-S - GTX 980 - i7-6700K - Win10 Pro 1607
Latest 3Dmigoto Release
Bo3b's School for ShaderHackers
Looking at your screen shot looks similar to a problem common with lights and shading where the further back you are from the object (or the higher its depth) the more it gets clipped at both edges, and I think this is because the final rendering is looking at the area of what would be the 2D unstereoizied image to render points, and not the actual steroized areas - imagine a Venn diagram of three circles in a row, the middle one being the 2D object, the two to each side (and overlapping) being the two stereo objects, only the part on the left 3d object that overlaps with the 2d object is rendered, and the same for the other side, giving them the clipped look. I might be talking complete crap here of course and it might not be anything to do with it, but if it is then I think it will require a fix in a Pixel shader. This would be unusual for something like the hud though. Helix has fixed stuff like this, I think Mars War Logs had something a bit similar for the decals on the walls (the problem there was more extreme I think). Have a look at how he did that perhaps?
Rig: Intel i7-8700K @4.7GHz, 16Gb Ram, SSD, GTX 1080Ti, Win10x64, Asus VG278
Here's a screenshot when SkipSetScissorsRect is set to true; everything is rendered properly, but the bars are always full, even when they shouldn't be.
While it would be cool to learn to fix this sort of thing, it's not a huge deal either. I spent an hour this morning playing without the Helix mod, and the crosshair doesn't seem to be all that important in this game. The HUD works fine in 2D.
it looks "max size". Meaning it cant be stretched anymore. It happens with UI heavy games. It will start to look like crap. Dragon age/That mmo I did[forget name] ran into same issue.
If you want JUST crosshair 3D you should be able to define its texture.
There is an option if you want certain portion of screen, but its not fun.[You probably need multiple If's for that hud] I did it with borderlands 2. Define area you want changed. I am guessing you want everything but interface hud in depth.
Sorry Im a messy writer[I like writing it all out so I can easily read it]
Co-founder/Web host of helixmod.blog.com
Donations for web hosting @ paypal -eqzitara@yahoo.com
or
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Honestly I was expecting it would be a really stupid idea, but if you think it's worth a try, I'd love to see what happens. Could it even work with a totally different engine if you could fix the inputs/outputs?
I'm happy to hunt the shaders if you write up/point me in the direction of a simple guide.
Going cross engine from like Source to Unity is less likely to work, because of the problem of global variables, but it is also not impossible if they happen to pass everything in as parameters.
Use eqzitara's hunting guide, where you run the debug dll, and use the numeric keypad to cycle through all of the shaders looking for the faulty one to blink out. When it blinks out you can have the dll write it out, using a different key.
Take a look at the very first post by Helix in this thread, and read through that. There is a guide toward the end that describes the steps.
The better example is eqzitara's guide with pictures:
http://helixmod.blogspot.com/2012/04/how-to-guide-remove-effects-from-game.html
Acer H5360 (1280x720@120Hz) - ASUS VG248QE with GSync mod - 3D Vision 1&2 - Driver 372.54
GTX 970 - i5-4670K@4.2GHz - 12GB RAM - Win7x64+evilKB2670838 - 4 Disk X25 RAID
SAGER NP9870-S - GTX 980 - i7-6700K - Win10 Pro 1607
Latest 3Dmigoto Release
Bo3b's School for ShaderHackers
Well...not quite. But I "un-broke" it. I identified the faulty one, and tried swapping it with the one from Portal 2. Didn't work. But then I picked a random L4D2 shader (no idea what it does), and replaced it with that. Now I have water that's a solid pale blue. Doesn't look much like water any more, but at least it doesn't have broken eye-bleeding reflections. So I guess all I have to do now is find a compatible water vertex shader, and try that? I'll post more details on which shaders I'm messing with soon.
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L4D2 have one VS responsable for water (2.0 version) that manage multiple things + multiple PS for water (2.0 version)...i found the PS responsable for water halo only, but it's in 2.0 version...i know how to convert VS, but not PS..and i don't recall Helix posting something about it.
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So the result? Not bad. The Dear Esther shaders produced worse effects than the originals, but using the Portal 2 pixel shader to replace all the originals worked pretty well. It's not a "proper" fix, but I'll take it. It kills reflections entirely, and causes the water to be a murky greenish colour. It also kills all bump mapping and reactions to torches, but it takes water sections from almost unplayable to perfectly acceptable. Not bad for a first attempt, if I do say so myself.
Aside from the above, the only other glitch is a weird rippling effect in the final mission of the Hard Rain campaign, where the spotlights shine - but only from certain angles. All up, it's not perfect, but it's a lot better than disabling the shaders entirely. I checked every water level I could think of.
Here's the fix, bundled with a fix that removes the floating (2d) names.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17425913/left%204%20dead%202.rar
Thanks so much to everyone who's helped me with this.
Are you sure about that? I increased convergence last night when I tried it with no problems whatsoever. I'm still using 314.22 drivers, not sure if that'd have anything to do with it. Maybe try holding down the keys longer.
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Works fine. Reinstall driver if holding down convergence doesnt work imo.
I posted something temporary for the game as well in a different thread. Something to just use for demo.
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If you can, go ahead and upload your set of proto-shaders. The unmodified original shaders for broken ones, and your possible good working shaders. And a who's who guide, cuz numbers won't mean anything to me. Maybe just drop them into named folders and zip that.
I'd like to take a look at your original idea of plugging in working water shader, and will be able to see if they might work.
The reason it goes murky green is that water shaders usually have two layers, one for bottom and one for surface. The surface is usually transparent allowing reflections. What you've done so far is to make the top surface more opaque, which kills off reflections. A good enough plan, but we might be able to do better.
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Latest 3Dmigoto Release
Bo3b's School for ShaderHackers
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17425913/l4d2%20shaders.rar
Here are the Portal 2 shaders
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17425913/portal%202%20shaders.rar
Here are the Dear Esther shaders
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/17425913/dear%20esther%20shaders.rar
Let me know how you go!