Re: Drizzle 32 ! (experimental)
Posted: Sat May 13, 2017 2:37 am
I was using the other method before for getting widescreen with this other app "http://www.wsgf.org/article/universal-widescreen-uniws-patcher" before I found Drizzle 32 version online here
Wow, nice finding ! I didn't even know about the universal WS patcher. I'll give it a try. I think it might actually be better than the Drizzle version, because Drizzle modifies a lot of files without any way to revert them, which is not very good. This program sounds safer.
I wanted a while ago to improve the Drizzle patch to work on Shards and not require modifying core game files, but it's hard and I had no time for it... I might do it in the future, if my hacking skills are good enough.
Anyway, it's impressive to see you can launch the game in such high resolution The highest I've been able to try is my own monitor's resolution (a standard 1920x1080 - this is already very comfortable, combined with high MSAA).
As for high-res textures: no, there has been no high-res texture pack made for the game (because it's quite hard to load them in the game). However, I found out a few high-res textures are left in the game but unused, as seen here. Drizzle has an option to modify the files to load these better textures, in Advanced->Command Line. You will need to enter the command "-usehigherrestextures" (without the quotes), and in the two fields below it enter the path to your Uru DAT folder, and the name of the Age you want to modify (for instance, "Kadish", or "Garrison" - you have to look up these names in the DAT folder). Keep in mind that this is a tricky process, and Drizzle will likely print errors if you entered the command wrong.
About missing effects in Uru: most of these are too hard to reimplement in the older version of the engine, unfortunately. However, I don't remember any sky or clouds animation missing - do you have some comparison screenshots ?
Oh, and about the snow in Eder Delin: it's intended, the Age has two versions: summer and winter (they even have different sound effects). You can toggle between the two using an Offline-KI command (I don't remember which, but I think you can find it if you type /help in the OKI).
About the "--iinit To_Dni": yes, it's required because most of the time Uru will override the resolution settings stored in the file dev_mode.dat. But if you don't want the --init To_Dni hack, you can also mark dev_mode.dat as readonly (which means no program will be able to modify it).
Now, on the "more effects" topic...
Keep in mind that Uru's renderer dates back to the 2000 era, and runs on DirectX 8 (which is incredibly old). Porting the offline game to DX12 would be too hard, but maybe it could be done with the online game (it's beyond my skills, though). And we probably won't have HDR and Ansel before the game is ported to DX12 and OpenGL, so...
As for Razer Chroma, while it's possible to add it to the game, it's not on the top of the to-do list, since not many people have such keyboards... (I myself prefer unlit keyboard ) Priority will likely be given to bugfixes and graphical improvements, or even virtual reality - which might take a few years...
about that feature in drizzle is their any non-fan ages that can use or need visual quality improvements? I know that a few of the non-fan ages if you try this feature on them , they break the ages, but some don't break the ages too, is their any uru offline age, that can be improved by using baking sunlight or with baking
No, the Ages already in the base game don't need these improvements. They already use much better light simulation, so applying this tool on them will be very detrimental. It's only useful for Fan-Ages which have no light simulation at all.
I'll have a look at those error messages someday, but school is taking a lot of my free time right now... I can't promise it will be anytime soon