The skies truly make a huge difference to the presentation of the game. 4K + Your Skies makes this an entirely updated (and enhanced) experience. Thank you!
Oh you have a 4k screen? How do they look? Any chunkiness or graininess? I wasn't sure if they'd come out as crisp in 4k.
The clouds and such look very pixelated at 4K but anything is an improvement over the base and it's less immediately noticeable when your playing and not standing in an empty space looking directly at the skybox.
Yeah that clear day wallpaper I made that one from wasn't the best, I'm actually working on a new version right now. Some of the other skies probably look better than that one.
I am using the default microset, no lighting or fog changes so there is a good baseline and I am taking a screenshot of the most problem area (if there is one). Screenshots are in bmp to avoid compression artifact.
The clouds for Grass Storm look far more crisp but there is some small amount of banding happening in the sky.
The stormy and winter skies turned out the best, no doubt about it. Skyboxes really will have to be hand-painted to get a smooth, crisp 4k result Thanks for showing those.
I find the biggest issue with this process was finding enough high resolution images to use, and some of them were grainier than others. Any further improvements to resolution will have to come from basically painting them from scratch at a higher res (50% larger should do the trick), and someone would have to pay me to do that :P
I too was amazed to find these worked out as well as they did! Definitely better than the originals on modern equipment.
@Savant1974, check out some of Toro's work with grass in the rural tileset. Here's a reference:
Specifically, this section of the comments for his vault entry:
Modification ------------ To modify the grass height or density is simple. Open the ttr01.set file with notepad, 2nd paragraph down you'll see this section:
Change the height and density to your hearts desire. Optionally you could just delete the line that says: GrassTextureName=toro_drygrass02 This will result in a combo, my dead grass on the ground with Bioware 3D grass.
If interested, I think there's enough info there to figure it out, though I haven't spent time on it myself. I believe there is only a texture you can update though, not a model. The grass is then random/auto generated based on the other settings mentioned above in the .SET file (afaik).
Really enjoying the enhanced edition. A problem though and it happened with Dante in Ch1 and then suddenly in Chapter 2 with my companions, Val and Ronan. For some odd reason they go into detect mode and i cannot get them out of it. When i look at the radial dial stealth and detect icons are greyed out, you can't cancel them.
@Marzy That's a weird one, haven't come across that before so I'm not sure how to fix it or if it's an Aielund problem or a NWN+Win10 issue!
@shadguy Yes I went through Toro's thing a couple of days ago looking for the grass model he used. I was able to use the ground texture but couldn't figure out which one was the actual grass and I didn't have a lot of time to spend on it. Might take another look soon.
Hey, so, I think this looks great and I'm very impressed by what an improvement it is over vanilla. Do you think you could write down a full list over the different tilesets you've used for me?
I've updated the Real Skies hak, with a new and improved "Grass_Clear" skybox set. The old one was a bit chunky even at 1080p, and this one looks a lot nicer in general (it's a higher resolution than all the others too, so might even be decent at 4k).
Allright, hearing that this mod gets a rework I am now confinced to get the NWN:EE edition as well. Now if the Hex Coda gets finished as well I can die happy
I know those last screenshots are about the grass (which looks good, but is it just me or does it like grass after you've taken 'mind enhancing substances'?), but the top sky looks awesome.
Actually those last shots are about the skies! The shots were taken in a generic 'sky test' mod, so that's default grass, default trees etc. It's all about the skies
Yes that's a big improvement. There's still some artifacts/film grain there but it's minor. I combined three different images to make that one, and went over it very closely to manually reduce obvious artifacts without losing too much detail. I also did that for the clear night sky, dawn and dusk images, all of which weren't quite up to scratch in places. Success!
Isaw some talk in the module comments about sub races and was wondering if there was a list of them especially interested in the aielund-specific custom races since I never played this module before.
@Svyy Although I tried implementing the subrace system, I didn't quite get it done right (there are too many custom scripts already in the series). Someone recently managed to play a svirfneblin which surprised me, so apparently it does sort of work after a fashion, but I've no idea what other subraces there are or if they work or not. Use at your own discretion
Wasn't sure whether to post here or on the NWN vault. Your latest update for chapter 3 has a bug with Saffron. When i go inside to talk with her, the only options are, " is it time to go yet", and "Not yet i need to have a look around a bit. I remember having a conversation with her and i am pretty sure the journal was updated with the counts lost love entry. There is no option to start this quest.
Comments
Here is a screenshot for you.
The clouds for Grass Storm look far more crisp but there is some small amount of banding happening in the sky.
Like I said, it's a huge advancement over the base sky boxes and when you are not in an empty cell looking just at the sky it is far less obvious.
It's also amazing to me any of this works in 4K to begin with!
If you ever do feel the urge to do a higher resolution set then just tap me on the shoulder and I will be more than happy to help test them out.
As it stands, fantastic work and thank you for making my world a little brighter!
I too was amazed to find these worked out as well as they did! Definitely better than the originals on modern equipment.
The list of things I would love to the engine if I had the time and someone was paying me for the effort is a mile long.
Oh what could be done to the game with a large enough Patreon fund!
Specifically, this section of the comments for his vault entry:
Modification
------------
To modify the grass height or density is simple. Open the ttr01.set file with notepad, 2nd paragraph down you'll see this section:
[GRASS]
Grass=1
GrassTextureName=toro_drygrass02
Density=6.500
Height=0.750
AmbientRed=0.600
AmbientGreen=0.600
AmbientBlue=0.500
DiffuseRed=0.600
DiffuseGreen=0.400
DiffuseBlue=0.300
Change the height and density to your hearts desire.
Optionally you could just delete the line that says:
GrassTextureName=toro_drygrass02
This will result in a combo, my dead grass on the ground with Bioware 3D grass.
If interested, I think there's enough info there to figure it out, though I haven't spent time on it myself. I believe there is only a texture you can update though, not a model. The grass is then random/auto generated based on the other settings mentioned above in the .SET file (afaik).
-Dave
@shadguy Yes I went through Toro's thing a couple of days ago looking for the grass model he used. I was able to use the ground texture but couldn't figure out which one was the actual grass and I didn't have a lot of time to spend on it. Might take another look soon.
Now, about those trees...
Very little artifacting in the clouds compared to the previous version. It's like night... and day!