sFall with Reshade

akaine

akaine

First time out of the vault
Howdy! I was thinking about playing some FO2. And since it's been a while I've made a fresh install based on the GOG version with FO2tweaks and RPU v29. As we know, the latter one also goes along with the latest sFall (v4.4.3.1).

Now, maybe it's just me, but vanilla FO2 graphics was always a bit too dim for my personal taste. So to improve this a bit, I've also decided to use Reshade. The latter actually worked and it looks pretty good imo (I can share the settings if you want).

However, there are two minor issues with using Reshade as I did:
  1. The keyboard is essentially disabled for the Reshade overlay. As far as I understand, it's being intercepted by the sFall. Nonetheless, I've managed to overcome this by binding some special keys like NumLock or ScrollLock for it. So this issue is pretty much solved for me.
  2. Since Reshade add its own d3d9.dll to the play, the mouse cursor lock to screen added by sFall stops working properly with mouse cursor now going outside the game area to other monitors all the time, if you have a multi-screen setup like me, even if you're using the non-windowed fullscreen mode. I've managed to partially overcome this with the manual cursor screen lock feature provided by the Dual Monitor Tools. However, this solution seems to be pretty cluncky and I also constantly get short freezes with it every few seconds, which is pretty frustrating.
So the question is: Does anyone know how I could use Reshade with sFall 4.4.x for FO2 without breaking the mouse cursor lock to screen?
 
akaine said:
Howdy! I was thinking about playing some FO2. And since it's been a while I've made a fresh install based on the GOG version with FO2tweaks and RPU v29. As we know, the latter one also goes along with the latest sFall (v4.4.3.1).

Now, maybe it's just me, but vanilla FO2 graphics was always a bit too dim for my personal taste. So to improve this a bit, I've also decided to use Reshade. The latter actually worked and it looks pretty good imo (I can share the settings if you want).

However, there are two minor issues with using Reshade as I did:
  1. The keyboard is essentially disabled for the Reshade overlay. As far as I understand, it's being intercepted by the sFall. Nonetheless, I've managed to overcome this by binding some special keys like NumLock or ScrollLock for it. So this issue is pretty much solved for me.
  2. Since Reshade add its own d3d9.dll to the play, the mouse cursor lock to screen added by sFall stops working properly with mouse cursor now going outside the game area to other monitors all the time, if you have a multi-screen setup like me, even if you're using the non-windowed fullscreen mode. I've managed to partially overcome this with the manual cursor screen lock feature provided by the Dual Monitor Tools. However, this solution seems to be pretty cluncky and I also constantly get short freezes with it every few seconds, which is pretty frustrating.
So the question is: Does anyone know how I could use Reshade with sFall 4.4.x for FO2 without breaking the mouse cursor lock to screen?
Click to expand...
looks way too red, do you calibrate your monitors' color and gamma?
 
agris said:
looks way too red, do you calibrate your monitors' color and gamma?
Click to expand...
I guess everyone has a different monitor color setting, so it might look too red on some monitors. On my monitor it looks pretty balanced with RGB equality represented. Basically, I've boosted contrast and brightness a bit, as well as saturation and vibrance. Also I've added a slight denoise, so some textures look a bit less pixelated, but without fanatism. Finally, a standard FXAA to smooth sprite edges a bit and that's it. On my original screenshot I had bloom turned on, maybe this is what caused a somewhat exaggerated picture. And though bloom does look awesome at night, especially in towns or irradiated dungeons, I turned it off because it was too much with the day lighting.

reshade_setup.png


Anyway, I think I managed to solve the 2nd issue as well, by manually locking the cursor to the screen using the Dual Monitor Tools before starting the game. This way, the cursor limits are calculated using the actual screen and not the game window, which was causing the lagging issue.
 
Last edited:
@akaine
RU absolutely sure using custom d3d9.dll doesn't screw up with sfall?
AFAiR only sfall5 allows for custom dx9 wrappers to be used, i highly doubt it works properly with vanilla branch.

anyways the screen shot looks cool, almost exactly when i set fallout2 executable GPU correections to overwrite deault settings in my GPU software, for the said executable.
 
gustarballs1983 said:
@akaine
RU absolutely sure using custom d3d9.dll doesn't screw up with sfall?
AFAiR only sfall5 allows for custom dx9 wrappers to be used, i highly doubt it works properly with vanilla branch.

anyways the screen shot looks cool, almost exactly when i set fallout2 executable GPU correections to overwrite deault settings in my GPU software, for the said executable.
Click to expand...
The setup specs I provided for my install are accurate: sFall v4.4.3.1, Reshade 6.1.1. As I also mentioned in my first post, it does screw it up a bit in terms of mouse cursor behavior. However, I managed to overcome it by using Dual Monitor Tools sticky cursor feature (I have to turn the "lock cursor onto screen" on first and only then launch the game every time, otherwise I have other side effects like wrong screen dimensions clipping, game/animation lagging, etc.). There might be other stuff I haven't noticed, maybe because I don't actively use every sFall/fo2tweaks feature. Still I've played for 30+ hours and didn't notice any glitch or anything that would bother me.

As far as I remember, this is what I did to install the game in that order:
1. Installed GOG's version (v2.1.0.18) of Fallout 2
2. RPU v29 from: https://github.com/BGforgeNet/Fallout2_Restoration_Project
3. FO2tweaks v12.17 from: https://github.com/BGforgeNet/FO2tweaks
4. RPU - Talking Heads Addon v3.6 from: https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout2/mods/45
5. RPU - Talking Heads Actually Talk (THAT) Mod v0.4.0: https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout2/mods/67
6. ReShade 6.1.1 from: https://reshade.me

And here is my mods_order.txt (could probably remove the non-English rpu_*.dat files):
Code: 
rpu.dat
party_orders.dat
npc_armor.dat
rpu_czech.dat
rpu_french.dat
rpu_german.dat
rpu_hungarian.dat
rpu_italian.dat
rpu_polish.dat
rpu_portuguese.dat
rpu_russian.dat
upu_russian_sound.dat
rpu_spanish.dat
rpu_enhanced_worldmap.dat
rpu_extended_flamer.dat
rpu_improved_mysterious_stranger.dat
rpu_rifle_animations.dat
rpu_wakizashi_animations.dat
cassidy_head.dat
cassidy_voice_joey_bracken_hq.dat
talking_heads.dat
talking_heads_audio.dat
walk_speed_fix_low_fps.dat
goris_fast_derobing_low_fps.dat
fo2tweaks.dat
InventoryFilter.dat

As for the visuals. On an old full HD LCD monitor I've got F2 looks too pixelated and dull for my taste, even with sFall's pixel shader, so I decided to smooth it a bit more and spice it up a bit to make it more colorful without going too crazy. And I think I managed to get what I wanted.
 
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