DSfix 1.1

Posted on 2012-09-09 by petert

This is a rather big one.

Bugfixes:

SSAO depth buffer inaccuracy fixed. Removes line artifacts from SSAO.
Added further renderpipeline state restoration after SMAA and checks whether we are at the correct stage. May (again) fix the SMAA issues some people are having.
Fixed windows scaling issue when toggling between borderless windowed fullscreen and windowed mode.

New features:

SSAO is now configurable in the .ini, with 3 strength presets (low, medium and high).
Optional high-quality DoF blur. This allows you to set the sharpness as intended while still maintaining very high DoF image quality.
And maybe the most requested one: HUD on/off toggle as bindable key action. Default is the right Ctrl key.

I’m a bit burnt out now after basically spending ~90% of my free time on this for almost 3 weeks. I’ll probably start getting the fix cleaned up for an open source release so that others can pick up the torch.

Here are 2 screenshots showing off what the game looks like now on a high-end system:

Screenshot 1
Screenshot 2

As always, consider donating if you like the mod.

DSfix version 1.1 download

Please please remember to read the README.txt!

Don’t set your DoF resolution to the same as your vertical rendering resolution, set it LOWER than that. Same or higher doesn’t make sense and is wrong and you shouldn’t do it and it will cause problems.

170 thoughts on “DSfix 1.1”

Ricardo on 2012-09-11 at 23:31 said:

Hello Peter! Do I have to do something special for downsample or the fix automaticaly downsamples the rendering resolution to the display resolution? I’ve changed only the renderWidth and renderHeight.

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killerzebra on 2012-09-11 at 23:04 said:

After playing the game with SSAO on 2 just everything looks so much better it just all that little detail great work
2880×1620 at 1080 display
810 dof
smaa 4
ssao 2
dof blur 1

pc 2500k@4.8 gtx580 sli 16g ram

last wish is a smaller HUD

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keropi on 2012-09-11 at 21:04 said:

This gives me performance drop actually… previous versions with the same settings (1920×1200 + 540DOF , no AA or any other kind of effect) gave me a constant 30fps EVERYWHERE.
Now in the same machine with the same settings (no aa or ssao or extra stuff) I get fps drops in places like Blight Town … kinda like the ps3…

PC is a 2600k + 560ti + 16gb ram + win7/x64 + auzentech x-fi sound…

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ironlord on 2012-09-11 at 19:41 said:

For the ppl who seriously need 4:3 image format, this is a workaround: set 1280×720 (ingame graphic res setting) instead of 1280×1024. It would remove black bars and you’ll have a fullscreen image (a bit distorted though)

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Brett Ross on 2012-09-11 at 19:00 said:

Still getting some minor artifacting but nothing that I care about really. (it’s much less finicky than skyrim so I’m good) Performance has been great, I have been running everything at 30 FPS at only like 60% load. (3 SSAO, 3 SMAA, 1080p, 3 quality dof blur) on a GTX 670m. The SSAO is working brilliantly! The HUD looks fine to me, but I normally only play on a 15.6 inch monitor anyways so maybe it looks a lot blockier on large monitors. I am still trying to find a good texture dump so I can get to work on some higher resolution textures (for the armor especially!)

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Aedd Gynvael on 2012-09-11 at 13:37 said:

I cannot take hudless screenshots with 1.1.
Pressing the key does nothing. I changed the key binding, still nothing. What is the cause of the problem?

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- Aedd Gynvael on 2012-09-11 at 13:54 said:
  
  Nevermind. There was a “#” in front of the takeHudlessScreenshot option for some reason. Removed it, it works.
  
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rainyday on 2012-09-11 at 09:32 said:

The new DOF effect looks fantastic but I’m unable to alt tab out at all now. The game stays in the foreground no matter what

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Raigavin on 2012-09-11 at 07:04 said:

I like the new DOF blur option, it gives a good sense of dynamic DOF while playing the game instead of the illusive area based DOF which was in the game by default(by the looks of it).

Goes well around values ’1′ and AO also set to ’1′.

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- MuduM on 2012-09-11 at 10:28 said:
  
  yeah
  
  2-3 SSAO makes some objects weird with their shadows like the grasses.
  
  Oh, and if any of you have a Nvidia vcard add the data.exe of dark souls and make the power management to maximum performance and the maximum pre rendered frames to 4
  
  It fixes the particle/s dips to 15 fps
  
  My game works perfectly now
  
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Fyre on 2012-09-11 at 06:11 said:

I noticed a weird bug about the disable hud option is that it doesn’t remove the weapon attribute indicator, the small circle next to the weapon that indicates if it is lightning/fire/chaos/magic/enchanted/divine/occult/crystal. Great work otherwise, thank you for spending so much time putting out this fix.

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Rick on 2012-09-11 at 05:45 said:

What number do i put for intro skip?..it doesnt say…I’m guessing its “1″ but would like to know for sure, thanks.

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- Rick on 2012-09-11 at 05:50 said:
  
  Also, I would like to know the best settings to put…I have i5 2500k..16g RAM..GTX680..screen is 47′ LED/LCD, thanks!
  
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Szoreny on 2012-09-11 at 05:19 said:

Sorry crew, but now that Dsfix’s texture filtering override is been ditched in favor of driver-level overrides – I was curious which filtering setting needs to be altered in our control panels to enable super-sampling?

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echerrington on 2012-09-11 at 05:09 said:

just adding this web site that praise you. lol

http://www.destructoid.com/impressions-dark-souls-prepare-to-die-edition-pc–234713.phtml

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gianluca on 2012-09-11 at 03:29 said:

Hi, great work, really thank u.
I have a question, could I force the AA and AF from the Ati driver?
I have crossfire of hd4870, I set the parameter in N, but don`t see any improvement, did I wrong something.
still really great work!!!and like your way to explain the history of that!!!!

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darksuma on 2012-09-11 at 02:45 said:

Thank you for your efforts

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Rocky on 2012-09-10 at 19:59 said:

hello durante .. thanks for all the updates.. the game looks absolutely gorgeous now .. i just wanted to ask if the floor messages have been fixed ? they dont show up … has been a way to fix it ?

thanx again for the mod ..

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- thebigJ_A on 2012-09-11 at 05:08 said:
  
  They show up fine for me. They’re all over.
  
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  - Rocky on 2012-09-11 at 06:25 said:
    
    then why is it not showing up for me ? …
    
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- Daniboy on 2012-09-11 at 07:21 said:
  
  My messages display fine too you might want to tweak your settings or check your graphics card’s settings
  
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dabura667 on 2012-09-10 at 19:47 said:

Bug report:
For toggling HUD, the buttons on the bonfire menu and the buttons on the main menu as well remain shown with HUD disabled.
Also, during binocular usage, the powerup icons of the character are still displayed.

When performing HUDless screenshot they disappear, so I am sending Steam screenshots.

http://imgur.com/nqRV8,NqHGf#0
http://imgur.com/nqRV8,NqHGf#1

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- petert on 2012-09-10 at 20:44 said:
  
  Will be fixed in the next version!
  
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dafh101 on 2012-09-10 at 19:35 said:

Hey dude really nice work fixing Dark Souls, many thanks for real.
Also wanted to show you this if you have time to check it out:
http://pastebin.com/qeNp4Rpv
Looks like this guy came up with HBAO for your fix!
Again many thanks!

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Aedd Gynvael on 2012-09-10 at 19:01 said:

Is SSAO set at 4 causing textures to look sort of pixelated from afar/lines to appear in some distant textures/the “fuzzy” look?
Also, I don’t know if it is a problem on my part, but why is my character herself so blurred when I turn the camera around to see how my armour looks?

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sobo on 2012-09-10 at 18:29 said:

this is legen……wait for it….D-A-R-Y!

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Gareth on 2012-09-10 at 16:13 said:

Durante, you are a legend! Just finished my first PC playthrough with DSFix 1.0 this morning. Whole game was perfect, smooth as butter and jaw droppingly gorgeous start to finish as the result of YOUR hard work an dedication! Will donate some pennies soon. Now take a break and enjoy this wonderful game! You’ve earned it man. Thanks once again for the amazing mod. Peace out and much love.

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- Guy on 2012-09-10 at 17:46 said:
  
  what controls did you use? ( mouse/key or xbox controller )
  
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Wtf on 2012-09-10 at 14:03 said:

hmm ever since you started using dinput i cant use x360 controler emulator keys are all messed up last version of ds fix working for me was 7

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- GObonzo on 2012-09-10 at 14:58 said:
  
  using newer version of x360ce with DSFix1.1 and working perfect with my Saitek P990. have had strange problems with the 360 gamepad emulators though, sometimes i just have to reinstall\configure and redo the settings.
  
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jud on 2012-09-10 at 13:36 said:

Hey, I really appreciate the work you’ve done on this and it is fantastic to play on the proper res.

However I am completely plagued by one issue, particle effects dropping my fps, golem shard attacks, dragon breaths, some fog gates, I have absolutely no idea what is causing this, it happens using your fix and on the default horrible res too. I have tried virtually everything possible but to no avail. Also, the vram usage never goes about 350~ even on those particle effects, which I have tested a lot.

I run a 460gtx, amd x4 955 3.4gz, 8gb ram, windows 7 64 bit,

I realise this might not be your domain, but I am literally out of places to ask for a solution, or maybe you might recognise something wrong in the files.

Thanks for any help and great credit for the res fix.

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- petert on 2012-09-10 at 14:22 said:
  
  That’s strange, both your GPU and CPU should be sufficient, especially at default resolution.
  
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Marco on 2012-09-10 at 13:31 said:

The only thing I really wanted was “overrideLanguage en-GB” but of course it doesn’t work (German, Vista 64-Bit) it doesn’t matter if I change it to fr, pl, ru, ko none of them works. And change my pc region everytime… is annoying.
Sad.

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- Sderp on 2012-09-10 at 21:03 said:
  
  I can confirm this, language override never worked for me either. When the source is released, i would be curious to see what language changer is exactly doing. I suspect that whatever is being done, it just doesn’t work under Vista.
  
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- dabura667 on 2012-09-11 at 06:28 said:
  
  http://www.andiamo.co.uk/language-resources/iso-language-codes.aspx
  
  Try one of the alternative language codes for the language you want.
  
  en merely changes the language setting to EN, but leaves the region to Germany or whatever is set…
  
  Try en-GB… or es-mx etc… does it still not work?
  
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- dabura667 on 2012-09-11 at 06:36 said:
  
  Also delete any PrevLocales in the following registry key
  
  HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\International
  
  Then try restarting the game with the proper language in the ini file.
  
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  - Sderp on 2012-09-11 at 19:49 said:
    
    Thanks for trying to help, but it’s not working.
    
    There was no PrevLocaleName entry in the registry. In the *.ini i had en-GB set before, i tried en-gb, just in case the entries were case sensitive. Started the game and it was still in german. I tabbed out to Windows and checked registry values.
    PrevLocaleName = de-DE
    LocalName = en-gb
    But for example Locale was still 00000407 which is the code for german.
    When changing regional setting via control panel manually to English (United Kingdom), almost all registry settings get changed, for example Locale is 00000809 and this just doesn’t happen when using DSFix.
    
    Thanks for trying to help though, appreciate it.
    
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    - Sderp on 2012-09-11 at 19:51 said:
      
      There was a typo in my previous post:
      LocalName => i meant LocaleName
      
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SirMage on 2012-09-10 at 13:08 said:

Not sure if you can fix this Durante but I’d like to bring it up. With SSAO I get funny fps drops, it locks to 20fps, reloading the effect brings it back to 30fps. It doesn’t particularly matter with where I am either, I’d go through certain places fine, go through them again and experience the drop&lock. Here’s a small usage graph of when it happens. http://i.imgur.com/3GssT.gif

Fantastic job so far, can’t wait for a scaleable hud

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- lhorror on 2012-09-11 at 17:26 said:
  
  the same. 30-20 fps
  
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Neil on 2012-09-10 at 12:58 said:

Hi durante,
just inr egards to ver 1.1, i noticed when i tried it out the translucent textures in firelink look pretty bad with SSAO on. So i copied and pasted the SSAO code you posted on neogaf the other day, and added it to the vssao.fx file in ver 1.1, so now the new DOF, gaussian blur and SSAO all work and the translucent textures bug isnt there anymore. You can see the shots here, this is using 1.1, no issues ont he translucent textures
Im sure you prob know this already but just thought id show it to you!

http://i.minus.com/iJPXSK3FGKK9Q.gif

http://i.minus.com/ibbjAHUfEzmsZA.gif

http://i.minus.com/iMLtkUx6bXbsY.gif

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- Neil on 2012-09-10 at 13:07 said:
  
  edit:
  
  just to clarify heres the vanilla 1.1 translucent textures issue
  
  http://i.minus.com/ieBs5TY2Gk3Zx.gif
  
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Guy on 2012-09-10 at 12:54 said:

Wow, the screenshots you posted look so good, I cant manage to get that quality on my high end computer, what settings do I need to change in order to get that quality?

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LCFerr on 2012-09-10 at 11:19 said:

theres a way to not use keyboard shortcuts at all? i play the game in the keyboard and i dont need to configure the DSfix inside the game

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ApplePie on 2012-09-10 at 11:06 said:

Hey can anyone tell me how to get a constant 30 fps ?? I have 7870 but sometimes the game has brought me down to between 15-25 fps….Please help and much appreciated!

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apierion on 2012-09-10 at 06:09 said:

Hey one thing I noticed, with the latest version of the patch is at the sunlight alter, SSAO (I think) causes a huge whiteout if you happen to catch the sun through the clouds. I don’t know if it happens anywhere else, but it’s noticable there. It only happens when the sun is in the field of view and is actually cutting through the clouds, but when it does, ooh-boy, total whiteout, like a flash-bang going off. I don’t think this happens when SSAO is disabled. Just thought I’d let ya know.

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filleted gerbil on 2012-09-10 at 05:59 said:

Take some time off Durante,you earned it mate.

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lee on 2012-09-10 at 05:57 said:

I’m having odd issues with the UI being a bit blurry, including the icons in the lower left corner. The starting logos and Dark Souls logo at the main menu screen also show a few vertical lines. I have my dof set to default and my resolution set to 1920×1200 (also tried default 1920×1080). I’ve tried changing the dof to different values and end up having the same problem. The only framerate issues I run into tend to be in areas with tons of particle effects. During one of the updates (maybe .7?) it stopped having this problem, but it came back with later updates.

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derp on 2012-09-10 at 05:27 said:

For some odd reason with this version of the fix the gfwl overlay no longer works for me at all and I’m unable to load my saves. I deleted all the old files before putting the new ones in the folder and all I changed in the ini was setting it to start up in borderless fullscreen mode and and set the dofoverrideres to 1. Any idea what could be causing this Durante?

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- derp on 2012-09-10 at 05:43 said:
  
  Actually nevermind it’s working now
  
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- petert on 2012-09-10 at 14:19 said:
  
  Probably unrelated to the mod. Try asking Steam to verify the game.
  
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  - derp on 2012-09-11 at 02:24 said:
    
    Yeah that was actually the problem. It was just a coincidence it stopped working then XD
    
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Apav on 2012-09-10 at 04:40 said:

Sorry for triple post! I just read that instead of N, you enter the value that adapter uses (0,1, ect). If I set it as 0 it crashed immediately. If I set it to 1 it goes to a white screen for a few seconds then crashes. Am I missing something here? Appreciate it.

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Apav on 2012-09-10 at 04:35 said:

Hello,

Thank you so much for this fix! However I am still experiencing issues with Optimus even with using this fix. I’m still locked at 15 fps. Does it have something to do with this line in the .ini?

# D3D adapter override
# -1 = no override
# N = use adapter N
# this setting is for multiple (non-SLI/crossfire) GPUs
# everyone else should leave it at -1
d3dAdapterOverride -1

What is N?

My system:
i7 3610QM
GTX 660m/Intel HD 4000
8GB Ram

Thank you so much for this fix! I just need to get this working then it will be perfect

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- Apav on 2012-09-10 at 04:38 said:
  
  Just to clarify, I changed the setting here to N, but I am still locked at 15 fps.
  
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  - Xeros on 2012-09-10 at 17:21 said:
    
    Hello, i’ve got this issue too and it’s really hard to play like that :s,if someone can help us ? ^^
    
    ty for listening.
    
    gtx 650 M 2GB
    4 GB ram
    i5 3210 2.5GHz/3.1Ghz (with turbo boost)
    and windows 7 64 bits.
    
    Reply ↓
    - Xeros on 2012-09-10 at 17:56 said:
      
      Ok it’s seems that this option use our Intel HD 4000 instead of our gtx 650/660m. But I changed the value -1 by 1 (where the card is normally) and it’s the same. I tried with “Bus PCI 1″ (we never know) and again. So we have to specify that we want it use the nvidia graphic card but how can we do that? hmmm ….
      
      Reply ↓
      - Xeros on 2012-09-10 at 18:30 said:
        
        Ok you can call me PGM !! i was searching for 1 hour and it’s done . In fact, it’s because the system run the game with the intel graphic by default. You just have to right click on the icon and choose “run with graphic processor -> High-performance NVIDIA processor” (It must to be approximatly that, my windows is in french ^^). And you have 30 FPS! You can define the default graphic processor, so i will do that ^^. I’m really happy guy!! Have fun
Evilskillit on 2012-09-10 at 03:56 said:

First off, thanks from the bottom of my heart for the mod. It makes my favorite game… favoriter?
Anyways, with my Geforce GTX260 when dofOverrideResolution is set to anything other than 0 I can’t see anything but the hud. Internal resolution is set to 1680×1050 btw.

Picture of problem: http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540686227944745655/6A86C033F4FF114ED379E7C0213DCF40E65DE41D/

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thebigJ_A on 2012-09-10 at 03:51 said:

I’m seeing odd shadowy lines all over my character’s catarina armor, especially in the sunlight, in this new version. That’s with SSAO *off*, by the way, and all the settings the same as in the last version.

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- thebigJ_A on 2012-09-10 at 03:52 said:
  
  Ok, I’m failing at commenting for some reason. Sorry for the double post!
  
  Reply ↓
  - apierion on 2012-09-10 at 06:07 said:
    
    Is it like a “dark aura” effect? it’s SSAO I think. It gets more pronounced if you have it set to 2 or 3, but 0 (off) and 1 (low) makes it not too bad. 2 actually isn’t bad either as far as i can tell, it’s just barely noticable to me.
    
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    - thebigJ_A on 2012-09-10 at 22:14 said:
      
      Read my comment again.
      
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GObonzo on 2012-09-10 at 03:20 said:

all features working great so far. actually seems to be a more steady frame rate after 1.1 with less particle induced hiccups.
would be a good idea to build it into a Game Launcher with it’s own menu for options\key bindings.

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The Emerald Tiger. on 2012-09-10 at 03:07 said:

I can’t run the game at 30FPS no matter what I do, for some reason. My specs are the following
Intel Core i7 2620M @ 2.70GHz
6 GB DDR3 RAM
Nvidia 520 M

Any tips?

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DSfix 1.1

170 thoughts on “DSfix 1.1”

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