GeDoSaTo Dark Souls 2 Edition 0.3 ALPHA Release

This release is entirely dedicated to fixing the issues of the previous ambient occlusion implementation interacting with fog and alpha blended effects such as when you rest at a bonfire or fog walls. It also updates the AO shader to a new version by Asmodean.

When I set out to do this I expected it to take about an hour – it ended up at around 5. I first tried to apply the ambient occlusion in the game’s shadow buffer, and got that to work, but sadly there isn’t any shadow buffer in some areas! So I had to throw that away and start from scratch. Now the AO is applied in the base (linear color) HDR pass before alpha effects are rendered. A few shader-level tweaks might still be necessary, but at least the basics are now solid.

Remaining known issues:

  • [GeDoSaTo] Crashes when alt-tabbing out of and back into the game.
    Cause: Unknown, probably a resource management issue.

By the way, sorry if I don’t reply at whatever channel you are trying to contact me through, or approve your post here, I’m getting a lot of messages.

Here is the download. And as always, you can donate here to support GeDoSaTo development.

UPDATE:
It seems like the VSSAO2.fx shader file included in this version causes severe performance issues for some. If you are affected, try replacing it with the file from version 0.2. I’ll revert it in the next release. The actual rendering fixes are independent of the shader file, so you will still benefit from upgrading to 0.3!

37 thoughts on “GeDoSaTo Dark Souls 2 Edition 0.3 ALPHA Release

  1. Yes, the hot system suggestion is a very valid one, now the other guy saying the hardware is too weak, not so much…

    I am downsampling from 3200×1800 to 1920×1080.

    Strange thing is, Crysis 3 seems like a heavier game, demands much more from the videocards and i have no problem with it.

    Is it possible that enabling the downsample is demanding even more than Crysis 3 on Ultra settings? Dark souls 2 seems so much lighter than Crysis…

    I will try and monitore the temperatures, but the 780s have a temperature target, supposely it will bring down the clock and raise the fans if temeratures are too high and the fans never changed speeds.

  2. Still, airflow might be a problem. If your PC reboots when downsampling (which uses a lot of horsepower), suspecting your system to be overheating is a very valid suggestion. Could be that you’re overclocking? What rendering resolution were you using?

    (Also, people, no need to get snarky.)

  3. If you are not going to contribute dont post at all.

    I have a GTX 780 ti SLI and a 850w power supply here, is this weak enought for you?

  4. A am experiencing a strange issue.

    When i enable downsample it works and the game looks awesome, but after a few minutes playing the PC reboots!!!

    Bot shure why this is happening, it works flawless for many hours with downsample disables.

    Is anyone else experiencing this? Any thoughts on what may solve this problem?

    Thanks

  5. I would also like to know if using GeDoSaTo is safe now that the game hac been VAC enabled? Thanks in advance and keep up the awesome work!

  6. Well now that Dark Souls II is Valve Anti-Cheat enabled… how will GeDoSaTo be affected by this? I don’t wish to have a VAC ban on my account. :(

  7. And I realy hope about opportunity to set a high resolution (non-playing) in windowed mode for program as Flawless Widescreen, could work for 4:3 monitors. Thanks.

  8. It’s strange, in version 0.2 SSAO worked everywhere, but incorrectly with stripes. In version 0.3, SSAO does not work everywhere, for example, it does not work in a place where grandmothers sitting in red dress near the fireplace in the beginning of the game.

  9. I wanted to ask if it might be possible for you to add a Hide / Disable Mouse option. When playing with a controller, during menu interaction and dialogue, the mouse appears in the middle of the screen over and over. Any slight movement of the mouse also messes with the camera, especially when aiming a bow. Disabling the mouse in the control panel removes the accidental movement, but makes it impossible to move the cursor away when it does appear in the middle of the screen.

     

    Thanks :)

  10. Thank you so much man. You are awesome. Others have already asked this but is there any way to make this work with ENB in the future? Dont know it thats technically even possible, maybe just the downsample-function only? I would like to downsample with ENB but I think your AO is much better in my taste also so that would be awesome to use too. Nevertheless, awesome job!

  11. Hi petert,

    Hopefully (although Im sure you already tested this) I can assist you in eliminating the possible causes of the following :

    - [GeDoSaTo] Crashes when alt-tabbing out of and back into the game.
    Cause: Unknown, probably a resource management issue.

    I can confirm after using GeDoSaTo since DS2 launched last week that I didnt get alt-tabbing crash issues with all of the post-processing, SSAO etc.  I wondered what the known issue was about, and downloaded the new alpha3 release this morning.  Installed it, and activated it… then I remembered that I could never get downsampling to work.  (When I press +, it said ‘Not downsampling’). I would then go to the ingame resolution, and select 2560 x 1440 (custom), apply it … and my game would crash…

    I then went and looked at the built-in resolution settings in the *.ini, and THEN only realized this section I never configured it properly:

    # The resolution you want to downsample *to*.
    # Should generally always be your output device pixel size and frequency.

    Your built-in ini setting is 1920 x 1080, whereas MY native is 1920 x 1200 (16 x 10), changed it and activated… NOW downsampling works perfectly @ 2560 x 1440 (which I now changed to 2560 x 1600 for 16 x 10).

    And then I tried ALT-TAB to test if my game crashes or not.  I can confirm that ALT-TAB crashes are happening because of downsampling, no other effects.  It has something to do with your native resolution (as I specified above I incorrectly didnt change 1920 x 1080 to my native 1920 x 1200, selecting it ingame made it crash, and thats why I think: when you ALT-TAB to your native resolution, and then back into an ‘unknown’ resolution it causes a crash).

    Hoping that this at least gives you some idea of where to start debugging, otherwise this is just something that might assist others (noticed in the comments) to get downsampling to work on 1920 x 1200.

    Thanks for the amazing tool!

    Cheers

  12. Is it possible to make the fixes available as dsfix  thus I can copy files to game directory and forget. Cause sometimes I forget to enable gedosato and then in game I realize it is not enabled. So exiting  the game, enabling it and the reentering the game is a bit annoying. Alt+Tab and enabling it makes my game crash. Your mod is so amazing that I can’t think of playing without it. So please make a version like DSfix.

    • You can just keep GeDoSaTo running in the background, it doesn’t really use any resources. Minimize it and forget about it.

  13. I just tried out the new version, but i seem not to be able to toggle SSAO ingame. :\ Don’t really know if it works or not. :D Had my hands on  tons of different mods and confing today, my eyes aren’t recognizing much difference anymore. :D Graphics card: AMD Radion HD7950

  14. This version works best for me. Couldn’t, for the life of me, get the down sampling to work before…. all good now. Awesome work Durante!!!  :)

  15. Any progress towards Vista (and presumably XP) support? :(

    Using driver SGSSAA and ‘HBAO+’ in the meantime, but there’s weird line artifacts around the world so I’d like to use this tool instead. Though, considering ENB just came out and it reportedly crashes when used alongside this tool, I’m not sure which solution I’d end up going with in the end..

    Exception log just in case you need it: http://pastebin.com/ajMPpTqr

  16. Durante, really exciting stuff! I won’t be dipping in yet as I’m still playing DS1 myself :) but I was curious about a few things:

    - I know that the new tool will have a growing capability of being used in other games, over time. Will GeDoSaTo get to a point where it will be preferable to use in DS1, instead of using DSfix? I imagine you won’t be adding game specific things like intro skipping and save-backup to GeDoSaTo, but from some of what you wrote it sounded like your approach on this new mod is a bit cleaner than some stuff you mentioned DSfix does (regarding frame counting and such), and you seem to be using more updated effects here as well. Would there be a point in using this (eventually) with DS1?

    - Have you or anyone you know had a chance to check out any of the areas captured in the article below, to perhaps show off a comparison between the reveal shots, console shots, and new pc captures using GeDoSaTo? I would really love to see how much closer the enhancements of the PC port coupled with your mod are able to match the shots already taken (especially the one looking down from the bridge…):

    http://kotaku.com/yes-dark-souls-ii-looks-different-than-it-did-last-yea-1543149728

    - finally… just out of curiosity, did you consider just calling the new tool GDST? You probably wouldn’t change it at this point, but I was wondering why you didn’t go with a semi-obvious shorter abbreviation. One which also happens to have DS in the title, though I know this will be a framework for many games in the future. :)

    Really amazed at what I’ve seen so far, thank you for keeping many of your screenshots spoiler-free in terms of enemies! I’ll definitely be sending you more donation money when I finally pick the game up. Hope to hear back from you, though! Whenever you have a moment. :)

  17. The halving of FPS was happening both when downsampling from 1440p and running natively at 1080p.

    I don’t get the runtime error that he’s reporting though, and Afterburner doesn’t seem to suggest I’m running out of GPU memory.

  18. yes, tried 1080 and 1200 in game and respectively in INI too. And double (2160 & 2400) for actual rendering resolution in INI

  19. Getting the same issue with fraterate as TheTrain on GAF with the new SSAO.

    7870  2GB, dropped from 55-60 to 25-30 FPS, easily seen by using the Num3 SSAO toggle.

    Gone back to Alpha2 for the moment. Thanks for all your hard work on this so far!

  20. Can anyone help, it says Not downscaling when I press NUM+.

    It has been like this since ver 0,1.

    So I got 1920*1200 native res in game menu and downsample *to* in INI. Tried using double that for render resolution (3840*2400) Does not work.

    Tried using standard 1080 instead. Does not work.

    Am I missing something? I run GeDoSaTo as admin, activate, whitelist.

    The mod is clearly working since I am enjoying the AO, Bokeh DOF and extra FX. Game looks really good, no problem, but it would be cool to try the downsampling too.

  21. That happens to me too when I have crossfire enabled on my hd 7950′s. If you have crossfire, try disabling it and it should disappear.

  22. SSAO don’t work now. Is this norm for this release? Do you intend to improve this problem?

  23. Absolutely fantastic work, Durante. Thank you!

    I’m having a strange issue, though. Ever since the first alpha, I’ve been getting a purple shimmer on objects including hair and walls. It almost looks like GPU artifacts, but it’s not.

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