Running a website called Dead End Thrills (about pictures of grafix), I spend a lot of time playing with visual mods. When PCG asked me to list my favourites from 2012, I agreed thinking I could do it in the style of the prize round from Bullseye. "You'll be up all night 'cause it don't look like shite." "Act well-heeled with this depth-of-field." But that wouldn't work overseas, they said, and stopped being funny after two examples.

Here's a straightforward top ten, then, in no particular order.
SweetFX
Battlefield 3 screenshot by Jim Snook (jim2point0)

No sooner had Nvidia's Timothy Lottes introduced FXAA (a 'fast approximate' antialiasing solution effective, unusually, upon deferred rendering and shader aliasing) than 'some dude' (their username - bet it's a lady) weaponised it into a DLL injector for most DirectX games. Copy it into the same folder as the game's binary and it hooks the calls to DirectX, softening the edges most AA methods can't reach.

Then things got interesting. Tonemapping, digital vibrance, luma sharpening and other neat effects got thrown into the mix, giving us the power to customise the look of most modern games. It's also one of the most reliable, no-nonsense screen capture tools: just hit your assigned hotkey and a lossless image plops into the game's folder.

Christian Jensen's SweetFX is the next evolution. Using SMAA for antialiasing, its features include S-Curve contrast adjustment and a filmic Cineon DPX treatment. Popular presets for these injectors include the Mass Effect 3 'Illumination' mod and James Snook's work with Borderlands 2 and Dishonored. When it comes to cheap, powerful tweaks to colour, image quality and luminosity, PC gamers have never had it so good.



Smarteck's Mass Effect 3 textures
Additional screen.

Back in February, the official Mass Effect Twitter account confirmed that “when the full game releases, hi-res textures will be built into the game!” And so we learned that when BioWare uses an exclamation mark, it's because it can't quite believe what it's saying - because it isn't true. Altogether now: 'Crikey, these textures are taking a while to update. Oh, they have updated and the costumes still look like Ceefax.'

Some months later Smarteck, a member of BioWare's long-suffering community forum, has led an effort to retexture not just Mass Effect 3 but all of its DLC as well. Inspired by the sterling efforts of 'Jean-Luc' with his ME2 textures, he's made the game's costumes and environments palatable, if not strictly 'hi-res'. Some detail texturing here and artistic licence there can't always cover the initial upscaling that's gone on.

The other quirk is that you need ancient memory patcher Texmod to actually inject the stuff into the game. It adds something in the region of ten minutes to the initial load time and can cause issues of varying severity if you try and inject too much. All of that said, it has the not-insignificant effect of making the game compatible with your eyes.



Durante's 'DSFix' for Dark Souls
Screenshot by Midhras

I'm going to paraphrase a bit here. From Software: "We can't do it." NeoGAF poster Durante: "I bet I can do it in half an hour." 23 minutes later: "Look at that! Sometimes I surprise even myself." An awkward silence now follows into eternity, save for all the whooping and cheering of users who'd just about written off the PC port of the magnificent Dark Souls.

Unlocking the game's internal frame buffer with his 'DSFix', Durante revealed assets that were clearly fit for more than pitiful sub-720p rendering. Then, among other things, he added ambient occlusion, uncapped the framerate and improved the game's texture filtering. And there was much rejoicing - and nagging for further features.

It's hard to recall a PC version that's been rescued from the brink of utter rejection quite like Dark Souls, and certainly not rescued by players themselves. The wrong lighting model going into Resident Evil 4, the performance tailspin of DX11 Arkham City: such things are usually patched with some urgency by the developers. Souls fans had barely lit the torches, much less found the pitchforks and a way to still type, by the time the game was fixed.



ENB Series for Skyrim and Fallout 3
Outspoken graphics programmer Boris Vorontsov might just be one of the most important people in PC gaming right now. No joke. His ENB wrappers and injectors have brought to many games the kind of generational leap in quality people expect from modern graphics cards, but seldom receive beyond those tech demos where fairies in Nvidia-branded loincloths ride turtles into battle with Decopunk death balloons. Those exist, right?

But where do you begin? Vorontsov has banned the hosting of his core dlls anywhere but on his own website; then you have the community-made presets. That's where effects like indirect lighting, subsurface scattering and complex ambient occlusion are wrangled into something complementing (or wildly departing, depending upon taste) the game's original look.

The last year has seen several masters of this bizarre artform emerge. In one niche you've got Midhras and his deep and luscious 'Midhrastic' presets for Skyrim and Fallout 3. In another, Trillville (aka Anthemios) and his muted but cinematic 'TV ENB', again for both games. And there's the fantastical (but surprisingly GPU-light) Seasons Of Skyrim by Bronze316. There's loads, basically, so get looking.



Sikkmod/Wulfen's Textures for Doom 3
Additional screens: 1, 2 and 3.

Not strictly from this year but here by virtue of significant recent updates. If Rage left you questioning the genius/foresight/influence/marbles of one John Carmack, let the properly modded Doom 3 splash all over your grumpy face like a hyper-demonic poo pump (or whatever those things are).

To put it really crudely, user Sikkpin brings the effects while Wulfen (and to a lesser extent another modder called Monoxead) brings the textures. There's a lot more to it, though. Sikkmod adds a beautifully implemented list of options to the game's menu, letting you toggle but also heavily customise things like ambient occlusion, colour grading, bloom and HDR. The icing on the cake, though, is the experimental parallax occlusion mapping (POM).

Given supporting ultra-quality textures like Wulfen's, POM adds a relatively primitive relief effect to the game's grungy surfaces. It's also an effect, though, that makes you want to reach out and touch all the stuff you really don't want to have on your fingers. The caveat - and it's a big one - is that it's far more demanding and less reliable than tessellation in a DX11 game. When the effect breaks, it breaks bad. Still worth it? Absolutely.



REX: Real Environment Xtreme
Alternative screens: 1 and 2

Of course you're aware that the flight sim community takes things rather seriously. Where modding is concerned, they build planes like they're actually building planes. The manual for one of these suckers is bigger than the manual for my car; in fact, the 2005 Honda Jazz feels less realistic all round. Meanwhile, when these modders are building the weather, they do it better than God. His clouds have been rubbish for years.

You'll get the lot if you invest the considerable time and money required by Flight Simulator X and its biggest mod, Real Environment Xtreme. The latest version is called REX Essential and is soon to be improved by REX Essential Overdrive. Assuming your mind can handle something so essentially overriding, what that gives you is almost 10gb of clouds, runways, dawns, dusks, reefs, waves... an awful lot of photorealistic stuff.

The way the mod works is to build a weather profile for the particular flight you add to your planner. It takes a while to import the necessary textures and runs a background app to keep track of them, but it's well worth the rigmarole. Add it to things like TileProxy and a high-fidelity terrain mesh and you have a game that makes Microsoft Flight look like... well, Microsoft Flight.



Skywind/Morrowind Overhaul
Screenshot from Morrowind Overhaul site.

The heart says Skywind but the head says Morrowind Overhaul, the one you can actually play. The magpie in me likes Skywind’s shiny stuff, but the historian bristles at the idea of just transplanting Morrowind into the framework and tech of a really quite different game. Not that it stopped the Dragonborn DLC, but that's not quite the same thing.

The screenshots of Skywind are marvellous, of course, in that specific way that most ENB-assisted shots are. Beautiful art and beautiful technology on occasionally decent terms. Can the authors pull it off without inflicting a violent mood swing on the game? We're a long way from finding out: they just made the difficult decision to take several steps back in order to bypass some serious obstacles, and now there's just a skeletal worldspace to explore.

Morrowind Overhaul has had a lot longer to gather its greatest hits collection of mods for the original game. Crucially, it suffers none of the legal issues surrounding asset-porting that affect Skywind and its Oblivion-based predecessor, Morroblivion, so isn't such a kludge of community-only content. And hey, even if you don't like it, the divine beauty of its installer will still come to you in dreams.



GLSL shaders for Minecraft
When no one can even agree on Notch's motives for the game's look - I want to call it 'Voxel Art' but its polygons won't let me - you can imagine the confusion over how Minecraft should be modded. Maybe that's the beauty of it. At the very least you get the comedy of people striving to make it 'photorealistic', as if waiting for the mod that shrinks each block to 1 cubic pixel so they can make a perfect replica of Crysis.

Better, I think, to flatter the blocks without pretending they're something they're not. I'd love to see realtime radiosity in Minecraft but suspect my computer wouldn't. (You should have heard the noise while rendering these 4K screenshots.) What we do have, though, is the ongoing work on daxnitro's abandoned GLSL Shader mod. Some of it's awful, like the lens flare and depth of field effects, but you can turn those off in the shader files and still enjoy sumptuous light and shadowing.

What I was looking for was a realtime version of the renders described here. It warms me to know I'm still looking at a game. I have to warn you, though, that finding the right shaders for the right version of the mod, for the right version of Minecraft, was an utter chore. Each small update of Minecraft requires a new version of the mod, and each new version of the mod tends to break something, whether it's the lovely new water shader or Nvidia compatibility. It might not even work at all.

You need to learn this stuff for yourself, really, as there's a lot of trial and error. Start by reading the thread for Sonic Ether’s Unbelievable Shaders (SEUS). Then look at Sonic Ether’s updates page on Facebook and figure out why he chose such an abhorrent solution as Facebook for an updates page (hint: you can’t). If, like me at 2AM, you’ve followed all of these instructions and have more questions than answers, you could always try chocapic13’s preset here which I turned to in desperation, and which actually worked.

Crysis 2 MaLDoHD Mod


Screenshot from MaLDoHD site

Real soldiers don't look at the enemy, they look at the floor. They stand by their fallen comrades, lower their guns and think, "That is a dirty puddle, all right, but is it a wow puddle?" Then they get shot. Bleeding out, they look up at the sky and think, "No, those clouds aren't doing it for me at all. This is simply unacceptable."

Thanks to the jargon-tastic MaLDoHD mod, the shoegazing soldier doesn't have to die disillusioned any more. Fears that Crysis 2 would become any less MAXIMUM with age can be safely laid to rest.

He's suffered for his mod, this Maldo. His computer "burst" in October, reveals his blog, and some believed he was dead. So you'll just have to settle for the "1894 textures and 1297 materials" in the existing beta version of MaLDoHD; those, and all the effects such as SSDO, object tessellation and penumbra shadowing. Sucks, huh.

The RAR file is 1.5gb and expands to over 2gb. The configuration process remains, as even MAXIMUM GAMER Craig Pearson had to admit, "a bit of a faff". His install guide still applies, though, so check it out.



Deus Ex New Vision
Screenshot from Deus Ex New Vision ModDB page.

Any visual mod for Deus Ex has its work cut out. My lasting memory of the original graphics is how freshly waxed the floors looked, not how the characters resembled ice sculptures on a balmy day. Accept the rather mathematical art as a style choice, though, or a trade-off for the game’s complexities, and you’ve ticked the first box for installing New Vision.

As well as enabling DX10, New Vision gives most of the game’s textures a fourfold increase in size and quality, bringing them into line with a modern game. It does it by exploiting the seldom-used S3TC standard of the original Unreal Engine.

Installing it is simple, especially if you have the Steam version which includes the required patches. The single installer asks if you want to install a modified launcher (you do if you want FOV options and enhanced resolution options) on top of the new textures, then you just run the game as usual.

Sucked helplessly into Ion Storm's universe for what’s probably the tenth time, you might just realise that old geometry and HD textures aren’t always a bad combination. New Vision is the work of top-tier artists with an obvious respect for the source material, and these are genuine 1024x1024 textures rather than horrid upsamples. Rather than drag the game kicking and screaming into 2012, though, they invite you back to 2000 with augmented eyes.

It's not the officially licensed movie, but this teaser trailer for an upcoming Human Revolution short film is looking mighty impressive. DCode Films are handling the project, with Moe Charif acting as writer and director, as well as playing Adam Jensen. Getting all those cyborg limb augmentations shows some admirable dedication, don't you think?

There's no firm date for the film's release, with the team saying they're hoping to get it done as soon as possible. Presumably they've still got to edit in a filter to bathe everything in Human Revolution's overwhelmingly yellow hue.

Still, the team behind it have created a seriously well-realised slice of Deus Ex. Except... hang on.



That is not the face of a man whose friend is being thrown through a wall.



That's a man who can't remember if he left the oven on.

Thanks, Kotaku.

Hitman Absolution seems set to become the next game to feel the full force of Square Enix's bizarre obsession with cross-game promotion. After shoehorning practically every one of their franchises into Sleeping Dogs, the company has now released Deus Ex DLC for Agent 47's sort-of-assassination adventure.

The Adam Jensen disguise and handgun microtransactions (purchases sold separately, batteries not included) add a silenced pistol and cyborg costume into Contracts mode. None of which is going to fix the many problems that Tom had when he reviewed the game.

It does make you wonder what's next in SE's tireless campaign to tie all of their games together in increasingly silly ways. I'm hoping that future costumes for 47 include the traditional Lara Croft tanktop, or that they look to one of their Japanese titles and dress him up as a miserable teenager with a giant sword and shit hair. Any better ideas?



Thanks, PCGamesN.

When a man who's the co-founder of tabletop game manufacturer Games Workshop and an Officer of the Order of the British Empire talks, people listen. Or at least that's the hope when longtime Eidos executive Ian Livingstone, who was promoted to the title of "life president" after Eidos was absorbed like a sponge by Square Enix, berated broadband providers for impeding growth of the gaming industry at the Broadband World Forum on Wednesday.



In a 20-minute presentation titled "Super Fast Broadband for Super Fast Games Market," Livingstone told the telecom operators in the audience that "what we need is super-speed broadband" to keep up with the growing demands of the games marketplace.

"The games industry is big...it's the largest entertainment industry in the world," proclaimed Livingstone, who noted that the market is worth $50 billion now and will be worth $90 billion by 2015. "Games are now moving from a product to a service," he said, and gamers are increasingly playing games online and require reliable networks with low latency to enjoy an optimal experience. "We're still having to fight bandwidth to avoid latency" in an online environment where 40 milliseconds is the minimum to be unnoticeable.

"Big games need big broadband," Livingstone continued, referencing that every successive iteration of Call of Duty takes longer to download than the last because the files are getting bigger and bigger. "It's kind of crazy that we're fighting broadband the whole time in our industry. You're kind of holding us back in many respects. We want to do more."

"Gamers are the most demanding of Internet users. Game developers will all be pushing the limit of what technology has to offer. So, you must plan for what you can't predict as well as what you can," he concluded. "Super-fast games will drive demand for super-fast broadband, so, ISPs, please do not rest on your laurels."

CBS have acquired the screen rights to Deus Ex: Human Revolution and will be working closely with the developers, Eidos Montreal, to make a film. Welcome to the terrible mental no man's land that lies somewhere between "hmm, interesting" and "ohnononono." Let's take a look at what the folk involved have to say about the thing and then recklessly judge the endeavour.

"As is clear from the wild success of the game, Square Enix and Eidos-Montreal know how to exceed their audience's expectations by engineering incredible worlds." That's the cracking, distorted voice of CBS co-president of CBS, Terry Press, appearing as a faceless talking head on a glass screen in front of the silhouette of a pacing conspirator. "No one knows 'Human Revolution' like the team that created it, and we look forward to working with them from day one to make a film adaptation worthy of the 'Deus Ex' name."

The conspirator stops and turns as faceless shadow NUMBER TWO begins to speak. "As the millions of fans who have played the 'Deus Ex' games for more than a decade will tell you, these games catapult you into a universe that is stimulating, engaging and relevant," Augmented sonic receptors (ears) tell tell us that it's Phil Rogers, president and CEO of Square Enix Europe. "We're firm believers in building strong partnerships, and so we're thrilled to be working with CBS Films on bringing the unique 'Deus Ex' experience to the bigscreen," he says.

The shadowy conspirator picks up a datapad to find a conveniently relevant Variety article on the front page. It suggests that the plot of the film will be similar to that of the game. Instead of a security guard, Jensen's character will be a SWAT operative, but he'll still have augmentations, which he'll have to use to bring down a corrupt and sinister conspiracy. The conspirator nods. Is he pleased? It's too damn dark to tell.

With a few taps at a console dossiers appear on the flat screen. One man's name swims out of the flickering golden UI. Adrian Askarieh, producer of the Deus Ex project, previous projects: Hitman.

The room grows cold.

Another name: Roy Lee. Previous credits: The Ring (US remake), The Grudge (US remake).

The conspirator moves an arm up slowly, and then hits his forehead with an audible slap. A facepalm, or the momentary glitch of a poorly calibrated arm augmentation? The man taps more buttons and three switches light up. Switch A: Press to watch this film. Switch B: Press to pretend this film doesn't exist. Switch C: Initiate drone attack order on business competitors. Which would YOU choose?

There are two Deus Ex games. The original classic, and the brilliant recent sequel, Human Revolution. Sure back in 2004 there was an ill advised follow up called Deus Ex: Invisible War, but shortly after its release we all agreed that it never happened, and we would never speak of it again.

Warren Spector apparently didn't get that memo. Speaking to IGN during a preview of Epic Mickey he said he regretted listening to the feedback of focus testers when making the game.

“We focus tested concepts." he said "and I was told, ‘Set the game further in the future and put the guy or the girl in a purple jumpsuit; people like purple jumpsuits. Why did I listen?”

Who on earth answers a focus test with 'put the guy in a purple jumpsuit?' What kind of questionnaire even asks that? Who could possibly think that was helpful or relevant advice? The mind boggles.

Thankfully Deus Ex did eventually get the sequel it deserved, years later and without Spector's involvement. You can find out why it works in our Deus Ex: Human Revolution review.

"Cheap as chips" is a throwaway UK saying for something that has plunged straight through the realm of "inexpensive," surpassed the grotty lands of "surprisingly good value" and come to rest in the sugary sands of "tat." Few things in this world are cheaper than the pots of oily polystyrene packs of potato shifted from small shops on street corners up and down this country, but thanks to Steam, one of our favourite games ever, Deus Ex, is cheaper than a small pile of fried potato. How has this happened? It's best not to ask. Instead, just head to Steam and grab yourself a copy if you don't own one already.

Eidos Montreal's excellent 2011 follow-up, Human Revolution, is also a steal at £5 / $7.49. If you already own that, Human Revolution's DLC pack, The Missing Link is also available for £2.24 / $3.74. Alternatively, you can buy all things Deus Ex (including Invisible War) for a bundle price of £9.99 / $14.99. The deal's set to last all weekend.

Graham, Chris and Tom Francis gather to discuss the Portal 2 Perpetual Testing Initiative, Diablo 3, Torchlight 2, upcoming MMO The Secret World and Deus Ex: Human Revolution's problematic cutscenes. We also talk about Graham and Rich's ongoing FIFA 12 rivalry and (try to) answer your questions from Twitter. Also, we decide that capitalism doesn't work. See below for show notes.

Download the MP3, subscribe, or find our older podcasts here.


Chris' Portal 2 Perpetual Testing Initiative hands on video and the final map.
Tom's Torchlight 2 video series.
Chris and Tom Senior's first look at The Secret World.

 

Eidos Montreal general manager Stephane D'Astous has been talking to OXM about the pressures of resurrecting a treasured franchise, a trick the studio pulled off last year with Deus Ex: Human Revolution. D'Astous said that "Deus Ex was the kick-start of this new series of great games, and Thief will be a part of that."

As with Deus Ex, the challenge for Eidos Montreal of course, is to deliver a new Thief that feels fresh, while also being immediately recognisable to fans of the original games. "We don't want to deliver the same each time," said D'Astous. "Our mandate is to bring new stuff to the table; games that we'll be talking about for years"

D'Astous didn't drop any specifics on how the studio are planning to accomplish this, but he did say that Thief 4 will have "more than just stealth." In addition, the studio has "more international staff working on Thief, which brings a great flavour to the game."

"There are a lot of challenges to bringing back a great cult IP, but we consider it like a new IP and we are going to respect the spirit of the franchise like we did with Deus Ex."

There are still painfully few details out there about the new Thief. A blurry screenshot appeared waaay back in February 2011, and more recently a bunch of images hit the web which appeared to show storyboard art for a new Thief cutscene. We can safely say that it'll probably have a bow, and hopefully a blackjack that makes a comedy "whump" noise when you KO a guard with it. What would you like to see from Thief 4?

Game designer at Square Enix, Francois Lapikas, has been talking Deus Ex: Human Revolution at GDC. We love that game. Tom even awarded it an outstanding 94%

Tom hates one bit of Human Revolution though: the boss fights. "They are terrible. And they cannot be avoided." he said in his review. "The game is so conflicted about this that there’s even a Steam achievement for completing it without killing anyone, which apologetically adds that boss fights don’t count." Ouch.

Unexpectedly, some of the design team agree. Francois has offered a sincere apology for the four bosses that featured in Human Revolution.

“We didn’t know what they were for. We saw them as a way to break the tension,” admitted the dev. But the fights weren’t designed until well into the game development and the team were pressed for time. “We figured by putting in enough ammo in the room, we would be fine and could move on... next time we’ll think about them more. They were a big part of the game and we should have put more effort into them. We are truly sorry about that."

Aww. Now I feel a bit sad too. How did you get on with the bosses in Deus Ex: Human Revolution?