DirectX 9 Shaders
Hello, everyone!
It has been a long time since I've posted anything on here, as I've been away from Istaria for a few years now, but I figured that this would be the best way to jump on in and get back into the action. So, what about DirectX 9 shaders?
Some Technobabble and Introduction Ahead! (Skip this for the interesting stuff)
Well, let's take a look at prior interactions that I've had with my experimentation over the last two years. I've been involved with a lot of random, silly work to try and implement different sorts of graphical effects in games, mostly due to my absolute fascination of all things 'eyecandy'. I love seeing what one can do when you are able to apply external, open-source hooks into the game and the 3d space therein; however, some games have problems that others don't.
I'll begin by saying that Istaria's engine, what powers the game and allows you to interact with the world, is natively ran on DirectX 8. This is a very old version of what most games run on these days. Now, consider this:
What if, in theory, we could get Istaria running on DirectX 9, or some variation of it? What if we could get the game to run on the API that Skyrim uses? That's exactly the fantastic work that the devs did.
A Little History:
In the past, a file that the ENBseries dev released allowed users to 'translate' DX8 to DX9. That got me thinking. What if I tried to use that and THEN apply some form of DX9 shaders? I managed to get ENB working and saw a MASSIVE boost to my FPS. I was excited! Something like this would be amazing as a hook to allow access to all of those amazing effects that I've come to adore over the years. Sadly, back then, I was nowhere near capable enough to implement and properly build shaders, nor could I understand how to actively 'hook' these shaders into Istaria through the converter.
So, after I took a break from Istaria, I moved on to Guild Wars 2 for quite a while. Guild Wars 2 can natively utilize shader hooks that allow for more intense graphical effects that wouldn't otherwise be available. Again, I wanted to see what I could do with an engine that supports it. What I found was varying results. Many said that it couldn't be achieved. This was back before there were workarounds and around the time they broke SweetFX's shaders (can't remember the date exactly).
I stumbled upon something called 'REshade', something that came along with my research into SweetFX. It was in its infancy stages, but it was a fully functional hook that actually worked with GW2... to an extent. It would suddenly deactivate itself after any activity in GW2. That didn't stop me from spending eight hours experimenting until finally, I got it working. Guild Wars 2 had Depth of Field, HDR, beautiful reflections that smashed the ones available prior. I loved it.
The Present:
I came back a few days ago, curious to see what was going on and how the community has been. What I didn't expect to see, was a little option in the launcher that said: 'Use DX9 Shaders'. I did a bit of a double-take and suddenly... there it was! ENB, right there in the directory! Again, I got excited. What if, in theory, I could implement REshade 3.0 into Istaria.
Well, I now present Istaria with REshade 3.0
I want to add that these images are work in progress screenshots on my preset. They aren't final and need a TON of outside communication to optimize it. I'm currently running on very high-end hardware, including a Titan X (Pascal), so optimization won't be able to directly come from me (I will do the absolute best I can, of course).
So, thoughts?
How do you feel about these effects?
Are you interested in obtaining the preset I've been working on?
Are you interested in a tutorial for those that want to make their own presets and utilize the groundwork that the devs have done for all of us?
Let me know! I'd love to get some feedback
