ReShade for PSOBB (Optional Screen Space Ray Traced Global Illumination)

ZabaZu

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What Is This?
This specifically is a modified ReShade .dll that can keep depth buffer access in multiplayer games, along with a couple presets I made. As for what ReShade is generally, it's a post processing injector similar to ENB, except it works generically in just about any game. It can't modify textures or models or otherwise enhance the in-game effects/lighting, but it can add in depth-dependent effects like ambient occlusion or depth of field and otherwise do anything you could do to an image in photoshop.

Why Would I Want It?
Take a look at these image comparisons.
(full RTGI image gallery coming soon)
RTGI vs MXAO+RadiantGI vs Low End vs Off

Alright, I'm Sold, Where's the Download?
Here you go! (For RTGI 0.18, MXAO + RadiantGI preset included. Also a low end preset that should work on even integrated graphics).

But there's a catch! While I included presets that work for free, the Global Illumination shader used in the gallery photos is currently in beta and the developer does not want it publicly distributed. For now, if you want access to said shader, you'll need to support the developer on his Patreon, where it is in the $5 tier (I am in no way, shape, or form affiliated with the developer of this shader). Once the shader is finished in development, it will be available for free. As for why you might consider throwing him 5 bones, he's responsible for a ton of quality shaders for ReShade which are absolutely free, such as the great MXAO shader I've used as an alternative until the GI shader is available publicly.

How Do I Install This Thing?
Once you've downloaded the files, extract them to the root of your PSOBB install (where the PSOBB.exe is located). Boot up the game, and open the ReShade menu by pressing '\'. At the top of that menu, there will be a selected preset. Ensure that the correct preset is selected for your needs.

As an added suggestion, go into the control panel for your video card and enable 16x Anisotropic Filtering for the game. Also, you cannot use MSAA or SSAA with this mod. It may simply make the depth effects not work, or it may crash at launch.

How's Performance?
These effects are extremely performance intensive as configured. At 3440x1440, this pushes my RTX 2080 to about 50-55% utilization. If you have a modern mid-range gaming PC and aren't running a 4k monitor this should run fine for you. I can't do a large range of performance testing, so if you have any performance problems please let me know what GPU you have, what resolution, and where you have problems. If anybody has issues on reasonable hardware, I can try to make a more performant preset. Optimization wasn't a concern for me given the age of this game and it having a 30 fps cap.

Thanks for taking the time to look at this! I spent a lot of time tweaking this to my tastes and making sure it didn't look bad in a large variety of scenes. If you give it a download, let me know what you think, and if you make your own preset, I'd love to see some screenshots! Hope you all have a great day!

Troubleshooting
If your game crashes with the mod installed, check to make sure psobb.exe isn't using the compatibility mode for windows xp service pack 2.

If you need more direct help, feel free to add me on discord: Jon#2105

Changelog
12/23/2020
  • Updated preset to make use of the latest RTGI.
  • Technical improvements aside, RTGI has been tweaked to have a more dramatic effect.
  • Using a different bloom shader made by prod80
  • Using a fog/haze detection shader that attempts to blend depth based shaders into said effects. Also has some adverse effects that are greatly beneficial (no weird SSR on the beach for instance).
  • Using a different sharpening shader that avoids edge sharpening. Used at very low intensity to avoid artifacts, but recover a bit of sharpness back from the SMAA+FXAA pass.
  • MXAO has seen some substantial updates recently, so the MXAO preset now features MXAO HQ which is based on GTAO (the best non-raytraced SSAO available currently). Low end preset is still using regular MXAO at half resolution.
  • The MXAO preset now features a free GI shader, RadiantGI, developed by blueskydefender. It's a ray traced solution, though it's not as advanced as RTGI (and not as heavy to run). It currently lacks an AO component, so it's paired with MXAO. It's still easy for me to recommend RTGI over this if you can spare the cash.
  • No longer doing any color correction. I may revisit this in the future but this is my current preference.
  • Updated to custom built DLL (around version 4.8.2) that removes the network check. It's also a build that features a shader cache, though that won't matter much for PSO.
Old Versions
Image Gallery below more representative of older versions
For RTGI 0.10
For RTGI 0.9.0.2
For RTGI 0.7
 
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I haven't played in so long that I am having trouble telling the difference in-game, but the screens got me to pony up for GI because I like more colors.

Performance-wise, 2080 TI can still do whatever the hell it wants at 4K. Maybe I'll try playing with the other shaders...
 
I haven't played in so long that I am having trouble telling the difference in-game[snip]

My default configuration has "scroll lock" as a toggle key for the effects, if you want to see a before and after. I also left it setup so that "print screen" automatically takes a screenshot before and after.
 
What Is This?
This specifically is a modified ReShade .dll (built on September 29th) that can keep depth buffer access in multiplayer games, along with a couple presets I made. As for what ReShade is generally, it's a post processing injector similar to ENB, except it works generically in just about any game. It can't modify textures or models or otherwise enhance the in-game effects/lighting, but it can add in depth-dependent effects like ambient occlusion or depth of field and otherwise do anything you could do to an image in photoshop.

Why Would I Want It?
Take a look at this gallery. If this preset doesn't interest you, this includes tons of shaders I didn't use, so you may want to play around with it yourself if that's your cup of tea.

Alright, I'm Sold, Where's the Download?
Here you go!

But there's a catch! The Global Illumination shader used in the gallery photos labeled "x GI" is currently in beta and the developer does not want it publicly distributed. For now, if you want access to said shader, you'll need to support the developer on his Patreon, where it is in the $5 tier (I am in no way, shape, or form affiliated with the developer of this shader). Once the shader is finished in development, it will be available for free. As for why you might consider throwing him 5 bones, he's responsible for a ton of quality shaders for ReShade which are absolutely free, such as the great MXAO shader I've used as an alternative until the GI shader is available publicly.

How Do I Install This Thing?
Once you've downloaded the files, extract them to the root of your PSOBB install (where the PSOBB.exe is located). Boot up the game, and open the ReShade menu by pressing Shift + F1. At the top of that menu, there will be a selected preset. Ensure that the correct preset is selected (PSO+GI if you installed the GI shader, PSO+MXAO if you have not).

IMPORTANT: The GI preset was designed specifically around the RTGI 0.7 beta release. Newer versions will not look like the screenshots without serious tweaking. I will make a new preset to share when the shader is fully released to the public.

As an added suggestion, go into the control panel for your video card and enable 16x Anisotropic Filtering for the game. Also, you cannot use MSAA or SSAA with this mod. It may simply make the depth effects not work, or it may crash at launch.

How's Performance?
These effects are extremely performance intensive as configured. At 3440x1440, this pushes my RTX 2080 to about 50-55% utilization. If you have a modern mid-range gaming PC and aren't running a 4k monitor this should run fine for you. I can't do a large range of performance testing, so if you have any performance problems please let me know what GPU you have, what resolution, and where you have problems. If anybody has issues on reasonable hardware, I can try to make a more performant preset. Optimization wasn't a concern for me given the age of this game and it having a 30 fps cap.

Thanks for taking the time to look at this! I spent a lot of time tweaking this to my tastes and making sure it didn't look bad in a large variety of scenes. If you give it a download, let me know what you think, and if you make your own preset, I'd love to see some screenshots! Hope you all have a great day!

This looks nice. I contributed via Patreon to help support the developer. Have you played around yet with the latest 4.5 ReShade or the 0.8.x betas for GI? Would definitely be interested in if you do! (not very savy with playing with these settings myself)
 
This looks nice. I contributed via Patreon to help support the developer. Have you played around yet with the latest 4.5 ReShade or the 0.8.x betas for GI? Would definitely be interested in if you do! (not very savy with playing with these settings myself)

The build I included here was built close enough to the release of 4.5 that it has most of the changes in 4.5. There's not much reason to rebuild it for this game at least. I have played around with the 0.8 version of the GI shader but I haven't gotten it looking how I want. I haven't been playing PSO much lately so I haven't spent much time with it. I plan on revisiting it and really dialing in what I want when the shader fully releases.

That said, the GI shader in particular is pretty easy to adjust, you really just need to play around with the amount of ambient occlusion and GI. You can keep the rest of the settings at default in 0.8. For testing, you'll want to go to particularly dark areas (VR temple in the tunnels for example) and make sure it's not too dark (adjust AO accordingly), and also go to areas with high contrast and make sure the GI isn't too aggressive and unnatural looking. Keep in mind it needs to assume global lighting only within screen space, so high values can look very bad in some scenes.
 
This looks nice. I contributed via Patreon to help support the developer. Have you played around yet with the latest 4.5 ReShade or the 0.8.x betas for GI? Would definitely be interested in if you do! (not very savy with playing with these settings myself)

Got around to playing with the newest version. I also learned how to use the shader better myself (my advice wasn't particularly good in the last post, not for the newer version). Still working out what settings I want, but the results are much better than before so far. https://imgsli.com/MTEwMzc https://imgsli.com/MTEwMzk

Current settings if you want to copy them
 
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I updated to a newer version of reshade and have a preset for the latest version of RTGI with some minor tweaks to both that preset and the MXAO preset. I also included a new low end hardware option. This also fixed the issue where it didn't know where the presets were when installing (forgot to make it a relative path when uploading before...), so if anybody had issues getting this to work before and didn't ask for help, it's far more likely to "just work" for you now ;).

I haven't played in so long that I am having trouble telling the difference in-game, but the screens got me to pony up for GI because I like more colors.

Performance-wise, 2080 TI can still do whatever the hell it wants at 4K. Maybe I'll try playing with the other shaders...

I should have read between the lines with your comment. I don't think it was working for you before, unless you changed the path of the presets. I uploaded it with a hard path for the presets before, so the only way it would work is if you had your game installed to a Games folder on a J: drive lmao. I thought I'd changed it to be relative but it turns out I didn't. It's fixed now.
 
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Used reshade before so im abit familier with it and modding I done alot of times in other games.. but tried this and when I try to start the game, I get Psbb.exe error could not start program (0xc0000005) pinpointed it to be the d3d8.dll file making the game crash on startup

update. using both the d3d8 or d3d9.dll's together and the game crash . taking away 1 or the other the game starts. now I understand taking away 1 of them just disabled the mod itself but maybe that info could be important for someone that understands this better.
 
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Used reshade before so im abit familier with it and modding I done alot of times in other games.. but tried this and when I try to start the game, I get Psbb.exe error could not start program (0xc0000005) pinpointed it to be the d3d8.dll file making the game crash on startup

update. using both the d3d8 or d3d9.dll's together and the game crash . taking away 1 or the other the game starts. now I understand taking away 1 of them just disabled the mod itself but maybe that info could be important for someone that understands this better.
Hmmm that's really weird. I'm going to go ahead and package up the latest files (along with some changes to my preset) for you to try out to see if it fixes it.
 
Sorry nope downloaded the new link you gave me, open the rar in winrar put everything in that rar to the client root folder with the PSOBB.exe and nothing gets overwriten just fyi. and still same error
 
Could it be my Item reader mods causing problems? Im using Ephinea client
 
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Could it be my Item reader mods causing problems? Im using Ephinea client
Well it definitely should overwrite stuff. To make sure you're doing it right, you should have a d3d8.dll and a d3d9.dll in the same directory as psobb.exe. And the item reader shouldn't be a problem, I use it as well. What OS are you on? Is there any chance you somehow don't have directx 9 installed?
 
OS is windows 10 strange it should overwright stuff? even from a clean install?
 
OS is windows 10 strange it should overwright stuff? even from a clean install?
Oh, a clean install of it shouldn't overwrite anything. I thought you were saying the new files didn't overwrite anything.
I'm really not sure what could be causing the problem. Might be worth temporarily disabling the item reader (just rename the DLL it uses). Are you using the latest version of the drop reader?
 
Oh, a clean install of it shouldn't overwrite anything. I thought you were saying the new files didn't overwrite anything.
I'm really not sure what could be causing the problem. Might be worth temporarily disabling the item reader (just rename the DLL it uses). Are you using the latest version of the drop reader?
As far as I know yes im using the latest but just to make sure I will try without using the mods on clean install and test I check back once I did it.

na new clean install did same error. I give up I think, Thanks anyway for trying ^^ I will try to see if others have had better luck maybe I can copy their files and try see if it works.
 
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