Shadowgrounds

Fix By Eincrou

Fix for Shadowgrounds: Survivor

Cutscene	Gameplay

Created using game version 1.05

Description

First, thank you to Eqzitara for the thousands of hours of work he has put in to making 3D Vision better.  By my estimation, he has put in 100x the amount of work NVIDIA themselves have over the past two years.

This fix comes with a huge warning: I have had crashes with the Helix Mod that prevented me from progressing through the game.  Sometimes the game will crash when attempting to load levels.  This happens only with the d3d9.dll version, but the injector version simply does not work.  Since the game only saves progress at the start of levels, it's not possible to save before the end of a level, disable the Helix Mod to load the next level, and then resume with the Helix Mod enabled.

It could be that this is a problem only on my system.  That's why I am uploading the fix, in case it can work for others.  If your game crashes when it tries to load a level, you know why.

Crashing resolved: Thanks to TsaebehT for sharing information about the Steam overlay causing crashes.  The game loads where I was getting 100% crashes.  Details in the How To Get It Working section.

This fix solves:

1. Incorrectly rendering dynamic shadows removed.  Using the Helix Mod to target only the bad shadows allows you to enjoy the game's functional dynamic shadows.
2. Gameplay and cutscenes require drastically different convergence values.  Three presets for depth/convergence are available with hotkeys.

Problems not fixed:

1. Ground textures for exteriors appear below ground level.  Very bizarre...
2. 2D crosshair and world markers.

Change log:

• v1: (7/26/2014) Initial fix.

How To Get It Working

1. Extract the .zip file to the same location as Shadowgrounds.exe.
2. This is an old game that doesn't natively support widescreen.  The game resolution must be manually set.  Open [Game Directory]\Shadowgrounds\Config\options.txt and set screen_height and screen_width as needed.
3. The Steam overlay must be disabled. As of August 2014, un-checking it in the Steam settings does not fully disable it.  You must rename GameOverlayRenderer.dll in your Steam installation folder while Steam is running.  After playing Shadowgrounds, rename it back to normal.
4. Use F1, F2 and F3 to set your desired depth and convergence values.  They come preconfigured with F1 for regular gameplay, F2 for slightly lower convergence than F1, and F3 for cutscenes.

More information about Steam overlay issue: GeForce Forums: steam-update-breaks-helixmod-on-some-games

Preset Hotkeys:

Pressing F7 saves your current depth and convergence values to the last preset key you pressed.  The default hotkeys can be changed in DX9Settings.ini.  Reference the linked chart for keycodes.  Use the number from the second column: Keyboard Keys and Key Code Values

• Preset Key 1: F1 
• Preset Key 2: F2
• Preset Key 3: F3

Download

• HelixMod-Shadowgrounds_v1.zip