Sunday, May 23, 2021

Trine 4

Updated to v2.0 on 2021-05-23. See update notes below to see what's changed






The words "Trine" and "Stereo 3D" used to go together like peanut butter and jelly (or chocolate, if you're a Reese fan), and it truly is an ominous sign that 3D is all but abandoned by everyone except us enthusiasts when the latest game in the poster-child for 3D series did NOT have stereo 3D functionality built in. People cried out on the Steam forums, pleading to have 3D patched in and the developers have made it clear that they have no desire or intention to do so, which is a shame because Trine 4 is a marvelous game, both in gameplay and visual capacity. Well fear not, friends, for I have come to the rescue and it is a great honor for me to provide you with this fix to bring T4 to it's full 3D glory.


Version History

v2.0 on 2021-05-23:

  • Entire fix remade after being broken from Melodies of Mystery DLC update
  • Specular highlights are now at realistic depth
  • Slightly better behaving auto-convergence shader during cutscenes

v1.1 on 2019-11-04:


  • Determined that certain issues were fixed only for 1440P (resolution I play at). This update adjusts these fixes to correctly work across all resolutions and all AA settings.

3D Fix Summary

Game Engine: Trine Engine - DX11

Fixed Issues:

  • Lighting & shadows
  • Specular highlights
  • Halo effects


User Interface Features:

  • Fully dynamic scene auto-convergence. This is a HUGE benefit to this game, as the camera zooms in and out a lot as you play through the levels, which having a static convergence would mean that the pop-out effect that is so desirable for these games would be lost when the camera would zoom out. It also caused the mouse cursor to constantly be off-axis with objects. This, however, would be remedied by having a 3D mouse cursor, which I did also incorporate.
    I've tried my best to tweak the parameters of the autoconvergence shader to provide a constant state of having the player characters at screen depth, while also providing smooth enough transitions during cutscenes, but with such a wide range of convergence values it was tough to achieve and still has some quirks. You may find during some cutscenes the auto-convergence shader may keep shaking (aka judder) between 2 values (unfortunately the built in "anti-judder" failsafe doesn't seem to work), so in these cases it is possible to temporarily disable the shader via a toggle key until the next scene.
  • A 3D mouse cursor with toggle switch to set cursor to static depth as an option
  • Cyclable HUD depth


Other Notes/Issues:

  • This is NOT a game where you want to crank up your separation. Not only does it make the environments look unnaturally elongated, but doing so causes many visual anomalies, such as aggressive occlusion clipping which will have geometry in the background start disappearing/flickering as the screen moves, some blocky clipping on shadows, and misalignment of others things which have already been stereo-corrected. I find running at about 50% separation on my 27" screen and lower is about the correct scale and eliminates most of the anomalies, and going down to even about 25% still looks good in scale and completely eliminates all anomalies.
  • Sometimes the game will randomly break some fixed shadows. Sometimes alt+tabbing will fix them, or just reloading the checkpoint will do it. Completely infuriating, and nothing I can do for it. See this post here for proof and details
  • This game seems to have shaders used for multiple effects, which creates conflicts, as some of these effects are not correct in 3D and some are, and there seems to be no way of differentiating and separating them to fix what needs to be fixed without "fixing" the already correct effect, and in turn breaking it. Some examples are:
    • Environment shadows vs character shadows. Character shadows are correct without any fix, however environment shadows need a stereo fix. Fortunately, when the convergence is at a value where the character is at screen depth then character shadows become correct as well, which is one of the main reasons I focused on achieving that through auto-convergence
    • Certain HUD effects vs fog/smoke. This one here is just plain ridiculous that all these are handled by the same shader. Fog & smoke are stereo correct, but the visual effects like the "swish" lines when swinging on a rope, arrow shot trails, and the line that gets drawn when summoning boxes have way too much separation. Trying to fix these breaks fog & smoke, which I feel is not an option so I don't even bother, but. I do provide a key where you can disable all of these effects if you'd prefer.
    • The blue outline when highlighting most levitatable objects vs the same outline on barrels. Another mind-f*ck this one is, because it's the same damn thing, but for one particular object (barrels) doesn't require a 3D fix, but all the rest do. So, ummm, f*** those barrels, more important to have the fix for everything else in place.
    • Dust vs snow clouds. Snow clouds in Amadeus' first level are fine without a fix, but the dust in the background when you first enter the haunted manor as Pontius is a bit broken (not too bad if you follow my instruction to lower your separation) is. I've provided a toggle key to switch between the two if desired.


Instructions


1. Download fix: Trine 4 3D Fix v2.0

2. Extract fix contents to '..\Trine 4 The Nightmare Prince'  folder where Trine4.exe exists

3.  The following keybindings have been set up:

    Key                          Effect        
      ~                    Enables or disables the auto-convergence shader. Default is enabled
    F1                    Cycles through HUD depth settings
    F2                    Disables HUD (for those perfect screenshots)
    F3                    Enables or disables the 3D mouse cursor. Default is enabled
    F4                    Enables or disables the fog/smoke and HUD effects shader. Default is enabled
    F5                    Toggles between the dust/snow fix. Default is diabled, so that the snow will be correct, since it comes in the level before the dust
Capslock  or     
Xbox L-Thumb     If choosing to not use the autoconvergence shader at all, then this is a toggle key for low-convergence during cutscenes 
stick             

Tools used and special credits


-3DMigoto v1.3.16 by 3DMigoto development team
-Auto-convergence and 3D crosshair shaders by DarkStarSword



Donations


-Like my work and wish to show appreciation and provide funding towards future game fixes? Dontations can be sent by visiting: www.paypal.me/DShanz or by sending to rshannonca@gmail.com

40 comments:

  1. a big thanks to you for trying to keep the 3D alive and solve all the obstacles of game programmers who do nothing to facilitate 3D.
    you are a hero and all the contributors to this magical website are too.
    an absolute french fan

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for the fix, and the well written introduction to it.. :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Glad you enjoyed the intro. I like to keep in mind that this is still a blog, so it's important to add a little bit of a personal opinion piece write up with each one.

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  3. Thanks so much ;-)

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  4. vry vry vry tks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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  5. Hey DJ-RK- Until your original post, I had no idea the Trines were 3D Vision ready. I got Trine (1) for a mere pittance and my reaction was...meh, what's the fuss...UNTIL I FOUND THE IN-GAME CONVERGENCE AND DEPTH CONTROLS! So I'll likely now be working my way back to this fix. Thanks!!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's awesome to hear! The past games are timeless masterpieces (although some would say the 3rd game isn't as good as the rest, and that T4 is a return to proper form), so you've got some great gaming to look forward to. Glad my writeup was able to introduce you to them. Enjoy!

      Delete
  6. Also, dude you are awesome for fixing this game, and continuing the epic level of beauty in these games. Thanks!

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  7. Thanks bo3b. The exaltation from your compliment is only rivaled by the honor of being able to take up the mantle for fixing such a prestigious series... which being able to do so all started from a little something called "bo3b's school for shaderhackers!" LOL. A long way we've come from that, and once again my thanks to you for all you've done and glad for it to come full circle!

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  8. Can't agree more -- Trine and 3D Vision are the perfect harmony for us fans. Can't thank you enough for the heroic work you do here!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Any way to run this in SBS mode? This is the first Helixmod I have tried and may be missing something in locating that setting. I have installed 3D Fix Manager, but can't find the option in there either.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Uncomment the line ;$\ShaderFixes\3dvision2sbs.ini\mode = 0 in the d3dx.ini file, and it should work.

      In 3DFM, you can switch to the 3D Fix tab, and scroll down to General Ini settings, and click Enable alternative 3D format: and set a default of SBS, and it should run in SBS next launch. I think you can set that globally in Settings->DisplayProfiles->Preferred 3D format, but am not sure about that one.

      Delete
    2. Awesome, thank you! I wasn't able to get it to work with the global settings, though the option does exist there, but it worked through the general Ini settings. Thank you too for all the work on this DJ-RK!

      Delete
  10. Can you please fix it for latest drivers, it doesn't work properly, thanks

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The fix is not driver dependent. Whatever problem you are seeing is not likely to be related to this game.

      Delete
  11. 3DV is really dying :( none of the fixes lately really works :( I bought DMC 5 after I saw it here, didn't work, I bought Trine 4, didn't work, AC Origin doesn't have even a fix for 3DV yet :(

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Not to put too fine a point on it, but 3D Vision has always been 'dying'. We've always had the problem of games being updated breaking fixes.

      In the land of 3D Vision, you need to be more proactive if you want to play. Disable all the stupid auto-updates, stop mindlessly upgrading to 'improved' drivers, and block Win10 from breaking everything twice a year.

      If you have DMC 5 on Steam, you can easily play a pre-update version that works in 3D. Put in some legwork, you can't rely on us to do everything.

      Delete
    2. Thank you Bo3b and everyone here who's working hard to keep this working

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  12. Are we going to stick with this not working fix for long time? Is there any other guy to do proper one which works with newer drivers please please! This game especially must be done by professional ones :(

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You are confused. The fix has nothing to do with new drivers. Any given fix will work on any driver.

      You could spend some time trying to debug it, instead of complaining. For example, install driver 425.31, known good driver, and try it. If you are certain it's driver dependent, then test a couple of other drivers to find out when it broke.

      We can't fix problems when people don't give us any information. Saying "it's broken" is useless. You have yet to even clarify exactly how it's broken. Put in some effort. Stop expecting us to hand everything to you an platter.

      Delete
    2. With the new Losti-Schwing drivers this works perfectly.
      Thank you Bo3b

      Delete
  13. Great fix for amazing game! Thanks for keeping 3dv alive.

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  14. There' a new DLC with 6 new levels... unfortunately it seems the fix no longer works. I uninstalled the fix and reinstalled and still big time broken.

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    Replies
    1. I've already been made aware, so I'll hopefully get to looking at it soon, but thanks for reporting.

      Delete
  15. any chance of the fix working again? i am really itching to play this game in 3d it looks so good, i adored trine 1 2 and the 3d in 3

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  16. Fix is working better than ever! Brilliant!

    ReplyDelete
  17. Hi, thanks for the fix. I dont know why I am having problems with this fix, the colors are too bright, like if somenthing is wrong. When I run in 2D the colors are fine. I am using a Oculus Quest 2 connected via Remote Desktop. I've changed the reg file on Windows following this thistructions, but didnt work for this game. I tried Yooka Laylee and the colors are fine, dont know what is wrong with this game https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/7zp9hx/3d_vision_sbs_3d_for_flatscreen_games_with_the/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I've tried everything, changing the resolutions and video settings to all sort of configs. The problem seems to be very similar to this guy (link). The brightness also affect the steam overlay. https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/fullscreen-too-bright-not-using-nvidia-settings-fixed/153473
      I wonder if would be possible to use Helixvision, but I cannot find Trine 4 in the list of games to play.

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    2. Fixed it guys!! Thanks! I've enabled resolution upscaling on the 3D Fix Manager and it fixed.

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  18. I played it before, but today I installed it and found that with the correction, the gamepad does not work in the game

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    Replies
    1. I have the same problem, the fix is working well, but the controller stops working when it is active, does anyone have any idea what might be causing this?

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  19. Hey, only f1 f2 and f3 have functions, f3 is only for auto hud not 3d mouse. Also some background grass/foliage etc is broken. I installed with 3d fix manager. Just wondering if this is normal or am I missing something. Thanks.

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    Replies
    1. Just tested this again, and it seems to be working well. There are a handful of visual glitches but nothing bad, same as DJ-RK pointed out in his comments. Driver 452.06. First pass using 3DFM/HelixVision did not work, and gave me a lot of broken shadows and one-eye characters. Backing up and installing manually seemed to work, so the 3DFM profile might be broken. Used latest Steam version of game.

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    2. Thanks for the reply, when I install the fix manually, It runs to the loading screen, 3d mouse works. When I start a game I get a runtime error and crash. manual install means just adding fix files into game .exe folder i am assuming.

      When installed via 3dfm, everything works ok but no 3d mouse and there are few things broken, playable-ish.
      Latest steam version and 452.06 drivers.

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    3. To use driver 452.06 you need to either use HelixVision/3DFM, or set up the two files d3d11.dll and nvwgf2umx.dll to not be _disabled, otherwise it will crash. You don't need that if you use driver 425.31. I had the effect of things being broken when I first tried it, but am not sure what fixed it outside of manually adding the fix files but keeping those two files from 3DFM. Worth noting that after it is working, I can use PlayIn3D from HelixVision and it works.

      Delete
  20. Can we have a try for fixing Trine 5 please?

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    Replies
    1. Did you try this fix for Trine 4 with Trine 5 ? I am going to try it

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