Friday, October 20, 2023

The Evil Within (DX11)





3D Vision and geo-11 fix for The Evil Within. Remade from scratch to fix remaining problems from the original fix by DHR (https://helixmod.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-evil-within-dx11.html). Credits to him for introducing me to some fixing methods.


Update (2023-10-20): added geo-11 fix. Autoconvergence configured and some HUD issues polished. Other corrections that I can't remember.


Fixed
- Shadows.
- Lighting.
- Decals.
- Light shafts.
- Volumetric lighting.
- Screen space reflections.
- Lighting clipping, mostly. Some may show up at high convergence values. A more proper way to fix that unintended effect requires shader partnering, and that kills performance, so I decided not to do it. 
- Radial blur.
- Distortion effects.
- One eye particles.
- Realistic specular reflections.
- Water effects.
- Stereoized 2D geometry elements (rain, some smoke, particles...).
- Added dynamic crosshair and HUD.


Known issues
- Lighting clipping may be seen at high convergence. One more obvious consequence is that some trees in the early chapters show a black outline at convergence higher than zero.
- There's a boss in the first and second DLC that creates lighting out of its head. It's supposed to be volumetric, but I didn't find a way to make it "float" in the air like the other volumetric lighting shader. So it remains sticking to surfaces like a normal fixed lighting shader. This effect also appears briefly for a light cone near the end of the second DLC, and is also used for the flashlight in the first and second DLC.


Installation
- First of all, don't use Windows 7. This fix makes launching it very easy compared to old methods by forcing flip model, something that was created for Windows 8 onwards. I tested this on Windows 10 and checked with other people that Windows 7 doesn't trigger 3D Vision. If you want to try the old method of launching the game on Windows 7, you're on your own.
- (geo-11, recommended, with build v0.6.182) Download this file and extract its contents in the "TheEvilWithin" folder, where "EvilWithin.exe" is. Remember to edit "d3dxdm.ini" to change your "direct_mode" to the output you need. For 3D Vision monitors, only "nvidia_dx11" works.
- (Older 3D Vision fix, mostly for people who just want the post processing toggles) Download this file and extract its contents in the "TheEvilWithin" folder, where "EvilWithin.exe" is.
- Run the game and let it overwrite the profile the first time.
- In the ingame options, choose fullscreen and choose the same resolution as you use in the desktop. They have to be the same or 3D Vision won't trigger.


Hotkeys (numbers aren't from the numpad)
F1: convergence presets (0, 25, 35, 50, 75, 100). 50 by default, recommended for gameplay. I recommend 25 for cutscenes and 35 for the The Executioner DLC (first person mode). With shift+F1, you can cycle backwards. Autoconvergence is enabled by default so this key won't do anything if it's enabled.
F2: HUD depth presets (0%, 20%, 40%, 60%, 80%, 100%). 0% depth by default, but overriden by dynamic HUD, which is enabled by default.
F3: dynamic HUD toggle. Enabled by default. It puts the entire HUD (including mouse cursor) to the depth of what is at the center of the screen. If it's annoying for cutscene subtitles, just press this hotkey to use static HUD.
F4: color filter toggle. Not disabled by default, because I recommend the original state of the game. This disables the color filter of the game, restoring the colors and contrast to unmodified values (more colorful). However, in many situations this lets you see in the dark when you shouldn't, and it can make some scenes duller (less bright).
F5: depth of field toggle. Disabled by default because it's there for most of the game making it blurry.
0: vignette toggle. Disabled by default. I recommend leaving it disabled.
9: main lens flares presets. By default they are disabled because they are terribly annoying. With one press, they try to be at fully dynamic depth (using the dynamic crosshair code), but they have very few vertices so they wobble a lot. With a second press, they are at the depth of what is at the center of the screen (no wobbling, but more incorrect in general). With a third press, they are always at 100% depth (also incorrect in many situations). With a fourth press, they are disabled again. I recommend just leaving them disabled, even though they are sometimes used as some kind of fake lighting.


Recommendations
- Use flawless widescreen to increase the FOV of the game. For me the default FOV was unplayable, and I was comfortable with the maximum FOV of the mod.
- I recommend not using motion blur. It isn't broken, but I just don't like it.
- Don't force anisotropic filtering in the drivers. It will make textures shimmer.
- The "+com_skipIntroVideo 1" launch command (no quotes) skips some annoying intro videos at launch.
- If you use the "nvidia_dx11" mode in the geo-11 fix, try to not have a secondary monitor. It may interfere with the launching process and turn into a blinking black screen that never stops.


If you liked the fix and want to contribute for more future fixes, you can donate to this PayPal account: masterotakusuko@gmail.com

21 comments:

  1. Great fix. But now I'm afraid to run the game. Seriously. I'm scared!

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  2. GoG version v1.0 (36732) windows 10 dont work when i use 1920 1280,

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    Replies
    1. Not enough information to help you. 1920x1280, and not 1920x1080? Whatever it is, is it the same resolution you are using in your desktop?

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  3. Thanks for the fix, but after it the card began to heat up a lot, before that it was 40-50 C at 60 fps, and now 50-80 C at 60 fps. Perhaps something needs to be disabled in the settings?
    Win 10 i5 8600k 2070 Super

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    Replies
    1. Most likely you are just seeing the extra load that running in 3D puts upon the GPU. For any given stereo picture, you need two images, one for each eye. So the 3D Vision and fixes runs the entire scene twice, once for each eye, so you can expect to have 2x the load on your GPU. 50-80c is not a problem for any video card.

      If you are concerned about it, and think it's something different from a prior fix, you can always experiment by commenting out different parts of the d3dx.ini.

      Delete

    2. I see, I was just surprised how a game from 2014 can heat the video card so much)

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  4. I've tried this fix using both drivers 452.22 and 425.31 (using Losti's excellent tool)... 3D is kicking in, but I'm getting a crazy flickering effect all over. Any ideas?

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  5. Lanterns don't have lights at close range

    Without fix: https://i.ibb.co/wKq43Z7/Untitled2.png

    With it (same lantern):
    - https://i.ibb.co/bNDXmDH/Untitled.png
    - https://i.ibb.co/wzpkmc5/Untitled3.png

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  6. Are some of you using Windows 11 b 22593? I'm not able to run the game in this build, previous builds were working. Ryzen 5 + RX580 8G

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  7. dude you are a god, i am going to play through this entire game with post effects off. I hate post effects. This game has such brilliant colors!

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  8. Excellent arrangement, looks great. But I would like to know if you can remove the shadow from the subtitles.

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  9. VirusTotal marks geo11 and the old download as malicious

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    Replies
    1. False positive from the virus checker. Some virus checkers simply mark anything with a dll as a virus, even though that's just how the OS works. This VirusTotal thing is just running 20 some virus checkers, and it's a near certainty that at least one of those will have the brain-dead idea that *any* dll is suspect.

      We'd recommend not using VirusTotal unless you really need that level of security. If you need that level of security, you probably don't want to be modding. Not everyone is as rigorous about their software as we are.

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    2. how can i fucking disable this stupid annoying black bars?

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  10. how i can stop seeing double screens?

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    Replies
    1. I think the only way is by opening the "d3dxm.ini" file and changing the part where it says "direct_mode=sbs" and change to "direct_mode=nvidia_dx11" instead. I did this but I have a RTX 3060 on the newest driver and the game just shows a black screen then crashes pretty quick unfortunately. Hope we can get an update for this or a workaround of some sort. The motion blur in the regular game without this mod is atrociously garbage. I used this mod once on my old GTX 970 GPU and now I don't think I could go back to playing without it. Some of the cutscenes in this game are even ruined by this awful blur. Plz, update this one! This game is my favorite 3rd person horror!!! :D Thanks for your work anyways though, much appreciated.

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    2. You might try to edit d3dx.ini and change the 'force_stereo=0'. That disables the geo-11 side and allows for a normal 3Dmigoto modding setup. If you are not actually using the 3D generated, this might work, because the shader edits will still be run.

      You don't want to set it to nvidia_dx11, that requires an older driver that won't run on a 3060. You can use Ctrl-T to disable SBS output. It still does the work involved in generating 3D images, but will show a single screen instead.

      Simpler and more to the point though- if you are trying to disable a specific effect, it's easier to just use a straight 3Dmigoto install, use the hunting mechanism to find the hash code for the shader you want, and mark it as 'handling=skip' in the d3dx.ini file. Google around for this, lots of examples on the web.

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    3. I appreciate your quick reply!! I was just messing around again more last night and realized you can disable motion blur at least in the Epic version of the game I forget if the Steam version has it or not. Epic version apparently is the best version out there from what I've gathered. DXVK (vulkan) seems to improve performance by perhaps 5 FPS not much since I am running it in 4k on my 3060 with all settings up. Varies from 35FPS(worst I've seen yet in big open area) and average like 50-60 FPS in the regular areas. I am going to see how much the difference is with this mod out of curiosity probably will be a tad worse I will assume but I' rather check and see because I love to toggle the Color filter toggle on this as I've beat this game so many times so it's interesting to see this game without the filter. I also prefer the grayish filter they have in this game though, so I usually leave it on the default setting but it's cool to see!

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    4. Forgot to mention your suggestion of changing 'force_stereo=2' to 'force_stereo=0' worked great. I also did not need to press Ctrl+T in-game even though sbs is set as the stereo mode. So interesting, and just from the main menu I see color filter toggles, just a quick check for anyone who is trying to get this working for now. Cheers! :D

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    5. The "force_stereo=0" works but the hotkeys do nothing for me

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    6. Which hot keys do you need? I presume your not looking for the awesome stereoscopic 3D?
      If you are looking to mod specific shaders, you should use the basic 3Dmigoto from GitHub instead. That is preconfigured with hunting=1 so you use hunting UI to find shader hashes.

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