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Incline My Wife's Mod for Arcanum

lukaszek

the determinator
Patron
Joined
Jan 15, 2015
Messages
12,617
deterministic system > RNG
 
Last edited:

Viata

Arcane
Joined
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Messages
9,885
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Water Play Catarinense

The Wall

Dumbfuck!
Dumbfuck Zionist Agent
Joined
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Messages
3,017
Location
SERPGIA
I will offer 10 camels and 40 sheep for your wife.
^
TrumpBestDeal.png
!BEST DEAL!
TrumpBestDeal.png
^
 

Bester

⚰️☠️⚱️
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Vatnik
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I decided to give another go and found out that now Nvidia drivers allow what I used to do with my wife's program. That's right, Nvidia now has bicubic upscaling.

It's super easy now.

Check this box. It makes all EEs redundant.

0839a6a3d555fc2081737f42c53699b1.png


Now in your list of screen resolutions a new thing will appear, called "Scaling Resolution".
Set 1280&720 from this list.
c3aba1935c969e1453069d88bf9932bb.png


This will assign your monitor a fake resolution of 720p that will be bicubically upscaled to 1080p.

Now all you have to do is use that guy's (forgot the name) high resolution patch on Arcanum and set it to also be 1280*720 with full screen enabled.

Also, add a little bit of sharpening like this:
7f1b1d92a84b86edf4c41e01a079b65e.png


Just turn it on for Arcanum.exe, but leave it at 0. It will still apply a teeny tiny bit of sharpening. That's it, Arcanum will look just like on my screenshots in the OP post now.

Enjoy!
 

Chippy

Arcane
Patron
Joined
May 5, 2018
Messages
6,037
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I'm a simple bloke, and I ask simple questions expecting simple answers. So if I buy the Lossless Scaling software from Steam can I use it to get the effect the OP got with Arcanum on BG?.

Edit: Based on Bester response above, I can. Wow. Maybe this explains why Lilura hasn't been seen in some time?.
 

Null Null

Arbiter
Joined
Aug 2, 2014
Messages
542
Apparently bilinear and bicubic interpolation are used in medical imaging to deal with low-resolution images--the pics come off the CAT scan at 512x512 and the pixelation's distracting.
 

Semiurge

Cipher
Joined
Apr 11, 2020
Messages
6,074
Location
Asp Hole
I decided to give another go and found out that now Nvidia drivers allow what I used to do with my wife's program. That's right, Nvidia now has bicubic upscaling.

It's super easy now.

Check this box. It makes all EEs redundant.

0839a6a3d555fc2081737f42c53699b1.png


Now in your list of screen resolutions a new thing will appear, called "Scaling Resolution".
Set 1280&720 from this list.
c3aba1935c969e1453069d88bf9932bb.png


This will assign your monitor a fake resolution of 720p that will be bicubically upscaled to 1080p.

Now all you have to do is use that guy's (forgot the name) high resolution patch on Arcanum and set it to also be 1280*720 with full screen enabled.

Also, add a little bit of sharpening like this:
7f1b1d92a84b86edf4c41e01a079b65e.png


Just turn it on for Arcanum.exe, but leave it at 0. It will still apply a teeny tiny bit of sharpening. That's it, Arcanum will look just like on my screenshots in the OP post now.

Enjoy!

Is that feature included in new drivers for all Geforces or does it have hardware requirements? My driver is so old that it doesn't have image sharpening as an option, or maybe it's not even supported by Pascal.
 

agris

Arcane
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Joined
Apr 16, 2004
Messages
6,758
It shouldn’t, but knowing nvidia, it likely is artificially gated by hardware to drive obsolescence and new purchases. They did this with integer scaling too iirc, wherein both integer and bicubic are trivial programming-wise, the options are likely considered only relevant for the power user, ie milk the cow.
 

deem

Savant
Joined
Oct 3, 2019
Messages
421
I tried this method and I see no difference, it does not seem to improve the image quality.
 

Bester

⚰️☠️⚱️
Patron
Vatnik
Joined
Sep 28, 2014
Messages
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Location
USSR
Forget it all. Lossless Scaling app on Steam (the paid version) has multiple upscaling algos that are even better than bicubic upscaling. Use it.
 

deem

Savant
Joined
Oct 3, 2019
Messages
421
There is a paid version of Steam? Also, I've bought Arcanum on GOG. :(
 
Joined
Dec 5, 2010
Messages
1,611
Just get yourself a nice big 8K screen and you'll be able to losslessly/integer upscale most standard gaming resolutions (240p, 360p, 480p, 540p, 720p, 1080p, 1440p, 2160p) on any intel, amd (R 200+) and nvidia (turing+) gpus. "Zooming out" 600p games to 720p with mods would be the only compromise (negligble).
 
Last edited:

Poseidon

Educated
Joined
Feb 8, 2016
Messages
72
So I was about to create a post about this particular issue, but here we are!

So yes, Image Sharpening is nice and all, the game does looks awesome through Lossless Scaling but the performance suuucks, like switching between menus, or loading a new zone. How did you get around that, if at all?

DXWND makes the game runs seemlessly, but yes, stretching 720p to full screen introduces some bluriness. Right now, I prefer that over spikes in performance, but I'm sure I can have the best of both worlds?

Alternatively can I just pay your wife Bester to just upscale all the textures internally so none of this 3rd party shit is necessary :P


EDIT: Managed to get it done for those interested:
1. Back up any and all ddraw.dll in Arcanum folder (basically just move it so it doesn't interfere)
2. Use HighRes patch to set game to in Full Screen at whatever lower resolution you like.
3. Use DXWND (instead of a wrapper, that's why you removed it, it would clash) and make it run the game in Window of again, the specific resolution you require.
4. Use Lossless Scaling app as explained (AMD FSR had best results for me)
5. Profit

Only issue is, can't really take proper screenshots that way (if you have multiple monitors like me)
 
Last edited:

Absinthe

Arcane
Joined
Jan 6, 2012
Messages
4,062
Just get yourself a nice big 8K screen and you'll be able to losslessly/integer upscale most standard gaming resolutions (240p, 360p, 480p, 540p, 720p, 1080p, 1440p, 2160p) on any intel, amd (R 200+) and nvidia (turing+) gpus. "Zooming out" 600p games to 720p with mods would be the only compromise (negligble).
You can also just get a decent CRT monitor and simply set the screen resolution to whatever the current game wants and have it look good.
 

Absinthe

Arcane
Joined
Jan 6, 2012
Messages
4,062
If you're purchasing displays for old games anyway, yes. If you're not trying to get a top-of-the-line CRT but a middling one you can usually get them pretty cheap if there are some cities nearby. You just gotta know where to look for used and old electronics.
 

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