Anonymous edits have been disabled on the wiki. If you want to contribute please login or create an account.

User talk:Rose

About this board

Not editable

Hi Rose, i couldnt find another place to contact you. Just wanted to say thank you for mentioning the (this) wiki on the article! I am an admin there and added a link to your Journey article, since there is some really useful information too. scarfhugs! ravingmadness

Downgrading and hex editing Blur (2010) to fix strange FPS behavior

3
Radmaxx (talkcontribs)

Hi Rose, This is a complicated issue and I am not entirely sure how to add this information on the game's page. Blur has been removed from Steam and the retail copies use a variant of SecuRom that may not be compatible with modern systems, effectively mandating the use of cracked executables for new configurations. The current page suggests that:

1- The game supports 120+ FPS (and is uncapped)
2- but causes audio issues (mainly crackling) and
3- changing the game's audio quality from "Low" causes additional audio problems. 

All of them are true at a glance but ultimately misleading. I have managed to find both the updated and the original versions of the game and realized all of the audio problems are caused by the update. (The update causes the crackling even at 60 FPS or lower anyways and higher FPS makes it more frequent; furthermore causing the audio to be cut off sooner at "Medium" and "High" audio presets regardless of frame rate). Additionally neither version actually support higher than 60 FPS output (framerate is internally locked at 60 FPS and re-renders those 60 frames as many times as needed to reach higher values and breaking a few post effects in doing so). This max actual FPS value can be hex-edited but it is only usable on the original version. I may also need to recommend DXVK (translate D3D9 calls to Vulkan) for a more stable performance overall but I can only verify this for myself. The questions are: A- Can I upload the cracked files of the original release directly to the page (and if so how)? B- Should I remove all mentions and links to the update on the page? (I haven't found any other differences between the two, even after extensive testing.) C- Should I mention DXVK and recommend the user to test each of APIs for themselves? Thanks for reading!

Dave247 (talkcontribs)

Hi Radmaxx, I just wanted to let you know that Rose has stepped away from the Wiki to focus on other things, so they are unlikely to reply. Your best bet to ask for help on articles would be to join the wiki Discord server and ask there in the #articles channel.

Radmaxx (talkcontribs)

Thanks for the heads up. After more extensive testing, I've updated the Blur page with all of the information added here and more to the best of my ability. If possible, please notify me on how to change or improve it if necessary.

Removing contribution

13
Ciocolici (talkcontribs)

Instead of completely removing what I wrote ( https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/w/index.php?title=Mass_Effect_Legendary_Edition&oldid=prev&diff=1075918 ), you could have edited it to be the way you want it to.

Most people won't write on the wiki because of the rules and how time-consuming it is to learn how and where to put what. If you see something that helps the game and should be included on the page (as my stuff was there, and it took a while to write everything), but you don't like how and/or where I have written it, then edit it to be right, take some minutes and make it right. That info will be lost and people will probably not know about those mods and their fixes.

Just a thought.

Rose (talkcontribs)

Hi,

You cannot make major edits that are contrary to the guidelines and expect the community to make them right. The burden of following the guidelines is on each contributor with every edit that they make.

As for your concern about information being lost, every past revision is accessible via each article's History in the top right corner, so most of the time nothing is truly lost on the wiki and you can pick up where you left off, ensuring full alignment with the guidelines as suggested in my summary.

Ciocolici (talkcontribs)

I checked your link and I lost myself through the stuff there. I'm not that much into the wiki and have not much knowledge about doing it right. And I am not really willing to spend the time learning it, as I really find it too complex and time-consuming. I usually copy-paste the way I see it in other places, but edit it with my stuff.

That's what I did there. I only wanted to help and make sure people know about these must-needed mods for the best experience in MELE. If it isn't alright how I wrote it, then I am sorry, I did not find it ugly imo.

Unfortunately, I don't have the time to learn to do it better. As I said, I only wanted to help the others know about these mods. The mods are there, and if anyone wishes to use what I wrote and do it right, or the way you find it right, then they are free to do it.

Rose (talkcontribs)

It's not a matter of ugly or what either of us thinks. The guidelines are a framework created over years of discussions. It is very important to follow them unless we want every user to bring in their vision of how things should look or be, resulting in a lot of inconsistency and content of questionable value that each individual contributor may deem important but the rest may not. Navigating the wiki and finding information would become a hardship if the latter were the way, which is contrary to the purpose of the resource and the cause of its creation.

Putting the issue of formatting aside for a minute, your choice of mods was also problematic. For example, there are people that would not care about "Miranda's butt", and that alone would make it unacceptable to present the related mod as essential.

Ciocolici (talkcontribs)

Probably. Then getting that one removed from the list, informing me with the reasons why, would have been acceptable. The reason why I included it is because it is a restoration mod. It restores content available in the original game. Btw the link you provided is not the mod I included.

Ciocolici (talkcontribs)

Anyway, I did my part and tried to help. I understand your point, but I think you editing it to look and be alright would not have taken too much of your time, as you're already familiar with how the wiki works, instead of only removing it and throwing it my face with "check the guidelines". But whatever.

All is well.

Ciocolici (talkcontribs)
Rose (talkcontribs)

Thank you for listening. The new change is definitely an improvement to the format for better alignment with the guidelines. I made a few additional tweaks to the section as well.

Personally, I think the thumb up icon is overused because of the visual presentation and lack of universal applicability of some of the mods. For example, some people may not be interested in same-sex romance, so the related mod would be completely skippable, making it a case for {{ii}} over the {{++}}. The order of the mods could be improved as well, similarly to how we treat fixes.

Ciocolici (talkcontribs)

Thanks! The order I used was the order I installed the mods myself. Since for example ALOT MUST be installed last. But I did change the order a little bit. Have also changed the icon for some, as you said.

Mirh (talkcontribs)

That's still an monstrosity, that would quickly bore (i.e. loose the attention) everyone but the most fierce completionist fans. And some of those mods aren't even using the new not-exactly-perfect-but-better-than-nothing differential modding format, and are pretty obviously incompatible with anything else.

If this was a an old/unknown/difficult game, I guess mentioning "everything and the kitchen sink" that exists regardless of quality would still make sense. After all, the very news and information that modding is possible would be killer.

But here? Just like GTA games you have hundreds (if not thousands) of mods available, with entire websites and communities fully dedicated to it. Showcasing the most famous and appreciated ones is certainly nice to do, but you should always put yourself into the shoes of the average user (and there's not even a "game is an absolute disaster to remedy anyway" excuse here)

Rose (talkcontribs)

I do think that we need changes to the Other information guidelines which now allow anything to be documented under that section as long as the format is in alignment with the rest of the wiki guidelines. We are lucky that most articles are free of mods, and the ones that are listed are usually from a single contributor having shared their limited personal selection, when there is nothing stopping one from listing 100 or 200. The community may find that excessive and remove them but there would be no clear basis for that in the guidelines.

I'd be happy to help improve a set of newly drafted guidelines for Other information. I think that in order to try and keep the choice objective, free of excess, and consistent with the goal of the wiki, which is "fixing", we should consider limiting it to mods that can be referenced from other sections, like this Cheat Table for Control that is linked from the note on FOV. That way they are always within the scope of the wiki and reliant on the already established list of game features deemed to be important for all articles.

Aemony (talkcontribs)

> we should consider limiting it to mods that can be referenced from other sections

That is too extreme -- the section is intended for stuff that doesn't fall into any other section, so limiting it to stuff that can be referenced from another section would exclude too much.

I agree that random mod lists can sometimes be excessive, but a solution to that would for example be to set up a guideline that states that the mod portal itself should be listed instead of listing 10+ mods or whatever -- not remove the mentions of mods (or their sites) entirely just because they can't be references elsewhere in the article.

Mirh (talkcontribs)

Other information being used for loosely everything under the sun doesn't seem wrong or bad, it is after all the "whatever is left" section (though of course it has to remain up for grabs because no other section is good, not because you forgot to check one).

But I cannot really come up with any comprehensive guideline other than "keep it simple, stupid", because it's not even about the content per se and the only priority seems to be the page look.

As I said it's no biggie if you write even the most inconsequential cruft on a game without much else "happening" anyway (in fact, adding even some "almost pointless action" to a very skinny article may still embellish it). But the very same things would be atrocious on a much more busy article like the ones above (putting even aside that if there are really so many separate "unquestionable fixes", then it comes natural to ask why nobody bothered yet to bunch them together)

Maybe the instructions should focus more on the art of succinctness and cherry-picking?

Then, mods aren't exactly the most objective things on the shelf to begin with, but I don't believe that's any fundamental obstacle... even though it's hard to word out properly just how many "70% game world HD packs" are worth a "150 hours partial conversion or "coop total conversion.

p.s. I also thought we were all about fixes, and then we started to add overview and taxonomy

Scarlet Nexus resolution, fixes and graphical improvements

2
Radmaxx (talkcontribs)

Hi Rose, Given that you already created a tool to select ultra-wide resolutions on Scarlet Nexus, I wanted to ask you is there a way to force any resolutions in unreal 4 full-screen mode? I don't have a ultra-wide screen display so I am unable to test it myself. On what mode does that tool work? And what does the in-game option looks like? Scarlet Nexus only allows 1280x720, 1600x900, 1920x1080, 2560x1440 and 3840x2160 as selectable resolutions on full-screen mode (and slightly modified versions of those on windowed mode). The only way to select 5120x2880 for example, is to set desktop resolution to that and proceed to use borderless full-screen mode as it exclusively uses whatever the desktop resolution is. There is a way to force resolution through "GameUserSettings.ini"; however, it will only work on the splash screens as the game saves the aforementioned resolution values and applies them anyway.

Additionally, where should the following be added? Should they all have their individual text boxes or all be categorized as generic graphical improvements? - Mipmap and LOD bias (reduce texture pop-in and increase overall texture quality on very high resolutions) - Light, reflection and [sharp] shadow quality parameters (requires the user to lower in-game settings) - Draw distance parameters - Loading options (have the game fully load every level and remove the need for asset streaming, potentially removing performance spikes at the cost of longer loading times) - Trade-off between lower GPU usage (DX11) and CPU multi-threading (DX12) on V1.03 and older [V1.04 breaks textures entirely on DX12] (by default (DX11), rendering is single-threaded in this game, which is mostly not a problem but in the city hubs e.g. Suoh area, not even a 9900k can reach 144 FPS) - Mouse sensitivity loss on higher FPS for V1.03 and older [V1.04 fixes this] (also should "Increase mouse DPI to increase sensitivity regardless" be added or is it too obvious?)

Sorry for the long questions and thanks for reading.

Rose (talkcontribs)

Hi,

Setting the width and height values via ResolutionX and ResolutionY works in every Unreal Engine 4 game I can think of, but I cannot rule out that there are some exceptions. In some games, hotsampling via the Unreal Engine 4 Console Unlocker is the answer. Sometimes I just recommend borderless for some of my fixes to work, and I find it to be a tolerable tradeoff, especially now that games have fullscreen optimizations presumably resulting in parity with exclusive fullscreen.

As for your second question, any tweaks to the graphics should be under Video. We do this for Depth of Field, Sharpening and the like, though now all Unreal Engine 4 pages display a note below the Video table to direct to the Unreal Engine 4 article, which is a good way to document all the generic fixes and tweaks and keep the individual articles free of clutter or each user's preferences on what looks best.

Keep in mind though that lowering any graphics settings to achieve better performance could be considered a generic solution rather than a game-specific fix, because it's common sense, just as closing any running apps to free up system resources.

TAU Upscaling is VERY relevant and belongs in the Kena page

6
D0x360 (talkcontribs)

I disagree about it being a generic fix. It enables a completely different way of upscaling in ue4 & 5. A much higher quality version. In fact this tweak is far more significant to visual quality than anything related to sharpening. It's also a newer function in UE plus only games with resolution sliders can use it so it's absolutely not a generic fix.

It's talked about in the digital foundry video posted last week as an essential fix. The game can run at 65% of 4k and look essentially native with TAU but without enabling it the game looks terrible at 65% native.

I do agree the multiple edits was quite honestly stupid but I was using a mobile browser and having tons of issues editing. Everytime I tried to move where the cursor was the screen would zoom in which caused mistakes.

That doesn't change the fact that this is important information for this game. It significantly enhances visuals and is a mostly unknown UE setting plus like I said it's only available if there is a resolution slider.

Rose (talkcontribs)

It being generic means that it will work in other games on Unreal Engine 4, many of which use TAA and have a resolution scaling slider. The way to enable it in Kena appears to be a complete match to what is found on the Unreal Engine 4 page.

You may think it's essential but a 1080p user would not even see any 4K resolution options in the game, and the difference between enabling it at 1080p and not enabling it at 1080p is objectively insignificant, for obvious reasons. The majority of PC users are still at 1080p (68.42% reported by Steam), so they are extremely unlikely to find this useful.

As I stated in some of my other edit summaries, we have to be selective about what we cover - otherwise we would end up having countless technically working tweaks covered in each article on each game. Pretty much the entirety of the tweaks listed on Unreal Engine 4 is applicable to Kena and many other games on this engine. What if someone also wants to downscale on top of those nearly 20 fixboxes? What if they want to also force HDR? Where do we stop with this? The practice has been to rely on the glossary pages for tweaks and fixes that are not essential for virtually every user.

As for the sharpening being documented in the article, the need for that is that adjusting it specifically in Kena requires an approach that is different from the generic, with forcing it via [SystemSettings] having no effect.

D0x360 (talkcontribs)

I understand what you're saying but I disagree on the basis that this feature is disabled by default and it would still help people playing at 1080p. I just used 4k as an example. I know every tweak for every game can't be included but this is a function that greatly enhances visuals which is why it should be included. If nothing else please read the last paragraph.

Where do we stop? As a long time user before ever making an edit this is exactly the kind of info I would want on a games page. Every time I buy a game I check this site for exactly this kind of info.

Adding things from the UE list can be hit or miss. Some settings are hardcoded so even editing an ini won't enable or change them. This function works and can improve visual quality at any resolution. It's good enough that someone with a 1550ti could run this game at 50% of 1080p and still get good image quality and maybe be able to play at 60fps instead of 30.

So again from a strictly fan perspective this is exactly the kind of thing I would want to see. Also consider that it's likely those 68% of people you think would find this unhelpful also have no idea about editing UE files so they would never think to do this and they could be getting higher frame rates by using it at any resolution.

I just tested it using a surface pro 4 which is about 4 years old. It has an i7 and Intel igpu. I set the resolution to 1080p and all settings to low and I got an average of 17fps. Then I added this tweak, dropped the slider to 50% and I was able to play at a locked 30 with some settings on medium and the visual quality in terms of resolution was actually pretty good. It looked like the game running at native 720p with AA (no ghosting or jitter) but most importantly it made an unplayable game playable on the same hardware with that single tweak.

Rose (talkcontribs)

A few days ago we introduced the note that appears below the Video table in every article on an Unreal Engine 4 game, addressing the issue of people "having no idea". We also had users argue that having the TAA enabled is unacceptable and needs to be disabled with a fix documented in the article, so the way to address these subjective takes is to just lead to an article that has all the choices and lets the reader decide what they like or what they need depending on their hardware specifications.

Rose (talkcontribs)

You made good points about the less common resolutions, and I'm not particularly opposed to the idea of documenting TAAU, but the issue of consistency remains. Allowing this would still mean giving way to every other Unreal Engine tweak to be documented in the game article, and from some of the edits to the page, that would mean TAA removal, DoF removal, and Chromatic aberration removal. Then it could just snowball from there, as each reader interested in editing would get to reasonably ask "why not X too?".

Some would even proceed to add without owning the game, from what they see as essential based on their past experience with Unreal Engine. I felt like the pushing of TAA removal in Kena by one user consequently engaged in edit warring really highlighted this problem.

The wiki has had similar discussions in relation to controller support, with some arguing that we must set to "hackable" and mention something that definitely works for the game, like DS4Windows, and others saying that setting to "false" would expose the glossary link and lead to the bigger article on all the things one could try to force controller support. It appears to be a complicated issue with no easy answer.

D0x360 (talkcontribs)

I understand where you're coming from and even agree with 99% of it. I think users who generally dislike TAA would change their minds if they used TAAU. I certainly did. I'm playing far cry 6 right now and I've never seen such bad TAA when it comes to how much blur it adds. I'm playing at 4k and close to the player it looks 4k but at say... 20 feet from the player it looks so blurry it's almost like it's running at 720p. It's insane and there is no fix except for maybe reshade based sharpening.

Kena tonemapper sharpen value

6
82.27.31.167 (talkcontribs)

Thanks for your work on Kena, I usually like to edit engine.ini and use tonemapper.sharpen to recover detail lost from TAA but this default value of 3 seems really high to me, do you know if you can override that with engine.ini edits or otherwise?

Rose (talkcontribs)

The Unreal Engine 4 unlocker reports that it's set by "SystemSettingsini", which is uncommon. Attempting to set it to 0 the usual way has no effect on my end.

82.27.31.167 (talkcontribs)

Thanks for the swift reply. Ah thats too bad I think I will play this one on PS5 instead since its not configurable anyway, cheers again.

Rose (talkcontribs)

It turns out that I did not have the latest version of the unlocker, so using it caused the game to break. However, if you use 3.0.21, you can use it to also set sharpening to 0 or 1, for example.

82.27.31.167 (talkcontribs)

Awesome, thanks for the update.

TL431 (talkcontribs)

I see you reverted my edit on the wiki about the DoF removal patch.

I tried to set DoF to "limited" ingame but I am not seeing any visual difference. Also, r.DepthofFieldQuality remains set to 1 (I checked it with the dev console).

As I wrote in the wiki before, my patch indeed sets r.DepthOfFieldQuality to 0 without the need of the console.

Rose (talkcontribs)

Hi,

The game settings do not apply immediately. Return to the gameplay and see what the console reports when DoF is set to Limited.

TL431 (talkcontribs)

Ah, I see. Actually during the gameplay it is always set to 0, regardless of the DoF setting (Limited or On) in game. Perhaps it is activated on the fly, during rendered cutscenes for instance?

Rose (talkcontribs)

It does appear to be contextual, because going into a cutscene did set it to 1 on my end, and then to 0 again during a pre-rendered one. This being the premise, I still do not think that it would justify a fixbox. As I said in relation to another user's edit, we have to be selective - otherwise there are just too many tweaks we could document to populate every article on an Unreal Engine 4 game, and they would certainly do something, but would it be justified and seen as necessary by most users, not distracting from the most useful tweaks?

TL431 (talkcontribs)

Yeah, I completely agree with what you are saying. Thank you

Have a nice day

How to properly warn of future game removals from stores?

3
Flamingfool719 (talkcontribs)

Hi Rose,

You reverted my edit on Stranger Things 3 (see: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/w/index.php?title=Stranger_Things_3:_The_Game&diff=prev&oldid=1082956) warning that the game would soon be unavailable for purchase from select digital storefronts. You advised me to read the Editing Guide Introduction (https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/PCGamingWiki:Editing_guide/Introduction). I did read through it and perhaps I missed it but I didn't see anything about how to cover the availability or more specifically the impending future lack of a availability from a digital storefront for a game. For Stranger Things 3 specifically it is now a bit of a moot point (admittedly my edit warning users was only a day prior to their removal). But I was wondering what the correct approach is in a more general sense. Suppose it has been announced that a game will be removed from all digital storefronts in exactly one month from now. Shouldn't this be something that PCGW warns users about on the store page? If so, what is the proper way to do this if not as key points? I'm genuinely curious because I'm not aware of any policy outlining this. Is it outlined in the editing guide somewhere? Much thanks in advance and my apologies if this isn't the best way to ask this question. I'm relatively new to the wiki as an editor (though I've long been a user) and couldn't find a better way to contact you to ask this question.

Rose (talkcontribs)

Hi,

Our articles are not really intended to work as PSAs regarding impending changes. I would argue that it is against the spirit of the Time and dates policy. However, we do have the forums with the most recent threads appearing on the front page, and also the News section which can be edited by any staff Editor, Moderator and Administrator, though it has not been discussed whether to cover this type of content there, so it may be best to take it to the forums and ask the rest of the community. If concluded that it is acceptable, I may even start doing it myself to help out.

Rose (talkcontribs)

To add to the above, I suppose one could argue that some people do not visit the front page and would want to know from the game pages. If deemed acceptable and not contrary to the aforementioned guidelines, my suggestion would probably be to do it via the Note field of the Availability table, but that would create the expectation of having someone maintain that page to also timely remove the notes when no longer applicable and we cannot have that because everybody here is a volunteer working at their own pace.

i worked on a guide and everything was removed

2
67.171.34.187 (talkcontribs)

why remove everything i wrote? improve what i wrote instead of saying its speculation and false

wasting my time. i wont continue to support this wiki

Rose (talkcontribs)

Hi,

Read the summaries here and here.

Also see this conversation on how the burden of following the guidelines is on each contributor. You cannot simply drop information and hope that someone will fix it for you. Everybody here is a volunteer, not a robot always ready to correct every issue across thousands of pages.

Please stop editing the Aliens introduction if you don't know the game

3
JackStillAlive (talkcontribs)

Hi Rose!

I understand you don't want PR speak to be included in the introduction of the game, but you can't know what is and what is not PR speak if you don't know the game where you keep changing/removing other people's edits/additions. No, the "evolving threat" part is not PR speak for Aliens Fireteam Elite, that's literally how the game works, Xenos evolve during each match, stronger variants become more common and their number increases. You also removed the part that specifies for people that you only play as marines, no option for robots or Xenos. PCGW serves as a great, in-depth tech-focused description of games for PC gamers, so removing bits of introductions because you believe something is PR speak(or because it's not 100% tech detail) goes against this objective. My introduction was clear, short, yet very detailed about the game.

Please research more about the game or stop removing/editing other people's work on it.

Anonymous (talkcontribs)

Your thinly-veiled harrasment of one of PCGamingWiki's staff editors and your violation the wiki's licensing of its articles by blatantly copy-pasting PR-speak from the official Steam game description have earned you a temporary ban.

I suggest, in the meantime, you reflect on your actions by actually reading the relevant section of the editing guide.

Continuing this course of action WILL result in your permanent ban.

Anonymous (talkcontribs)
Radmaxx (talkcontribs)

Hi, I'm not able to test any other version of the game but GOG ultimate edition (update 1-41028) shows a maximum of 240 FPS during gameplay and a because of my current 144Hz refresh rate, the max FPS value lowers to 144 FPS in menus (even without v-sync). I found ways to change the maximum FPS but since you've already verified an uncapped value in the game's page and because of my limited hardware and refresh rates and a lack of having multiple versions of the game to test, I thought I might discuss this with you on how to implement the changes.

For both DX11 and DX12:

1. Cheat Engine: Searching 240.000000 as a double while 'writable' is set to off and memory scan option is set to Control_DX11.exe or Control_DX12.exe. A singular value will be shown and custom cap can be set (0 will crash the game).

2. Hex edit: Searching 00 00 00 00 00 00 6E 40 (240 FPS) and replace with something else. Examples provided below: 00 00 00 00 00 80 76 40 (360 FPS). 00 00 00 00 00 60 78 40 (390 FPS). 00 00 00 00 00 40 7F 40 (500 FPS). 00 00 00 00 00 40 8F 40 (1000 FPS).

(Note that if the value is set below refresh rate (e.g. 100 FPS@ 144Hz) it will also limit the menu's FPS to 100.)

I'm unable to comment about physics, DXR update rate, particles or cutscene animations' frame rate due to aforementioned reasons; any help in this regard would be appreciated.

Rose (talkcontribs)

Hi,

This can be documented under High frame rate as a fixbox containing the step-by-step instructions on the hex editing. Given my self-reference on the game supporting over 120 FPS stating that I had reached 223, I don't imagine being able to test for 360 or more, so it has to be thoroughly tested and verified by someone else unless you can link to a thread that already has this information.