DXDLL - advanced tweaking (and 12th anniversary)

[RozekPoland 591]

(Picture created by RozekPoland, edited by RozekPoland, remixed by RozekPoland)

 

Within a few days we are going to celebrate 12th anniversary of DXDLL 1.0 release that took place on 12th of July, 2004. I decided to share with you all the information I've found on BIForum and discovered myself about this amazing tool created by Kegetys and Feer. I am not going to repeat the information that is available in the readme and the configurator.

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Using DXDLL on modern OS (Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10)
It is a known problem that DXDLL do not like the modern OS. It crashes the game at the startup or while ALT+TABing.
The solution is: Set ColdWarAssault.exe in Compatibility Mode with Windows XP (Service Pack 3).
 
DXDLL is conflicting with other overlay(s)
DXDLL is an overlay itself that is why it is not possible to run DXDLL with Steam Overlay, Overwolf or TeamSpeak Overlay at the same time. It even seems that it is not possible to run CWA with DXDLL through Steam with or without Steam Overlay. However, it is possible to run DXDLL and FRAPS together.

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GENERAL
Use Trilinear Filtering

Enabling this feature on a computer with modern graphic card lowers quality and sharpness of textures on farther distance. It is because Trilinear Filtering is obsolete and was replaced by Anisotropic Filtering which is turned on by default (in graphic card's control panel).

Remove night pixelshader effect

Removes black&white night shader effect. Highly usable feature.

DISABLED | ENABLED

 

Handle printscreen key

The output format of the printscreen is TGA. Its final size is huge and taking a photo stutters a game for a second. There are better alternatives for taking photos ingame (FRAPS).

Stage 0 mipmap LODbias

Sets normal texture mipmap level of detail, range -1.0(sharp) to 1.0(blurry).

http://imgur.com/a/BeTsg

 

Stage 1 mipmap LODbias

Sets multitexture texture mipmap level of detail, range -1.0(sharp) to 1.0(blurry).

http://imgur.com/a/G3KZq

 

 

POSTPROCESSING
Enable postprocessing

Enabling this feature disables AntiAliasing (not available in the game itself) turned on in the graphic card's control panel.

Use special NV Goggles effect

Works only with vanilla OFP/CWA nightvision texture and FDF mod. DXDLL does checksum (CRC32) for 25% (1/4) of nightvision texture (size).

DISABLED | ENABLED

 

Hard Light effect

Allows to change RGB channels. The best thing of DXDLL next to water reflections. If you don't like the original values you may want to try Kegetys' personal settings (0.5, 0.5, 0.9).

DISABLED | ENABLED

 

Desaturate effect

ARMA2-Chernarus-like feature. Not really usable in regular playing but a nice effect for a specific screenshots/screenarts. If you don't like the original values you may want to try Kegetys' personal settings (0.2, 0.4, 0.2).

DISABLED | ENABLED

 

Glare

Blur, Bloom or whatever you call it. Eveything shines around you. Not useful for regular playing but (as above) a nice effect for screenshots/screenarts. If you don't like the original values you may want to try Kegetys' personal settings (Strength 0.4, Size 4).

DISABLED | ENABLED

 

Darken sky

Darkens the sky by 15% and the fog color by 10%. All these just to avoid overbrightness caused by Glare effect. Possible to be enabled without Glare effect set to ON.

DISABLED | ENABLED

 

Use fading

Useless because of making lighting show on your screen. Every bright source of light will stay on the screen for as long as another bright source will not show up to take place of the previous one(s) (explosions, searchlights etc.).

 

 

REFLECTIONS
Enable reflections

This feature requires setting Landscape textures resolution (by ColdWarPreferences.exe) to at least 512x512.
Works with vanilla OFP/CWA water textures only. DXDLL does checksum (CRC32) for 25% (1/4) of each water texture (size).
Water reflections may not work for unbinarised models (MLODs).
It is possible to manually set water reflections resolution (Configurator.exe limit is 1024x1024) by opening config.cfg (in dxdll folder), finding and changing sizeX and sizeY values.

DISABLED | ENABLED

 

Use exponential fog on water

Introduces the specific fog on water that hides the irregularities of OFP/CWA water shorelines.

 

Use lighting on reflections

Introduces wider amount of colors on water reflections.

 

Bumpmap strength

Strength of bumpmap water reflections.

0 | 10

 

 

HIDDEN
Requires manual change in config.cfg (in dxdll folder). Use Notepad to open the file.

 

EnhancedTracers

Enhances tracers to make them more visible. Less laser guns, more like the real ones. Disabled by default.

 

LODbias

Sets reflection texture mipmap level of detail, range -1.0(sharp) to 1.0(blurry).

[the_noob 88]

Well written review/guide. One of those essential programs for OFP/CWA alongside OFP Monitor and Fwatch. While there are alternatives to it such as ReShade/Sweet FX and ENB, they were not written specifically for OFP nor offer special effects like the ones seen in DXDLL like water reflections, night shader removal, custom NV effect and so on. I might add that the program is not compatible with Bandicam, which is why I haven't used those reflections in my "flood" video.

 

Anyway, here is a small contribution from me - different water bump maps pack:

 

http://www.mediafire.com/download/rc1vjrn9gvjwyvm/dxdll+custom+water+bump+textures.rar

 

With this you can toy with the different types of water bump mapping I compiled and see which suits you best, but make sure you use atleast 512x512 size.

[zulu1 145]

While this adds some visual effects, at least on my one older computer it adds a significant FPS hit in addition to the fact reflective water doesn't work on retextured water. I need to run some tests with my newer computer to see if it has any better affect without the performance hit.

 

Running a P4 (w / hyperthreading) and ATI HD5670. Before I lost my older card (nvidia 8800) I had no gfx issues. Every newer card I have tried both ATI and NV need crippled cpl settings to get OFP to perform decently. Need to keep VD low (~1000) and with that any textures at a moderate distance really start to blur out.

 

Next will see how it works with my i5 and NV gtx6600.

[krzychuzokecia 719]

EnhancedTracers

Enhances tracers to make them more visible. Less laser guns, more like the real ones. Disabled by default.

 

It is worth noting that enabling enhanced tracers messes with vanilla AH-1 and AH-65 HUDs. Not that these HUDs are useful (I've never learned what's the purpose of these two crossed rectangles), but it doesn't look good when you're flying one of these. Which is a shame because tracers look great with ET enabled.

 

[feersum.endjinn 6]

Couple of years ago I did some cleaning and found few old hard drives, took backup of their contents before wiping and throwing them into recycling and proceeded to forget about it all. Well, few days ago I started digging through the backups just for sake of curiosity and amongs random crap I found DXDLL source code. With Kegetys' permission, I now cleaned up it a bit and posted it on GitHub under GPL2 license.

 

I don't really know if this was the final version or not or whether it even compiles (or even Visual Studio version you're supposed to use), but it for me it was fun nostalgia trip reading through it up and maybe someone else finds it interesting too.

 

Source code and small writeup from what I remember about it's functionality is now at GitHub:

 

https://github.com/jarkkom/dxdll

[Oli89 0]

Where is the download link ?

[Oli89 0]

Is there a way to change the texture of the water itself? Or has anyone tried changing to a blurry texture?

 

Changing the bump map only makes the effect look better, but the water textures themselves are very blurry.