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Mass Effect 3 PC Thread: Fixing Bioware's broke-ass console port, now with holstering

B

Barrow Roll

Member
I played ME1 with high res textures and it looked nice, but I hated waiting for it to start up. High res textures we're too taxing on my system in ME2 and that Origin renaming sounds like a pain. Laziness wins out!
 
F

Felix Lighter

Member
After doing some reading about ME3Explorer, it seems like the tools are coming along and the texture replacement functionality is there. The thing I'm not clear about is will they be able to release mod packages that can just be downloaded and installed or will one need to replace the textures manually using the editor if they want to mod their game?
 
B

Bornstellar

Member
Felix Lighter said:
After doing some reading about ME3Explorer, it seems like the tools are coming along and the texture replacement functionality is there. The thing I'm not clear about is will they be able to release mod packages that can just be downloaded and installed or will one need to replace the textures manually using the editor if they want to mod their game?
Click to expand...

Installers are being worked on as well (see here. I'm currently putting together my own "package" as it were of textures that I find suitable.

Also, it seems most issues with texplorer (where you can replace textures) have been fixed so we can start saying goodbye to texmod.

389614_283274708461761_1842786421_n.jpg


Get the latest version here.
 
F

Felix Lighter

Member
Bornstellar said:
Installers are being worked on as well (see here. I'm currently putting together my own "package" as it were of textures that I find suitable.

Also, it seems most issues with texplorer (where you can replace textures) have been fixed so we can start saying goodbye to texmod.

389614_283274708461761_1842786421_n.jpg


Get the latest version here.
Click to expand...

Sounds great. Can't wait to start seeing texture mod installer packages. I love the modding community.
 
C

ChoklitReign

Member
Something's wrong...I can't start the game. I get to the menu, it takes a minute to connect to the servers, then I can move my mouse but nothing responds. I'm using the Widescreen Fixer, RadeonPro, Afterburner, and have the Leviathan DLC installed.
 
C

ChoklitReign

Member
Well I fixed that problem but now I am trying to use Texmod and it won't work. I followed the instructions from here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyhT0MzuLmk) EXACTLY but it won't launch from Texmod. I know I did the renaming and moving files around correctly because MassEffect3.exe has the Texmod icon. I should note I am using package mode instead of logging mode like in the video.

And now I can't even launch and play ME3 normally. Shit.
 
B

Bornstellar

Member
Felix Lighter said:
Sounds great. Can't wait to start seeing texture mod installer packages. I love the modding community.
Click to expand...

Mod installer is now a reality. See the following for details.

http://me3explorer.freeforums.org/post796.html#p796

I'm currently compiling a collection of the best high res textures and will put them into a mod when I'm satisfied with the results for a single "section" or category.

ChoklitReign said:
Well I fixed that problem but now I am trying to use Texmod and it won't work. I followed the instructions from here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyhT0MzuLmk) EXACTLY but it won't launch from Texmod. I know I did the renaming and moving files around correctly because MassEffect3.exe has the Texmod icon. I should note I am using package mode instead of logging mode like in the video.

And now I can't even launch and play ME3 normally. Shit.
Click to expand...

When I was using Texmod, I had to run a batch file any time I would use it to modify file names. After finishing with the game, you would finish the script and it would rename files again back to what they were supposed to be. I've also heard that it no longer functions with newer versions of Origin (this may or may not be true) so people would prevent automatic updating on versions that did work.

Anyway, the best solution is probably to use texplorer and the modmaker instead.
 
P

Protome

Member
Bornstellar said:
Fan made mod tools that are in development. Primarily in order to enable the creation of a better ending (like this for example).
Click to expand...

Haha wow, that "better" ending sounds even worse than the original.

I do think that people being able to create new endings is cool though. I just think that "And we beat the bad guy and everyone lived together happily and had a party and stuff" is a significant downgrade from the original.
 
L

Lime

Member
Protome said:
Haha wow, that "better" ending sounds even worse than the original.

I do think that people being able to create new endings is cool though. I just think that "And we beat the bad guy and everyone lived together happily and had a party and stuff" is a significant downgrade from the original.
Click to expand...

Everything excluding Star Kid and counter-intuitive endings differing in color is better than the original endings.

They could have made a new ending which basically just ALT+F4'ed MassEffect3.exe as soon as David Anderson
died
and that would still have been better than the stuff we got.
 
Trojita

Trojita

Rapid Response Threadmaker
Bornstellar said:
Just an FYI - me3 explorer is making a lot of progress and pretty soon texmod will no longer be a necessity.
Click to expand...

Of course I google to try and find out what this is and the website spoils the ending of the trilogy for me in the first sentence.
 
F

Felix Lighter

Member
Bornstellar said:
Mod installer is now a reality. See the following for details.

http://me3explorer.freeforums.org/post796.html#p796

I'm currently compiling a collection of the best high res textures and will put them into a mod when I'm satisfied with the results for a single "section" or category.
Click to expand...

Wow awesome. I wish I had the drive to build one, maybe some day I'll take the time to learn the tool. I really appreciate the work being done here. Thanks!

I actually put on hold a ME series full play through for this. I finished the original a few weeks ago but I'm waiting to move on to the sequels.
 
A

An-Det

Member
Awesome, I'd forgotten this thread existed. The Xpadder-> Xbox 360 controller support in the OP is exactly what I've been looking for. Maybe I'm just too used to the console controls, but aside from mouse aiming everything about the controls feels awkward to me after all the hours I've put into the multi on console.
 
S

StreetFighter

Neo Member
Sorry to revive an old thread - I've tried forcing AA through nVidia inspector but cannot for the life of me get it to work. I get a framerate drop in game with these settings, but the game just looks like AA is disabled with jaggies everywhere. I'm running a GTX 680 on Win8 x64, with 314.07 drivers. I should add I'm running the game through Origin.

Has anything changed with driver/game updates in the last 8 or so months? I'm noticing a lot of forum posts got this to work almost a year ago, but I don't seem to be having any luck now. Any ideas?

3oipNQ4.jpg
 
T

TheUnsunghero26

Member
Thought this may be relevant, or at least of interest. Has anyone watched the Edmonton Expo Mass Effect Universe Panel? I watched it not to long ago, one thing that stood out was this; at around 24 mins in one of the questions asked is "what was one of the hardest parts of developing the games?" one of the devs immediately answers with "PS3 performance" and went on to say how a lot of the stuff they had to cut was to get it to run on PS3. This makes me think that this is the reason holstering was cut out. A Bioware dev said it was due to low memory. Of course I'm just guessing, but if its true than it kinda sucks that it had to be taken out of the other versions.
 
H

hateradio

The Most Dangerous Yes Man
ME2 had working holstering. They removed it because there was no real exploration in the game. They added it on the Leviathan DLC.
 
L

Lime

Member
hateradio said:
ME2 had working holstering. They removed it because there was no real exploration in the game. They added it on the Leviathan DLC.
Click to expand...

Wait, so you have to buy the Leviathan DLC to get holstering? Or has it been included in an accompanying patch for all buyers?
 
C

Chance Hale

Member
Was thinking of buying the ME Trilogy from amazon (24 dollars) as I've been wanting to play them on PC for a while(finished on the 360) I've seen a lot of beautiful images involving the texture mods but along with that have been a ton of complaints about absurd loading times along with them. Are they really 15-20 minutes long no matter the PC? For example I have an SSD, GTX670, and I5 3570K. Not top of the line but pretty decent and to have to suffer through those loading times would be rather frustrating.
 
H

hateradio

The Most Dangerous Yes Man
Lime said:
Wait, so you have to buy the Leviathan DLC to get holstering? Or has it been included in an accompanying patch for all buyers?
Click to expand...
No, I may have mislead you guys. Exploration (holstered) mode is used in it, but you can't toggle holstering.
 
B

Bornstellar

Member
Another modding update. I've been taking high quality texmods and have been converting them to .mod files which you can use to permanently replace textures without the use of texmod. I have a bunch up right now, though it's a little out of date and I need to get around to uploading all the new stuff I've made.

https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=C62133E531AE6057!320&authkey=!ADCVOvdDa1ZVZw8

Also, someone found a way to replace Ashley's hairdo and give her a bun.

http://social.bioware.com/project/8729/#details
 
Dacon

Dacon

Banned
Does anyone else get some pretty noticeable banding around shadows?

Ive screwed around with a few solutions but it hasnt made much of a difference if any.
 
T

thechristoph

Sir!
Hey guys,

Can someone point me in the direction of a good resource on how to use FXAA Tool and what I actually need to do to make it work? Or maybe read my situation here and see if you know what to do...

First off, I know I fucked up by not backing up my data folder before installing mods...I installed Smarteck's Illumination mod and thought it actually looked worse than the default game, but I wanted to monkey with the settings. So I downloaded FXAA tool to see if I could make some changes. FXAA Tool told me that there were multiple DirectX files in the data folder so it couldn't run.

Okay, so I figured out I could run "Modificator FXAA Tool" that part of the original Illumination mod to make changes. But it is super limited compared to the standalone version. No matter what I do, it actually looks worse than the stock game.

I was able to turn everything off, but there's like this permanent radial blur every time I launch the game. I can tap Break to turn go back to default, but I really don't want to do that every single time I launch the game.

I deleted all the Illumination mod tools and now I am able to point FXAA Tool to my ME3 folder and it doesn't complain about there being multiple DirectX files in the directory. But nothing happens when I mess with the settings. The only thing I can perceive is when I turn Technicolor on, everything turns blue.

TLDR: Messing with Illumination and FXAA Tool give my game a permanent radial blur and nothing else. What do I need to delete/reinstall to get back to normal so I can start again?
 
TyphoonStruggle

TyphoonStruggle

Member
Bornstellar said:
Another modding update. I've been taking high quality texmods and have been converting them to .mod files which you can use to permanently replace textures without the use of texmod. I have a bunch up right now, though it's a little out of date and I need to get around to uploading all the new stuff I've made.

https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=C62133E531AE6057!320&authkey=!ADCVOvdDa1ZVZw8
Click to expand...

Is this all that needs to be done?

Open ME3 Explorer -> Tools -> Mod Maker -> File -> Load Jobs -> *.mod -> Run -> Run All
-> Launch Mass Effect 3 (via Origin)

EDIT: After clicking "Run All" it takes forever to "install" the mods. Is this usual? (It took about 1 hour for 2.5 of your .mod files)
 
B

Bornstellar

Member
New version of Garrus' default armor is out today (his alternate armor was also recently done).

Before:
tK0LEY4.jpg
Click to expand...

After:
HRQVJiO.jpg
Click to expand...

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?1aua9lj75ha2mvv

Don't know what the hell Bioware was smoking to ship the game with textures like that.

And his alternate:

masseffect32013-03-05vvy5n.jpg
Click to expand...

http://social.bioware.com/project/8624/#files

And if you're still not satisfied with the default retex above, another one is coming from the person who did his alternate.
 
G

Guri

Member
Guys, I finished the games on the Xbox 360 and I sold it, but now I want to play the Citadel DLC on the PC. Do any of you have (or know where to find) a save file for these choices? I already have for ME1 and 2.

------------------------------ CHOICE SPOILERS ----------------------------------

All 100% Paragon, including all of the DLCs on ME1 and ME2. All quests done on the trilogy, except for ME3's DLC. MaleShep, main face;

Romance options: Liara on the first game, then Miranda;

Kaidan saved on ME1 and Anderson on the Council, which was also saved. Wrex alive;

Last mission on ME2: All squad members survived;

In ME3, all squad members survived (except for the ones that would die because of the story and Anderson). The ending choice was to kill the Reapers and myself, except that the cutscene shows Shepard breathing.

------------------------------ CHOICE SPOILERS ----------------------------------
 
T

TheUnsunghero26

Member
Khorino said:
Guys, I finished the games on the Xbox 360 and I sold it, but now I want to play the Citadel DLC on the PC. Do any of you have (or know where to find) a save file for these choices? I already have for ME1 and 2.

------------------------------ CHOICE SPOILERS ----------------------------------

All 100% Paragon, including all of the DLCs on ME1 and ME2. All quests done on the trilogy, except for ME3's DLC. MaleShep, main face;

Romance options: Liara on the first game, then Miranda;

Kaidan saved on ME1 and Anderson on the Council, which was also saved. Wrex alive;

Last mission on ME2: All squad members survived;

In ME3, all squad members survived (except for the ones that would die because of the story and Anderson). The ending choice was to kill the Reapers and myself, except that the cutscene shows Shepard breathing.

------------------------------ CHOICE SPOILERS ----------------------------------
Click to expand...

You can use the save editor to make a save or convert your Xbox save into a PC one.
 
B

Bisnic

Really Really Exciting Member!
What's the easiest way to install all those HD texture mods? All i see from that big BSN thread is individual downloads, and i'd rather not have to download one at a time like that...
 
L

Lime

Member
Bisnic said:
What's the easiest way to install all those HD texture mods? All i see from that big BSN thread is individual downloads, and i'd rather not have to download one at a time like that...
Click to expand...

I still use Texmod and there's also a Skydrive with all of the Texture mods for ME3.

Or you can just download my zip file from some months ago.

Lime said:
Empty Space wanted me to upload my collected mods for Mass Effect 3, so I figured I might as well post the link here as well. You can download it here or a temporary mirror here

These are some of the examples of texture improvements of some of the characters. Note that not all texture modifications are present, but I tried to show as much as possible.



I have included the mods created by many different people, like JeanLuc, Smarteck, Ottemis, Deadmeat, and several other hard-working people. Their work is much appreciated, so big credit to them all. I've tried to avoid including the not-so-good texture mods, but it is hard to go through all of them to see what's good and what's not. At the very least I've included a much better N7 armour texture insted of the one we have seen with all the stripes and squares that people normally use.

In order to use them, you have to use Texmod.exe, which has to be started through Origin. To do so, follow this tutorial, it's a simple re-naming of Texmod to MassEffect3.exe and vice versa.

I have also included my edited Coalesced.bin, which includes some modifications. These are the hotkeys for the included Coalesced.bin:

Code: 
Home (load screen): Equip weapon
End (load screen): Holster weapon
F12: Tiledshot 4
NUMPAD1: Disable HUD
NUMPAD 2: FOV 0
NUMPAD 3: FOV 75
NUMPAD 4: Timescale 0.5
NUMPAD 5: Timescale 1 (normal)
NUMPAD 6: Stop time
NUMPAD 7: FOV 120
NUMPAD 8: FOV 20
NUMPAD 9: Flycam

Additional edits to Coalesced:
-NPC Armor
-No helmet Ajax armor
-Unlocked armor pieces

Finally, I added a Large Address Aware tool, that might enable MassEffect3.exe to tolerate the large amount of mods, but I am not sure if it actually helps, as the game crashes if one includes all the level texture mods.

P.S.
The game is still shit.
Click to expand...
 
B

Bornstellar

Member
Just wanted to say that after Jean Luc gave up hope on ME3, I was saddened by the possibility that we wouldn't get quality textures anymore. This is no longer the case. Ottemis is the new master.

http://social.bioware.com/forum/Mas...ations/HR-Textures-by-Ottemis-16260765-1.html

Her work includes HR retexes of ALL modular armor sets for both male and female Shep. Here's a preview of her stuff:

masseffect3201303102018.jpg


masseffect3201305300141.jpg


citadellaptopcomp1.jpg
Click to expand...

Texplorer .mods are also available for most of the base textures. In other news, it's now possible to modify DLC content (without a cracked game), so expect more on that soon.

One more thing - I have quite a collection of curated (high quality textures only) .mods that I will be uploading once I have a few more characters taken care of...
 
daninthemix

daninthemix

Member
Old bump here, but does anyone know why using SGSSAA causes a weird judder during cutscenes? Is there some cutscene-only frame blending or something that I need to disable?

EDIT: Found the reason: apparently SGSSAA is partially broken in Nvidia drivers newer than 347.88. I rolled back to 347.88 and can use 0x000000C1 with all three Mass Effect games now.
 
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