***OFFICIAL***: YOU can help the RS2 team! ENB modification

[Rt. Hon. Gentleman]

Hello to all you fellow RS players and fans out there!

An interesting option has been discussed lately in the development area of this RS forum over the past few days. Those of you that PC game outside of Total War may possibly have heard of a modification to up-rate old games graphics to modern levels . It is called ENBseries, and it was written by a very clever Russian chap called Boris, who made it for GTAIII, found it could work for a lot of games, and then made it a public release. It is used (in various different guises) for such diverse titles as GTA3, GTA4, Morrowind, Tomb Raider Underworld, Deus Ex, Mafia, Mount and Blade, and even Medieval 2: Total War. (See link here).

The modification gives us many effects, three of which are of special interest:

HDR (Bloom), as seen on many modern games, which (used in moderation) can make for a pleasing light reflection and intensity change.
SSAO (Screen Space Ambient Occlusion), which is a more recent innovation that gives us cool lighting, shadows, et cetera.
DoF (Depth of Field) which slightly blurs things seen in the distance, making it all look more plausible and hiding the failings of the Rome engine in portraying objects that are far away in any detail.

All three of these are found natively in Empire: Total War, and our ability to include them in RS2 would go a huge way towards our closing the graphics gap.

SO WHY DON'T WE JUST STICK IT IN AND HAVE DONE WITH IT?

Well, we can't. It's just something I found while trying to mod Morrowind, unrelated to RS2. The mod requires much fiddling, and there are literally tens and tens of versions for the mod, all of which may or may not work for Rome. The fact that it does work with M2 means that it can work with the engine, but that's as far as we have got. The team are doing all they can to make sure you get RS2 ASAP, and simply cannot spend time tinkering with things that may or may not bear results.

So, I had a simple idea. ENB is a public modification. Google it. Use your web searching skills to find as many versions as you can. Download them, see if they work. Join web forums, ask around with techy blokes and see if they can find a solution. If the basic mod works for RS1.6 or even RTW vanilla, it is sure to work for RSII! Do whatever you can to help us out here. It would be nice to have it, and whoever figured this out for us would be much praised, but the fact remains that you would have to sort it on your own.

Don't worry about settings. If you get green writing at the top of RTW when booted up, it will mean the mod is working. You can leave the settings to us. But please, we implore you, have a try. If any of you are/know awesome tech heads, get them to have a play. Check out the offical ENB website and forums.

Give it a go. Come back and report with your findings, whether or not they are successful. I will try and rep anyone who had a go.

Thanks. It means a lot to us that RS2 looks as good as it can. After all, this is 2010 now, not 2004!


A shot of the mod (tweaked and configured) as used in M2TW (credit goes to S-te-fan, not me)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

EDIT: I suggest signing up here and joining in when I ask what is going on with this. More people = more urgency to help.
http://enbseries.3dn.ru/forum/21

[tone]

I've had a thought since the discussion on the developers forum which is how about trying to contact the maker of the program? He might be interested in helping out.

[Rt. Hon. Gentleman]

I've had a thought since the discussion on the developers forum which is how about trying to contact the maker of the program? He might be interested in helping out.

Will do.

I know the RTR lot are also seemingly interested in making this breakthrough as well. Whoever figures it out first can help pass the info onto the other bunch, especially in our recent spirit of collaboration.

RE: contacting Boris, I'll get onto it now.

[tone]

Worth showing him some screenshots of what we've done with the engine which might convince him that there's still some life left in the old engine.

[Rt. Hon. Gentleman]

Technically, it should work for ANY dx9 game. It's weird beyond belief that it doesn't work for Rome.

I'll do as you say.

[Rt. Hon. Gentleman]

I think, from a bit of browsing on the official forum, I know the problem. RTW is old, it uses old dx libraries, not the newer ones I've been bunging in from med2 and mount and blade. I just need to dl each kind of the mod ever made, and see what the engine reacts to.

[Shadowfax]

count me in i will try my best

any thing for RSII team