Total War Rome II Aztec 2016 Graphics * 20/6/2016 Release Date

[Slypear]

Man I hate to be THAT guy, but I've been using AD Finitum (Thanks Slypear) for a while, and Aztec only recently, and yesterday I got into a battle that was so dark and foggy it was near unplayable. I feel like some of the weather in Aztec is too dark. Jus' sayin'. I don't want to uninstall it because most of the time it looks amazing, but when you get a random weather deal like that and are the defender (therefore unable to wait for better weather) it was just not fun.

Agreed. Some of the new lighting can be extremely dark. I've had to crank up my brightness and gamma by some pretty substantial amounts to get around it on a battle-to-battle basis. That being said, if it's TOO dark, I just hit F9 to temporarily disable GEM while I give out orders.

[Dago Red]

Whoops. Lol.

Basically what this guy said.

Download your choice of Aztec's mod in the original post. You should end up downloading a .rar file titled RomeII_Graphics_2016.rar

Use a program such as 7-zip or another extractor to extract/decompress the downloaded .rar folder and turn it into a normal folder.

Then, open up the new, extracted folder and you should find a file titled RomeII_Graphics_2016.pack.

Move RomeII_Graphics_2016.pack to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Total War Rome II\data

Done! Load up the launcher and tick romeii_graphics_2016 to enable it. Hit play, and you should have some pretty great vistas.

Thanks man. I thought I'd already done this (aside from the glitch where I had to rename the file to.pack myself -- it was indeed a .pack file sitting in there, not working. However, it helps to have a simple set of instructions to follow even when you think you know what you're doing, simply so you can just do it again knowing it's the right thing and the right place to put it. Seems to be working upon my second download.

A mod should paste the installation instructions into the OP. A lot of guys won't know this goes into the data folder, or that you need to enable it like any other mod.

[Senticon]

@SnickerSnack
Would be great if you remember where it was territorially, weather conditions and etc. We, users, could actually look into it ourselves and post solution before Aztec does.

@Slypear
Thanks for instructions and great presets, but I think I'll pass for now. Your config is much better than mine, so I think I'll wait till rig upgrade before I grab GEM.

[Tenerife_Boy]

In my case I just feel that the older version is better. Now I have some beautiful landscapes but the units are tremendously dark: their weapons armours and everything...can you fix it Aztec ?

Prooves if this darkness:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[SnickerSnack]

Well, I do remember. It was on Sicily. I'm using the DEI mod so I don't remember what the English equivalent is, but it was the city on the West side of Sicily - Lilybaeum I think it is in DEI.
Right on the coast.
Day battle.
Weather was dark bluish tinted and foggy. But not realistic fog like it was a morning battle or anything, it was just really... off. I couldn't see mine or enemy units unless I was zoomed up on them.
I can't say for certain which season I was in is the only thing. I should have taken a screenshot I guess... but I was too busy losing the battle to worry about it

[Tenerife_Boy]

You know, I use a mod to remove fog and rain (not snow I dunno but I like snow) of all the battles. Honestly, who the wants to fight on such conditions? appart that is it not realistic for the timeframe, Ok for Napoleon and Empire cauuse there are many reports on that, but for Ancient times? nah...

[Senticon]

I have rather specific question here. I noticed sun position moved way up in battles, which makes battlefield look much better in rain, but from certain angle you still can see sun reflection on the ground, and it drives me nuts... I've been trying to dig in data files with PFM with no luck so far, but seems like Aztec (or someone else here) might know how to tweak this:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I basically need this completely removed, not sure if anyone else is annoyed with it too, but I certainly am.

@Tenerife_Boy
Whow, do you get this everywhere? Are you using GEM or some other FX tools maybe? It's strange because I don't get same image, units look normal for me, without this crazy shading.

[Tenerife_Boy]

Maybe was the map but the truth is I used only aztec second verison of the mod. No GEM and no other fx tool. just sweetfx preset but even if I disable it I get those black shaders

[Dago Red]

Maybe was the map but the truth is I used only aztec second verison of the mod. No GEM and no other fx tool. just sweetfx preset but even if I disable it I get those black shaders

I'm no expert in lighting or graphics effects, but there's something wrong with your lighting and color saturation in the midrange, not shadows or highlights. This is the exact effect you would get on an image in photoshop if you cranked the midrange of the lighting scale slider along with desaturating the color palate, in the middle of the range. The effect is to wash out an image with a dark end that's not too black, dull highlights with no shine, but still lots of gamma, and muddy colors all around.

This is what I'm getting in DeI (which already makes considerable improvements to the crap vanilla textures and color palates, not to mention the units themselves) + GEM + Aztec. I've fiddled with a dozen Gem settings to lessen the big fantasy effects trying to get the most realistic looking environment possible. Aztec helps a ton in most situations though there's still some work to do ( and I don't know what I'm doing so it's all trial and error) to get realism.


The woods on the edge of an arid landscape in Eastern Anatolia/Armenia.


That arid landscape outside of the woods.


This one is somewhere in Thrace or Macedonia.


The Steppes, Rauxsa-alanna territory.

I've also glimpsed some of the terrible grey-blue fog / dark daylight conditions but only on my attack, so I was able to skip it so far.

[aztec]

FRIENDS .
thank you for all your feedback .
first I should say my purpose is not realism with this mod . however I desigend a lot of realism effects , I designed so many heroic environments to make battles memorable .
and @

Senticon , that is the bug of the game not my mod . in the Attila total war this bug was fixed by CA

[Tenerife_Boy]

I will try it again and if I dislike I will stay with Aztec first version wich I could have my most epic screens ever.

Aztec 1.0v

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[SnickerSnack]

FRIENDS .
thank you for all your feedback .
first I should say my purpose is not realism with this mod . however I desigend a lot of realism effects , I designed so many heroic environments to make battles memorable .
and @

Senticon , that is the bug of the game not my mod . in the Attila total war this bug was fixed by CA

Thank you Aztec. Point taken. That last battle was indeed memorable due to the weather effects, but just not memorable in a good way

I haven't had the chance to play this week at all, otherwise I would probably have seen other weather effects that I love and would be singing your praises.

[Slypear]

FRIENDS .
thank you for all your feedback .
first I should say my purpose is not realism with this mod . however I desigend a lot of realism effects , I designed so many heroic environments to make battles memorable .
and @

Senticon , that is the bug of the game not my mod . in the Attila total war this bug was fixed by CA

By all means, man, I'm still absolutely reeling at how gorgeous all the stylized weather scenarios are. Perfect for a wild, Corinthian-helmed Spartan campaign. Gerard Butler/10.

[faber_avgust]

Hi aztec, any news?

[Dago Red]

Great stuff, but any word on fixing the black/blue fog in daytime battles that you can't see through?

[Tenerife_Boy]

Great stuff, but any word on fixing the black/blue fog in daytime battles that you can't see through?

Post a picture.

And about your sugnnature...play DeI and check Ancient Empires reviews on youtube (about to be released for Atila, in case you don't know). Brilliant BAIs ever seen with the lastest graphics and animations. I c an not go back to M2tw...

[King Ramses]

Before I download this (it looks amazing) I have a few queries.

What resolution are you guys all playing at? I have a 2560x1440 monitor, but I don't know if I need such a high resolution to appreciate this mod, and lowering it would certainly improve fps.

My GPU is a nvidia gtx 660ti, would it be able to run this or should I upgrade?

Finally, and this is especially aimed at combining with gem, how easy is it to customise these mods? I am kind of a newbie.in this area. I aiming for a largely realistic but slightly stylised aesthetic, something that looks like antiquity but not to the extent that it looks like a comic book, where literally everything is just a different shade of bronze. How would I go about customising the look, or are there any GEM presets that anyone would recommend with this mod?

Again it looks amazing and I will download ASAP.

[Griwild]

@King Ramses:
To your first question regarding your GPU:
If you're rig is able to play Rome umodded, I'm sure, that you can play with Aztec and GEM. You'll get a fps drop in less GPU stressing situations, but you'll probably won't get so much drop in situations, where your frame rate is low anyways - in big siege battles especially and if you zoom in closely, cause here the CPU is ussually the bottleneck. Rome 2 isn't well optimized even after 17 patches and I got used to play in the range between 10-20 fps in big siege battles Lowering the graphic settings doesn't change much on my rig, cause even when I lower all (supossedly only) cpu intensive settings the GPU ironically takes a rest and GPU load goes down, while the cpu starts to swet even more by trying to cover up for the almost idling GPU.
With a 660Ti you'll probably be able to play on medium to high settings. This is just a guess - I have a GTX 970 4G, so I don't know what you'll have to expect exactly.
Your CPU is probably more important than your GPU - but as mentioned above: if you can play Rome unmodded you'll be able to play it with Atzec and GEM
Edit: But 1440 is probabely too hefty - I'm playing on 1080 and I've got a 970

To your second question regarding the cutomization of the mod visuals:
You can't modify Aztec. But you can modify almost everything there is in GEM (shader, lightning, effects... you name it). To do that start the GEMFX_Configurator.exe, which after GEM installation will be located in your RomeII directory - should be in *yourSteamDirectory/steam/steamapps/common/Total War Rome II. If you want to use a custom preset like one of the two marvelous Ad Finitum presets by Slypear, simply put the GEMFX_settings.cfg in the GEMFX/Presets/current folder inside your Rome II directory and you good to go!


@ Aztec:
First of all thank you very much for your incredible work! Your lightning mod is really a game changer for me! So much eye-candy for no significant fps drop - absolutely awesome!
Anyway, there's one tiny thing that I think might be a bug on the campaign map. The sky looks like behind a "watercolor-aquarelish" veil and there is a strange double black line between the horizon and the sky. Is this only on my rig or a known problem? Below a screenshot so you can see what I am refering to:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Nichita]

Hey man!
I downloaded the campaign map edition of your mod but when eneble this mod it completly rapes my campaign map. Shadows are overly dark and big.

[Nichita]

Campaign map without and with Aztec Graphic (Gem included): http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7...4/screenshots/ (fisrt one is without, second is with)