Colour Saturation, Brightness.

[ArcturusFyr]

Recently, re-installed my Steam Copy of "Oblivion GOTY", this time however the visual's seem a'bit off. My last installation (which went bad after playing for 4 month's on it, the game wouldn't even load-up!) allowed me to adjust the "Brightness" setting's of the game, which produced rich colour's and dark shadow's (dark to a point where I would need a torch or light-spell to see) and brought a greater level of immersion that i'm trying to emulate again, but unsuccessful at doing because of god know's what.

 

So here's my problem, when I launch the game and reach the Title Screen, a certain level of Brightness/Darkness would be set, but when I try to adjust the brightness slighter down, the game's brightness flare's up to a even brighter level (Even though I've been setting the slider down), and when I set the brightness level on lowest, it's still brighter than the initial setting's. The only way to reset it is to set the slider value's back to the center (and I mean CENTER, if the slider is even one bit off, the setting won't reset, the title screen when it's coming up will look like the original brightness, but after the title is on screen it'll just flare up again.)

 

I noticed this difference when using my laptop and that of my uncle's, when I launch the with my uncle's laptop, everything from the User-Interface down to the in-game colour is dark and saturated, when using mine, colour is slightly off, shadow's aren't as dark and colour seem's a'little washed out.

 

If anyone here has an answer to my problem, please feel free to leave an answer.

Thank's in Advance.

[Striker879]

Could be the game had trouble identifying your hardware, perhaps because of some files left over from your previous install (e.g. did you rename your old install's Oblivion.ini to something like Oblivionini.old). There is one setting in Oblivion.ini that could be giving you trouble. Search for 'bFullBrightLighting' and make sure that line says 'bFullBrightLighting=0' (it will be in the [Display] section). Also make sure you looking in Oblivion.ini and not Oblivion_default.ini found in your game's Oblivion folder. The one you want is located in 'Users\[username]\Documents\My Games\Oblivion' for Vista and Win7 or 'Documents and Settings\[username]\My Documents\My Games\Oblivion' for WinXP.

[ArcturusFyr]

Will do, thank's fellow. I will make sure to post my result's as soon as I change that bit of script there.

[ArcturusFyr]

Doesn't seem to be the case, the "bFullBrightLighting" script line is at the 0 value... Hmm, on another note, I did experience something strange this morning after doing the maintenance process I let my laptop finish over-night. Yesterday I tried to change the colour setting's of my game through the Nvidia Control Panel utility. The option I used to do this was the "Adjust Desktop Color Setting's" I managed to brighten up my desktop through the Brightness and Contrast setting's (both are set at "45") and changing the Gamma from it's original setting of "1.00" to ".63" screen color was less washed out, and was at a fair brightness level (The user-interface for the launcher became darker, but the game's colour and brightness setting still seemed a little too bright and colouration washed out), however, when I started up my laptop again, the colour setting's I had made didn't seem to take affect, colour was slightly washed out again.

 

I checked the Nvidia desktop colour control again, my setting's were saved, but they seemed to have not taken effect, I dialed down the gamma slider, and it immediately went to the dark colour again as opposed to the light-colour it was on, I only dialed down to point .60 and it looked like I had been dialing from the 1.00 setting to .60 instead, even though it was already .63.

 

I also forgot to metion this, but when my uncle's laptop goes to the Oblivion Title Screen, it's bright at first, but when the title "Rest's" on the screen it become's dark, but when my title screen come's up, it's somewhat dark. and when I try to move the slider down on the "Brightness" option it flare's up even brighter, my lowest setting's for brightness, are my uncle's laptop medium "Brightness" setting's. It's really odd...

 

If you've anymore help to spare, I will gladly accept it.

 

Thank's in Advance.

[Striker879]

Did your 'maintenance process' involve updating video drivers? If it did you could try rolling back to the previous version and see if it helps.

 

Have a look through Bben46's wiki article Oblivion reinstall procedure and see if anything mentioned in there flags something you know you didn't do (or did differently) when you re-installed.

 

Another trick is getting the game to create a new Oblivion.ini and re-detect your hardware. Just rename your Oblivion.ini (NOT Oblivion_default.ini) to Oblivionini.old and start the game as far as the menu screen. If your hardware isn't correctly detected you'll likely need to go into the video settings and reselect your preferred settings. Exit the game to the desktop (so that it builds the new Oblivion.ini) and see if that helps.

 

Laptops (even recent ones) and Oblivion weren't really designed for each other. Generally newer laptops will either come with a fairly good video card and a lame CPU or onboard shared memory video with a good CPU. You really need to be a smart researcher with deep pockets if you want a good video card (with dedicated memory) and a good CPU. Expect to pay $400 or $500 dollars more for options that only cost the manufacturer $200, but transform the machine into something worth while.

 

I suppose you were able to run the game before so it should run on the same machine again ... you can tell what my opinion of most laptops for gaming is though. Check your Windows updates installed log and I bet you'll see Microsoft helped you out.

[ArcturusFyr]

I can assure you that my laptop can run Oblivion.

But here's something that's really strange, I don't think it's Oblivion, but Skyrim(Has never been uninstalled) as-well, both have the wrong level of Brightness for setting's I've made in-game and out.

 

However, when it come's to Borderland's 2, the change's in for setting's in Gamma, Brightness and Contrast seem to apply.

Before, borderland's also seemed washed out, but after applying my new Nvidia Desktop setting's. The game became more vibrant and rich in colour's, when it's daytime in the game. Colour stand out as they should, when dark, it's appropriately dark, where-as the game prior to my recent desktop setting change's, colour was also washed out (in comparison, didn't really notice before, seeing the game was still colourful in either setting's, noticed the difference after making the adjustment's)

 

I'm wondering if it's a problem with the script extender's running for both game's on my computer, I mean, I've disabled a lot of thing's in the MSCONFIG utility, same with mine uncle's laptop, but with a few exception's. Think I should start from there?

[Striker879]

Sounds like you've made a lot of changes. If you kept a record of those changes you could start rolling them back one at a time until things sort out. If you don't have a record of the changes you'll need to rely on memory. I'd keep a record of what I do in troubleshooting. Having a list to look at may also trigger some other ideas on what to try.

 

I don't have any experience myself with Oblivion Graphics Extender (OBGE) or the like, but I do know that there are certain ways that things need to done (it doesn't generate it's ini file until first run for example). You make no mention of OBGE but you haven't giving us a mod list and it came to mind when you mentioned script extenders. I've never heard of any conflicts between Oblivion Script Extender (OBSE) and it's equivalent in Skyrim (SKSE if I've got it right, but I don't have Skyrim myself so I could be wrong).

[ArcturusFyr]

Hmmm? No OBGE or any Graphic's extender's for either game.

The mod's (Oblivion).

-Aetheric CuteBlade

-Jojjo's Drake Knight Armour and Weapon set.

-OBSE

-DMC Stylish (Non-.esp version)

-Fast Exit 2

-OSR

 

That's really it for Oblivion.

For Skyrim, no animation mod or graphic's mod's. All of them are just Armour and Weapon mod's. But they're far too numerous to list.

 

Y'know this's really funny, there are mods that can enrich the colour and deepen the shadow's of the game, but with a few simple change's to the in-game graphical setting's you can get some of the Visual's generated by visual enhancing mod's, not saying to be mean. Just thinking aloud is all.

Edited December 29, 2012 by ArcturusFyr

[Striker879]

About the only other thing I can think of to suggest is Koroush Ghazi's Oblivion Tweak Guide. When I build a new machine the first thing I do after installing Windows is use his TweakGuides Tweaking Companion (I'm still using WinXP and have an annotated hardcopy of the XP guide I've refined over the years). Next is the Nvidia Forceware Tweak Guide. Every build gets that treatment ... it gives me a known starting point.

 

When you're looking through the Oblivion Tweak Guide have a look at the [Graphics Variables] section on the Advanced Tweaking first page. When the first of my current rig's SLI two video cards died I had to redo the steps to force shader model 3.0 ... you may run across a similar thing. Before I thought of that I was really scratching my head. Your problem may be rooted in something simple ... a mismatch between what you are trying to set in the game menus vs what's being forced in your graphics card set up for example.

[ArcturusFyr]

Hmmm... This'll be a'bit short (Really tired, so please don't be too cross with me) but what I notice between my brightness/colour incorrect laptop vs the Two other laptop's which has appropriate colour setting's.(1-mine, 1 uncle's) is that they both have 'Windows Driver Foundation - User-mode Driver Framework' service enabled, while the one with the problem has it disabled. May that be the issue?

 

I'm going to try to enable the thing again but before doing that, I'd like to hear your thought's.