Mod Request: CP 199X

[Firepith]

I'm putting this out there because I don't know enough to get there myself:

I tried out the Low Spec Gamer guide for myself with a few mods from Nexus to remove the TAA anti-aliasing, run the game at 25% resolution, no motion blur, no film grain. Let me tell you, it is gorgeous - to the point where a few shader tweaks and mods might just convince me to play the rest of the game this way. I was even able to turn on RTX (reflections only), at least for walking around looking at things. Amazing.

A matching-yet-legible UI would push it over the edge, but the full resolution one that remains works out fine and doesn't break the illusion completely. That illusion being that the game was made in some kind of time-paradox-1996 where the developers never got HD screens but kept pushing graphical realism anyway.

There are only a few (big?) things that need tweaking to complete the look:

1) Something to get the fog effects to look not weirdly blocky. A dithered effect like what happens to the hair would be ideal.

2) Something to remove the "static" that appears between reflective and non-reflective surfaces in certain lighting, and to clean up all the other little flickering, but I suppose that much is also present in the base game...

3) Some kind of outline shader that sharpens the definition between objects and background, like in a cel-shaded game. Not too much or too little. (I don't have any clue here) Hopefully this would clean up the appearance of power lines and distant metal framework, which looks a little disconnected and floaty right now. If this were truly pixel art, you would hope to be able to see at least a 1px fully connected line.

4) Is there a way to push anisotrpy past '16' and would it help??

5) While most signs and things in the scene are legible enough at a reasonable distance, none of the computer screens are. A possible workaround would be a text box that opens up in the UI that transcribes things in a nice blocky font.

I am fully aware that there aren't actual mod tools yet. This is really just a wishlist.

Please, some more learned person, make the mod! Cyberpunk 199X!

I'm reminded of Lucas Pope's work on Obra Dinn. That project had some great goals in mind as far as keeping objects on the screen easily interpretable, some of which won't work here because there are a lot of colors.

My screencaps for inspiration:

Edited December 29, 2020 by Firepith

[Firepith]

Post updated with some screenshots to show you what I'm looking at using the techniques described.

 

Also I forgot to mention that I've locked the framerate at 20 fps, which jerks my little 90s kid nostalgia button even harder.

[Firepith]

Moar screenshots to show off the good and bad of lo-fi Cyberpunk without any fancy shader tweaks (because I don't know enough about that yet)

The lines between the tile get pretty jaggy. Actually a lot of the straight lines are jaggy af. A lot of the highlights end up making a lot of unneccessary bright pixels in the daytime.

Clearly, things get ugly in really bright sunlight. The flickering around certain things while in motion persists. Some surfaces and things like wire mesh will appear to be "fuzzy" like static at a certain distance, appearing to move around until you get close or far enough away. Barbed wire, power lines, just look disconnected without something to draw their outline more heavily. In my opinion, motion blur breaks the illusion too much and makes it all look really weird unless you are standing still.

Hangin' out by the indoor farming area (?) and the solar panel fields.

V just leans up against cactuses to feel alive.

 

Fine. I guess me and my Egrets will just flock off then.

Edited December 30, 2020 by Firepith