Dark Souls 2

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Cavou

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Cavou

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About this mod

Touches up various environmental textures throughout Dark Souls 2. Specifically, adjusts textures that noticeably tile by revising the art direction of the texture in an attempt to make the best of lazy environmental design.

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This mod replaces the environmental textures in various locations throughout Dark Souls 2 in an attempt to remove any glaring ugliness from the locations you explore.
All assistance and contributions are greatly appreciated. 

Texture Improvement Project ended up in 2nd place for file of the month for August 2014. I'm really happy that my mod got that far, and if anything I actually think BloodyGoreSouls was more deserving of 1st place anyways. Big thanks to everyone who voted!

A great big thanks to everyone for 260+ endorsements! It means a lot to me! I'll ensure to continue support for this mod for as long as I can find new things to improve within my abilities.


INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS:

To install, put the DDS files in Steam\steamapps\common\Dark Souls II\Game\textures\DarkSoulsII\override (or whatever directory GeDoSaTo is located in), and make sure that "enableTextureOverride" is set to "true" in GeDoSaTo.ini and that GeDoSaTo is enabled when you launch Dark Souls 2. 

If you're a regular user and don't care about all the details or choice and just want improved textures, just go to "Texture Improvement Project\For Users\Quick Installation" within the main file you can download and copy and past all the DDS files into the directory mentioned above and you'll be fine. Quick Installation always includes the most up-to-date and recommended files.
If you don't want to change the textures in certain areas for whatever reason or just want to know which files belong to which location, go to the "Custom Installation" folder also in the "For Users" section. Optional files and variants of other textures are also available here, but are not recommended.

The optional file contains the raw extracted TGA files and is intended for use by other mod developers.

NOTICE: Remove the file "00afe41e" if you're having stuttering in Brume Tower. The improvement didn't do much and causes stuttering, so it's not recommended.

NOTICE: If you do not like the very smooth texture of Eleum Loyce walls, remove "a0cdcbb2 and fd3f66a5" to restore the original bump maps.


WHY I MADE IT:

I was always annoyed ever since the beta by the sheer amount of tiling textures in the game, everywhere from Drangleic Castle to the Dragon Aerie to the Forest of Fallen Giants and Shaded Woods, even being apparent in the otherwise spectacular DLCs. It's distracting and harms the deep immersion the Souls series is so known for.
Repeating textures were something I've heard complaints about since the early reviews and impressions from the TGS gameplay reveal. Of course, it was never fixed in either the PC release or updates.
Some mods already exist to fix the tiling with the Shaded Ruins moss texture and are fantastic, but other eyesores still need tending to.
I've never touched a texture editing or viewing program until now, but I really wanted to do my small part to improve the epic Dark Souls 2 experience for others and hopefully encourage more people to make their own mods or even contribute to this one if they wish to try and put little fixes like this all in one package. 
I'm an amateur when it comes to texture editing, but I try my best. 


TEXTURE INFO:

Currently the mod includes 35 changed textures, with a few alternate options.

Tested and fully functional textures are:
+ Drangleic Castle foyer and Pursuers room brickwork wall and ceiling texture (82fb606c).
+ Forest of Fallen Giants battlement and bridge floor texture and bump map (64088596 and abbe19c8).
+ Forest of Fallen Giants soil seen most at the bottom of the area outside of the Cardinal Tower bonfire (f1865644).
+ Dragon Shrine Ancient Dragon boss chamber shrine walls brickwork (fb244752 and 4405c0b5). 
+ Aldia's Keep main hall brickwork wall bump map and texture (d11e8676 and 022c9f84). 
+ Shaded Woods bridge texture and speckled stone texture (6c623918). 
+ Earthen Peak dirt brick texture on the walls (063e3449, 62477782 and cf41edb2). [Includes two options, brick and pure dirt, see screenshots.]
+ Forest of Fallen Giants wall texture (13ec68e1). (Thanks to JudgmentJay.)
+ Iron Keep blackened brick texture on walls at PVP bridge (9d559fbd).
+ Brightstone Cove sandstone texture (ae8215b5 and efbc7114).
+ Crown of the Old Iron King DLC: Brume Tower rock texture and bump map at the base of the rocky outcrop where central Brume Tower is situated (956fd6a1, 7a095686, 5484a3e1, bb9b86c6). [Includes two options, gray and brown, see screenshots.] 
+ Crown of the Old Iron King DLC: Brume Tower brick wall bump map near the beginning area where the Smelter Wedges are collected (00afe41e). [Optional and not recommended due to stuttering caused by this texture.]
+ Crown of the Sunken King DLC: Shulva, Sanctum City pyramid rock wall bump map above Elana's boss fog (ef35c0ed).
+ Shaded Woods beige leafy forest floor texture seen in the misty area (b7a18dbc and c1a667fa).
+ Crown of the Ivory King DLC: Eleum Loyce textures and bumb maps throughout the area on the top and side of the entry bridge, walls and cathedral (09b3ce40, 74cc77e1, 1405cf13, b8c29209, bcc695d9, bea35af6, 4f7b4163, a0cdcbb2, fd3f66a5, 97889449). [Remove a0cdcbb2 and fd3f66a5 if you want to keep the appearance of brick on the walls of Eleum Loyce if you think it looks too smooth.)
+ Earthen Peak and Iron Keep connecting elevator bars texture (7d7157e5). [Huge thanks to Natranr for providing me with his progress on the texture, which I worked off of to make my own edits.]

To-do or in-progress textures are:
= More Eleum Loyce textures, notably inside the wall at the third bonfire and the distant version of the texture beneath the walkway where Ava is fought. (Proving very difficult to find.)
= Brightstone Cove church roof texture. (Will likely focus on darkening it mostly to make it stand out less with darker graphical configurations.)

Improved textures to be tweaked are:
- Tweak the Brightstone Cove texture to have less tiling, but changing too much makes it look too flat so it's a difficult balance to achieve.

Noted textures that I am unlikely to fix are: 
- Dragon Aerie dirt texture on the peaks. (I may not bother editing it because I don't think it tiles enough to be worth changing, but if I receive a request I may make a quick try at it.)
- Brightstone Cove rock texture in the Duke's Dear Freja boss arena. (I may just find out what texture it is and then include it in the TGA download so others can utilize it.)
- Various LOD textures from Things Betwixt to Iron Keep to The Lost Bastille to Brume Tower. I could try and fix them, but they are far too numerous and not enough of a problem for me to want to hunt down all of those textures to upscale them. Besides, it's part of the game's optimization and I want my game to run smoothly, personally, so I wouldn't even use that in my game.

Known Issues:
- Drangleic Castle brickwork texture causes stuttering in the room with the painting of Nashandra in it (82fb606c). (Not sure if I can do anything to fix it; the room is a loading zone for the previous area of the map where the replaced texture is used a lot. If you really hate the stuttering, just remove 82fb606c from your override folder. The stuttering personally doesn't bother me much since it's in a room you won't spend more than a minute or two in while fighting the Royal Guards and the Nameless Usurper invader.)
- Brume Tower brick texture near entrance causes stuttering in the foyer of Brume Tower (00afe41e). (This is due to the large file size of the texture. The improvement is barely noticeable and not work the stuttering, so I'd highly recommend to remove it if you downloaded it with version 1.8, as it is an optional but not recommended file included in version 1.85 and onward.)
- Minor stuttering in Eleum Loyce, mostly inside the Grand Cathedral.

REQUIRED AND RECOMMENDED MODS:

Required:
GeDoSaTo is made by the amazing Durante and can be found here: 
http://blog.metaclassofnil.com/?page_id=582

Recommended:
Although I have no association with them, here are some environmental texture mods I'd highly recommend which improve textures that I'd likely otherwise be fixing if such fixes didn't already exist on the Nexus, but are not included in my mod:

This mod by ObsidianStag fixes the atrocious Shaded Ruins texture, and offers four variants on replacement textures (I personally use Variant B, the Root Garden): 
http://www.nexusmods.com/darksouls2/mods/121/?

This mod by YarHar707 aims to improve both Shaded Ruins and Forest of Fallen Giant' moss texture, and includes bump maps which effect both textures (and yes, it doesn't look bad combined with the Root Garden variant from the previous mod, in my opinion it adds even more variation to the texture). I am using the Forest of Fallen Giants moss replacement with bump maps in the screenshots:
http://www.nexusmods.com/darksouls2/mods/166/? 

There is also this mod also by YarHar707, which replaces the Aldia's Keep foyer floor texture with one resembling the superior texture from the TGS demo, including bump maps:
http://www.nexusmods.com/darksouls2/mods/156/?

And, although a matter of personal taste, I think this mod by EvilDeadAsh34 greatly enhances the immersion in the Iron Keep by keeping consistent geography between the Earthen Peak and the Iron Keep:
http://www.nexusmods.com/darksouls2/mods/277/?

Another skybox replacement by EvilDeadAsh34 vastly improves the sky over Heide's Tower of Flame, making the sky more consistent with the sunset at Majula, while also making the atmosphere more dramatic:
http://www.nexusmods.com/darksouls2/mods/426/?

Yet another skybox by EvilDeadAsh34, one which I requested, improves both the sky and distant landscapes in the Forest of Fallen Giants, making it closer to the TGS original: 
http://www.nexusmods.com/darksouls2/mods/458/?

Once again a skybox by EvilDeadAsh, also requested by me, which improves The Lost Bastille skybox, making less of it a bland black abyss:
http://www.nexusmods.com/darksouls2/mods/478/?

CREDITS:

Thanks to FromSoftware for making an incredibly good, albeit unpolished, gem of a game. 
Special thanks to my wonderful online friend Jon, my long-standing buddy Sam for his support and feedback, Nexus user KampfKlops for helping me get started with recommendations, as well as ObsidianStag, YarHar707, EvilDeadAsh34 and Babby123 for inspiring me with their own mods.
Extra special thanks to Natranr for contributing a modified Iron Keep elevator bars texture!