Batman: Arkham City – Game of the Year Edition Guide

Arkham City: HD Texture Pack + Full Modification Guide *In Progress* for Batman: Arkham City GOTY

Arkham City: HD Texture Pack + Full Modification Guide *In Progress*

Overview

High resolution textures, new shaders, graphics refinements etc.

Intro

Texture Pack creator: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCL_-pwg6QbA5nD327B8Icww

“I modify video-game graphics and am responsible for the NieR: Automata & Arkham Asylum texture packs”

The goal of this guide is to show fans of the game how to get the best possible experience with Arkham City. I’ve allowed some options to let players tailor the game to their taste. I will also go in-depth with the three main ways to improve graphics:

Texture Mods
Configuration File Tweaking
Reshade Shaders

Bonus information is also added to this guide.

IMPORTANT TO NOTE:
  • I own the GOTY version of the game. I’m not familiar with other versions of the game, so don’t expect this mod to work perfectly with other versions.
  • I’m always welcome to reasonable criticism. It only helps the final results so feel free to comment your opinions.
  • You can use the texture pack without disabling depth of field or using Reshade. Keep the vanilla palette if you prefer.
  • Texture mods require Directx11 settings disabled. The only drawback to disabling Dx11 is that you miss out on tesselation. Config edits improve shadow quality vs Dx11 shadows, and Reshade improves over Dx11 HBAO.
  • Take note of your game’s install directory. Do this by right-clicking the game in your library. Select ‘properties’, now go to ‘local files’ tab. Select the ‘browse local files’ option. The game’s directory should be revealed in file explorer.

DOWNLOAD

TEXTURE PACK:

Texture Pack V5 – 235mb (Zip Format)[drive.google.com] Texture Pack V5 – 235mb

Reshade Presets

Presets V5[drive.google.com]

Texture Pack

What does a texture pack do?
Improves overall artwork over models. Less blur and more detail becomes apparent.

Why doesn’t the game have good enough textures?
Video-game textures are responsible for (often the majority) of a games disk space requirements. In order to keep the final game size reasonable, developers set a maximum resolution across all textures, ultimately compressing them. For older games, texture artists didn’t really bother creating highly detailed textures because of the inevitable compression that would occur. Unfortunately for us, the default textures don’t hold up on high resolution displays. Even at 1080p, low quality assets are obvious, yet we are all moving to 4k. Texture packs solves this issue.

Note:

  • This is highly work in progress and far from completion.
  • Texmod is used to replace textures.
SCREENSHOTS Showcase

Many textures drawn from scratch:

Background city texture ported from Arkham Knight:

More images:

VIDEO Comparison

Custom Texture Options

In the downloaded texture package, you will find the texture pack, a few capes and both batman and catwoman suits. Batman and Catwoman are individual in case some users want to use other suit mods that can be found online.

You can only select one cape. The cape textures are assigned to the same cape material. You can’t have the loaded textures interrupt each other.

INSTALLATION

Pay attention

The detail setting in the game launcher is the texture settings. ‘Extreme’ detail settings is nescessary. MSAA must be disabled. We will disable Directx11 in config files. This isn’t a downside. You get improved performance without Directx11, and the config section shows how to improve shadows for Directx9 (base) mode and Reshade improves over Directx11 HBAO. You can choose other individual graphics settings, but i recommend disabling ambient occlusion if using Reshade. MSAA can cause stutters in Arkham City and stops Reshade from functioning properly.

You are required to edit the BmEngine.ini configuration file to use the texture pack(additional config info in separate section)

This is because it disables the graphics memory usage limit set by the game – or the game will stop high resolution textures from functioning properly.

After adjusting graphics settings in the game launcher, go to —> C:Users(You)DocumentsWB GamesBatman Arkham City GOTYBmGameConfig
Make a backup copy of BmEngine.ini before editing it:
Open it and press Ctrl+F and search for ‘poolsize’ <— will be underneath [texturestreaming]
Change the value of 512 to your graphics card memory amount:
2gb = 2048, 3gb = 3072, 4gb = 4096 etc

Now search for ‘allowd3d10’ using Ctrl+F. Set both AllowD3D10 and AllowD3D11 values to ‘FALSE’.

Save the changes, and set the file to ‘read-only’. Do this by right-clicking on BmEngine.ini, select ‘properties’, check the ‘read-only’ option and hit ‘ok’ to apply. You will need to revert the read-only setting when editing the config file, and check the option again after any changes.

A pool size value of ‘0’ should potentially work fine on all cards (basically telling the game engine not to worry about limiting video memory usage), works fine on my 970 ‘4gb’, but not sure if this applies for all graphics cards.

Something to understand is that the higher the texture quality, the more Graphics Card memory you require. I do recommend disabling anti-aliasing as you will save on a lot of graphics memory usage. If you want to eliminate aliasing, you can downsample and/or inject SMAA which is explained in the Reshade section. Reshade also won’t function properly with MSAA enabled. If you don’t know what downsampling is, check out DSR if you have an Nvidia GPU[www.geforce.co.uk] or VSR if you have an AMD GPU.[www.amd.com]

The more textures selected, the longer it will take to load the game. You will have a blank screen until all textures are loaded. After the game’s loaded, everything should run normally but with the injected textures. It’s required to launch the game through Texmod everytime you want to use the textures. An alternate, better texture injection solution may occur in the future.

Texmod ships with the texture pack download. Open Texmod, run the application and select package mode. Select BatmanAC.exe as target application. Go to the smaller folder icon and use it to find the downloaded texture files. Run the game with selected texture(s). Only one cape can be selected (explained in custom textures section). Would advise installing the game on your fastest drive.

If you don’t know where BatmanAC.exe is, right-click the game in your Steam library. Select ‘properties’, now go to ‘local files’ tab. Select the ‘browse local files’ option. The game’s directory should be revealed in file explorer.

I would recommend adding Texmod to your Steam library. You can do this with the ‘+ ADD A GAME’ option on the bottom left of Steam’s window.

Reshade

Reshade[reshade.me] is a post-processing shader developed by Crosire for use in almost any game. It allows users to add custom post-processing shaders to games.

I’ve allowed multiple presets with multiple color filters to allow users to find their best settings.

NOTE


Reshade isn’t a perfect solution for applying more shaders. There are bleeding effects during cutscenes, unless you stick to the ‘LightMode’ preset (which applies colour grading and anti aliasing). You can set a hotkey in Reshade to toggle bleeding effects for pre-rendered cutscenes, and for any other case where bleeding is apparent. This can be a graphical annoyance for some, which is why a solution is being figured out.

PRESETS

All presets include SMAA anti-aliasing and MultiLUT shaders, as well as filmic mode option by default. More info on MultiLUT below.

Main:
This preset proves to be rather demanding. It adds ambient occlusion, light adaptation, improved bloom, sharpening and deband. Dubbed as ‘main’ because it’s what i use, and i’m bad with titles.

High End:
The same as ‘main’ preset, but more ambient occlusion samples are used here. Highly demanding.

Low End:
Balance kept here to allow good visuals and reasonable performance. Ambient occlusion sample count lowered. Eye adaptation effect is removed.

Light Mode:

Uses anti-aliasing and colour grading shaders only. Minor impact to performance and no graphical bleeding issues. You may want to keep in-game ambient occlusion enabled if using this preset.

Beta:

Recommended only for use with in-game depth of field enabled and HUD disabled. Enables reflections shader and also uses Vibrant2 LUT by default.

MultiLUT (Colour Grading)

LUT stands for ‘Look Up Table’. This is an image in which a shader references to understand how to apply its colour grading. Multi-LUT shader by OtisInf allows users to switch between multiple LUTs with ease.

I’ve allowed several colour grading options:

Colour Correction:
Aims for accurate to life colour grading.

Vibrant1:
Colour Correction with a bit more saturation.

Vibrant2:
Slightly different hue/saturation settings from Vibrant1. Recommended for use if in-game depth of field is enabled. Selected by default with Beta preset.

Cold:
Gives the game a colder feel with a mix of orange and blue tints.

Warm:
Slight yellowish tint with softer blues to provide a warmer feel.

Dark:
Aims for a gritty tone with a brownish tint.

Cinematic:
Lower saturation and stronger highlights for a more filmic look.

Return To Arkham:
Aims to replicate the RTA collection. Selected by default for all presets except ‘Beta’.

Isolated Blues:
Only the colour blue will remain intact, whilst other colours are black and white. Comic book feel.

Isolated Reds:
Only the colour red will remain intact, whilst other colours are black and white. Makes the game appear more bloody with only red being emphasized.

Monochrome:
Black and white.

INSTALLATION

Reshade 3 required:
[link] – Download available at the bottom of the page

Open Reshade 3 executable and locate and select application ‘BatmanAC.exe’ found in ‘SteamLibrarysteamappscommonBatman Arkham City GOTYBinariesWin32’

Select D3D9. When asked which effects to check, uncheck all and select only the following:
MultiLUT, SMAA, Borders, CA, FilmGrain, LightDOF, Deband, ReflectiveBumpMapping, Emphasize
(Experienced users can select extra shaders)

Copy all the files in the downloaded presets folder to the game directory:
Batman Arkham City GOTYBinariesWin32

Overwrite when requested

Using Reshade:
Open the game, let Reshade load (should be visible at the top of the screen). Press ‘shift+2’ to toggle Reshade menu. Choose the preset you wish to use in the dropdown menu. Feel free to experiment with the different presets and see which one works best for you. Experienced users can design their own presets.

‘Page-Up’ toggles MXAO. ‘Page-Down’ toggles Filmic mode.

In the settings tab of Reshade, make sure the following values (in the preprocessor tab) are all ‘0’:
RESHADE_DEPTH_INPUT_IS_UPSIDE_DOWN=0
RESHADE_DEPTH_INPUT_IS_REVERSED=0
RESHADE_DEPTH_INPUT_IS_LOGARITHMIC=0

The is to make sure depth based effects function properly.

IMPORTANT: THIS GUIDE IS STILL UNDERGOING MAINTENANCE. PLEASE GIVE US SOME TIME TO FINISH EVERYTHING 🙂

Apologies for the hold up. We are more focused on Asylum right now, before moving forward with City. Reshade & Config sections will be added, including comparison videos. For now, texture pack v5 is available.

Check out my other mods

[link]
[link]
Quick Arkham Knight Preset: [link]

You can also subscribe to myhttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCL_-pwg6QbA5nD327B8Icwwfor my latest content.

Donations

If you want to support this project, please donate here:
DONATE WITH PAYPAL[www.paypal.com]

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