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About this mod
A mod aiming to polish the lighting system and fix related or miscellaneous model oversights to improve the overall visual experience but be as close to vanilla as possible. In short: make the game 1% better!
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
- Donations
This mod originally started as just polishing up the lighting system, but I later decided to fix other light-related things, like window lights, neons and certain screwed models (because they got in the way of making certain shadows look decent), as well as whatever I stumbled across that was clearly broken.
I went through the entire main map and some of the other areas to try and improve the range, look and resolution of shadows, do minor tweaks to ambient colour, and fix blatant issues left by the developers (like dealing with areas that lacked lighting).
While heavily bound to the engine's absurd limitations, I'm confident this is at least better than Vanilla. Please share any feedback and report any lighting issues. (Read bottom notes on Feedback, first, please)
The mod comes in two .zip files:
The first one is just the lighting tweak (what the mod first started as), while the second, optional, includes several model tweaks for further polish (after I overstepped my own bounds and went "I kinda want to fix that while I'm at it...").
-Installation-
1) gsa_info.dat of the main .zip goes in the Graphics folder. Easy.
2) Everything of the optional .zip goes in World.img of the Stream folder. Use a tool like IMG Factory to replace.
Make backups!
-Changelog (as of v1)-
I hastily wrote this all at once instead of writing it while actually developing the mod to keep track of changes, whoops.
Some stuff might be missing but at least think of it as an overview with some of the main changes. Other areas may have had other minor tweaks, as well.
Added:
- School: A few lights across the dirt track, so the area isn't completely dark anymore.
- Old Bullworth Vale: Light behind Hattrick's Manor, so the area isn't completely dark anymore.
- Old Bullworth Vale: Light by the Pirate Island, so the area isn't completely dark anymore.
- Old Bullworth Vale: Neon light for the crab store, to mimic its PS2 counterpart.
- New Coventry: A new light to brighten the dirt track leading from the tenements area to the train tracks.
- New Coventry: Neon lights from the BAR, ROOMS and HOTEL signs, and Yum Yum Market to mimic their PS2 counterparts.
- Blue Skies: Light for the chemical plant area, so the area isn't completely dark anymore.
- School (Inside): Lights for the rooftop access door, so the area isn't mostly dark anymore.
- Principal's Office: Light to brighten the small middle room.
- School Basement: Flickering light in the middle of the tunnel leading to The Hole because I thought it looked nice, and it was to compensate for a removed light I didn't like.
- Gym: Light by the windows of the pool stands, as seen in the BradyGames guide. (A bit buggy)
- Auditorium: Light inside the unused room, so it isn't completely dark. Why not?
- Island 3: Four lights + ambient light so the area isn't completely dark anymore.
- Test Area: Ambient light so the area isn't mostly dark. (Shadows didn't want to work)
- The following areas now feature lighting that turns on at night, like on PS2: Principal's Office, Biology Class, Classroom, Greaser Hideout, BMX Track.
Tweaks:
- General: Bumped shadow resolution across the board. (Not always noticeable, sadly)
- General: A good chunk of the game's lights were tweaked in size, position, colour, range, etc... to try to polish things as much as possible given the limitations, so overall lighting might feel slightly different, particularly some of the areas of Old Bullworth Vale, New Coventry and Blue Skies.
- Carnival: Area should feel a bit brighter and more colourful with slightly increased lights range.
- Carnival: A Splish Splash light by Hector. (It was always there but the devs screwed it up, so I "restored" it.)
- Old Bullworth Vale: Tweaked light by Lover's View (the fenced area with a view of the beach house and the carnival) so leaving the Carnival tunnel to head to it shouldn't cause a weird "flicker" anymore. (This: https://youtu.be/AhCFvs9iJn8?t=94)
- School: Tweaked a light by the Boys' Dorm that lit roughly half of the campus, so the area by the gates is no longer dark, just like in the manual and the BradyGames guide.
- School: Tweaked parking lot light so the little island area for the collectable isn't completely dark anymore.
- School: Harrington House shouldn't feel dark anymore.
- School: Roof lighting should be a little more consistent.
Quite a bit more related to the school. Check it out in-game!
- Bullworth Town: The abandoned motel should now be properly lit. This seems like another oversight, as the light is always there but too high up in the sky.
- Bullworth Town: Come Hither neon light is no longer cutscene-exclusive and I tweaked it to be somewhat closer to its PS2 counterpart.
- Blue Skies: Fixed a flickering light by the burning container at the Blue Skies pier.
- School (inside): The light by the hallway with the lockers leading to Chemistry Class should hopefully flicker less than Vanilla. (Particularly noticeable in This Is Your School when confronting Russell).
- School (inside): Tweaked Principal's Office light a little so it's more noticeable.
- Principal's Office: Heavily tweaked lighting in general.
- Boys' Dorm: Slight hallway lighting tweaks.
- Shiny Bikes: Tweaked light to resemble a pre-release screenshot more.
- Junkyard: Tweaked light so the intro of Fighting Johnny Vincent isn't too dark. (More noticeable outside of chapter 3 but whatever)
- Greasers' Safehouse: Tweaked light direction so now it's coming from the windows, as seen in the BradyGames guide.
- Dropouts' Safehouse: Tweaked light colours to be blue instead of orange.
Removed:
- Most of the game's "pointlights" (They are "fake" lights that don't cast shadows and are there to give brightness to dark areas). Most caused an unnatural orange tint. (Example: See the weird orange glow of the short sawmill island<>asylum tunnel, or in the path to the observatory coming from a rock.)
- Old Bullworth Vale: A light by the dam. It didn't serve much purpose.
- Old Bullworth Vale: A light by the Happy Endings Retirements house. It was there to brighten the area (too much, imo), but without it, the game looks more than fine.
- New Coventry: A light by the Tasteful Tattoos store. Same reason as above.
- School Basement: A light coming from a tunnel outside the room of the school entrance.
-Changelog of "optional files" (as of v1)-
- Fixed the position and visibility of MANY window lights at night. (Bullworth Town and Blue Skies particularly)
- Turned off backface culling for many models, to work better with the different lighting or simply because the devs forgot you could see them from all sides. (See pics where Vanilla has the other part of a model invisible) Flipped faces for models that could only be seen from the wrong side.
- Tweaked transparency for some models/textures that had it completely broken, so it's less broken.
- Restored vertex colours to several neon lights that were turned white (New Coventry neons, Carnival attractions...), tweaked vertex colours that made some models mostly black or mostly white.
- Recycled quite a few X360 files to restore, for example, missing textures for the BanBike (the orange bike), or the model of the library wall since it was misplaced on the PC port...
- Restored and tweaked quite a few models that were explicitly told not to render. (Examples: Foliage in Harrington House, Halloween/Christmas decorations inside the school...). Likewise, hid some that weren't meant to be seen.
- Fixed some models using the wrong texture or were missing theirs entirely. (Like the floor tag in Jimmy's room, or the Ice Cream store by the Carnival...)
- Fixed properties of blocks of grass resulting in dark grass by pavements all across Bullworth Town and New Coventry.
- Restored some missing geometry borrowed from the Wii version.
Sharing Feedback and Reports:
1) Don't ask if this is compatible with [Insert mod name here]. I can't, and won't, keep track of every other existing mod for compatibility sake. That is more of a team effort thing. Results may vary. If in doubt, just install the main file for the lighting changes, as I'm sure this is the first of its kind, anyway.
2) Don't ask predictable questions such as "Can you make shadows better?". If I could, I'd have done it. Maybe one day...
-To-do List-
Things that may never be included, but I'm either aware of and just can't figure out how to fix them for now (if you know how to fix them, teach me!), or I haven't gotten around to fix:
- Fix crash when going to 0,0,0 caused by gsa_info.dat. Not sure why.
- Fix wallgrime4 (dirt in the gym pool)
- Fix RI1d_Turbines02 (the blades of the turbines under the carnival tunnel)
- Fix DamLibShdw (Doable, but pain in the butt. In the meantime, use this)
- Fix DL_RC_StrSnsDay and DL_RC_StrSnsNight (Open/Closed Neon signs that the devs broke, for Old Bullworth Vale)
- Fix DL_RI2a_nLights01 (the window glow of Tad's house garage)
- Fix scBoss_wall (Dark surrounding wall for Jock Boss Fight, like the boxing minigame)
- Fix some lamps inside houses in Old Bullworth Vale (it's just a matter of finding their model, hopefully)
- Fix the new GRS_Additive (The restored neon strip model disappears at certain angles, for some reason)
- Improve the new Drop_DrawLast geometry borrowed from drop_drawlast01 and drop_drawlastb of Wii. It could be better (Some has been hidden. Check the .nif)
- Improve the new scaffold. It could be better
- Restore missing geometry of pCloth_Open
- Fix Funhouse sign texture (There's transparency instead of wood)
- Fix DPI_PlantPot (Uses wrong texture)
- Further tweak FGRD_RI2b_terra_A and FGRD_RI2b_terra_D beach ground materials to match PS2 (Tried a couple times but failed in making it look good. Just changing materials looks too basic)
- Further tweak FGRD_CA1b_01, FGRD_CA1b_04, FGRD_BU1b_terra_A and FGRD_BU2b_terra_A ground materials to match PS2
List of things I can't do because someone needs to fix Blender's Niftools Plugin support for BULLY, as models break either when importing or exporting:
- Fix SC1b_mound_a (Some grass by the school gates is mostly out of bounds)
I went through the entire main map and some of the other areas to try and improve the range, look and resolution of shadows, do minor tweaks to ambient colour, and fix blatant issues left by the developers (like dealing with areas that lacked lighting).
While heavily bound to the engine's absurd limitations, I'm confident this is at least better than Vanilla. Please share any feedback and report any lighting issues. (Read bottom notes on Feedback, first, please)
The mod comes in two .zip files:
The first one is just the lighting tweak (what the mod first started as), while the second, optional, includes several model tweaks for further polish (after I overstepped my own bounds and went "I kinda want to fix that while I'm at it...").
-Installation-
1) gsa_info.dat of the main .zip goes in the Graphics folder. Easy.
2) Everything of the optional .zip goes in World.img of the Stream folder. Use a tool like IMG Factory to replace.
Make backups!
-Changelog (as of v1)-
I hastily wrote this all at once instead of writing it while actually developing the mod to keep track of changes, whoops.
Some stuff might be missing but at least think of it as an overview with some of the main changes. Other areas may have had other minor tweaks, as well.
Added:
- School: A few lights across the dirt track, so the area isn't completely dark anymore.
- Old Bullworth Vale: Light behind Hattrick's Manor, so the area isn't completely dark anymore.
- Old Bullworth Vale: Light by the Pirate Island, so the area isn't completely dark anymore.
- Old Bullworth Vale: Neon light for the crab store, to mimic its PS2 counterpart.
- New Coventry: A new light to brighten the dirt track leading from the tenements area to the train tracks.
- New Coventry: Neon lights from the BAR, ROOMS and HOTEL signs, and Yum Yum Market to mimic their PS2 counterparts.
- Blue Skies: Light for the chemical plant area, so the area isn't completely dark anymore.
- School (Inside): Lights for the rooftop access door, so the area isn't mostly dark anymore.
- Principal's Office: Light to brighten the small middle room.
- School Basement: Flickering light in the middle of the tunnel leading to The Hole because I thought it looked nice, and it was to compensate for a removed light I didn't like.
- Gym: Light by the windows of the pool stands, as seen in the BradyGames guide. (A bit buggy)
- Auditorium: Light inside the unused room, so it isn't completely dark. Why not?
- Island 3: Four lights + ambient light so the area isn't completely dark anymore.
- Test Area: Ambient light so the area isn't mostly dark. (Shadows didn't want to work)
- The following areas now feature lighting that turns on at night, like on PS2: Principal's Office, Biology Class, Classroom, Greaser Hideout, BMX Track.
Tweaks:
- General: Bumped shadow resolution across the board. (Not always noticeable, sadly)
- General: A good chunk of the game's lights were tweaked in size, position, colour, range, etc... to try to polish things as much as possible given the limitations, so overall lighting might feel slightly different, particularly some of the areas of Old Bullworth Vale, New Coventry and Blue Skies.
- Carnival: Area should feel a bit brighter and more colourful with slightly increased lights range.
- Carnival: A Splish Splash light by Hector. (It was always there but the devs screwed it up, so I "restored" it.)
- Old Bullworth Vale: Tweaked light by Lover's View (the fenced area with a view of the beach house and the carnival) so leaving the Carnival tunnel to head to it shouldn't cause a weird "flicker" anymore. (This: https://youtu.be/AhCFvs9iJn8?t=94)
- School: Tweaked a light by the Boys' Dorm that lit roughly half of the campus, so the area by the gates is no longer dark, just like in the manual and the BradyGames guide.
- School: Tweaked parking lot light so the little island area for the collectable isn't completely dark anymore.
- School: Harrington House shouldn't feel dark anymore.
- School: Roof lighting should be a little more consistent.
Quite a bit more related to the school. Check it out in-game!
- Bullworth Town: The abandoned motel should now be properly lit. This seems like another oversight, as the light is always there but too high up in the sky.
- Bullworth Town: Come Hither neon light is no longer cutscene-exclusive and I tweaked it to be somewhat closer to its PS2 counterpart.
- Blue Skies: Fixed a flickering light by the burning container at the Blue Skies pier.
- School (inside): The light by the hallway with the lockers leading to Chemistry Class should hopefully flicker less than Vanilla. (Particularly noticeable in This Is Your School when confronting Russell).
- School (inside): Tweaked Principal's Office light a little so it's more noticeable.
- Principal's Office: Heavily tweaked lighting in general.
- Boys' Dorm: Slight hallway lighting tweaks.
- Shiny Bikes: Tweaked light to resemble a pre-release screenshot more.
- Junkyard: Tweaked light so the intro of Fighting Johnny Vincent isn't too dark. (More noticeable outside of chapter 3 but whatever)
- Greasers' Safehouse: Tweaked light direction so now it's coming from the windows, as seen in the BradyGames guide.
- Dropouts' Safehouse: Tweaked light colours to be blue instead of orange.
Removed:
- Most of the game's "pointlights" (They are "fake" lights that don't cast shadows and are there to give brightness to dark areas). Most caused an unnatural orange tint. (Example: See the weird orange glow of the short sawmill island<>asylum tunnel, or in the path to the observatory coming from a rock.)
- Old Bullworth Vale: A light by the dam. It didn't serve much purpose.
- Old Bullworth Vale: A light by the Happy Endings Retirements house. It was there to brighten the area (too much, imo), but without it, the game looks more than fine.
- New Coventry: A light by the Tasteful Tattoos store. Same reason as above.
- School Basement: A light coming from a tunnel outside the room of the school entrance.
-Changelog of "optional files" (as of v1)-
- Fixed the position and visibility of MANY window lights at night. (Bullworth Town and Blue Skies particularly)
- Turned off backface culling for many models, to work better with the different lighting or simply because the devs forgot you could see them from all sides. (See pics where Vanilla has the other part of a model invisible) Flipped faces for models that could only be seen from the wrong side.
- Tweaked transparency for some models/textures that had it completely broken, so it's less broken.
- Restored vertex colours to several neon lights that were turned white (New Coventry neons, Carnival attractions...), tweaked vertex colours that made some models mostly black or mostly white.
- Recycled quite a few X360 files to restore, for example, missing textures for the BanBike (the orange bike), or the model of the library wall since it was misplaced on the PC port...
- Restored and tweaked quite a few models that were explicitly told not to render. (Examples: Foliage in Harrington House, Halloween/Christmas decorations inside the school...). Likewise, hid some that weren't meant to be seen.
- Fixed some models using the wrong texture or were missing theirs entirely. (Like the floor tag in Jimmy's room, or the Ice Cream store by the Carnival...)
- Fixed properties of blocks of grass resulting in dark grass by pavements all across Bullworth Town and New Coventry.
- Restored some missing geometry borrowed from the Wii version.
Sharing Feedback and Reports:
1) Don't ask if this is compatible with [Insert mod name here]. I can't, and won't, keep track of every other existing mod for compatibility sake. That is more of a team effort thing. Results may vary. If in doubt, just install the main file for the lighting changes, as I'm sure this is the first of its kind, anyway.
2) Don't ask predictable questions such as "Can you make shadows better?". If I could, I'd have done it. Maybe one day...
-To-do List-
Things that may never be included, but I'm either aware of and just can't figure out how to fix them for now (if you know how to fix them, teach me!), or I haven't gotten around to fix:
- Fix crash when going to 0,0,0 caused by gsa_info.dat. Not sure why.
- Fix wallgrime4 (dirt in the gym pool)
- Fix RI1d_Turbines02 (the blades of the turbines under the carnival tunnel)
- Fix DamLibShdw (Doable, but pain in the butt. In the meantime, use this)
- Fix DL_RC_StrSnsDay and DL_RC_StrSnsNight (Open/Closed Neon signs that the devs broke, for Old Bullworth Vale)
- Fix DL_RI2a_nLights01 (the window glow of Tad's house garage)
- Fix scBoss_wall (Dark surrounding wall for Jock Boss Fight, like the boxing minigame)
- Fix some lamps inside houses in Old Bullworth Vale (it's just a matter of finding their model, hopefully)
- Fix the new GRS_Additive (The restored neon strip model disappears at certain angles, for some reason)
- Improve the new Drop_DrawLast geometry borrowed from drop_drawlast01 and drop_drawlastb of Wii. It could be better (Some has been hidden. Check the .nif)
- Improve the new scaffold. It could be better
- Restore missing geometry of pCloth_Open
- Fix Funhouse sign texture (There's transparency instead of wood)
- Fix DPI_PlantPot (Uses wrong texture)
- Further tweak FGRD_RI2b_terra_A and FGRD_RI2b_terra_D beach ground materials to match PS2 (Tried a couple times but failed in making it look good. Just changing materials looks too basic)
- Further tweak FGRD_CA1b_01, FGRD_CA1b_04, FGRD_BU1b_terra_A and FGRD_BU2b_terra_A ground materials to match PS2
List of things I can't do because someone needs to fix Blender's Niftools Plugin support for BULLY, as models break either when importing or exporting:
- Fix SC1b_mound_a (Some grass by the school gates is mostly out of bounds)