- description

Terminator salvation a third person cover shooter rather
linear for today's standards but still an enjoyable snack.
So lets rewind the clock to 2009 and see how Connor is doing.

Being a movie tie in the game tries to emulate the heavy contrast
and severe desaturated look of the movie which does however, rather
obscure much detail in the game this mod tries to resurrect some details.

update 31/07/2024 v1.2
- set shaders to full precision (remove _pp)
  clothes npc
  weapon
  environment and structures
  skin body npc and avatar
  full precision gives a bit more accurate color
  and definition to textures, etc.
- remove outline swapable weapons
- reduce vignette and tint also brightens
- added ao (ambient occlusion) shader
- added curve shader

update 09/10/2020 v1.1
- altered reshade tonemap preserves contrast a bit better
- no helix tweaks were altered
(see new tonemap screenshots for an impression)

Helix tweaks contain:
- reduce overexposure sunlit areas
- correct camera range for ao and contrast lighting structures
- remove close blur on avatar while aiming
- reduce exposure sky dome
- reduce over exposure thru global light
- reduce global contrast

Further a reshade tone map re-balances brightness, plus removes a slight
yellow tint and a 'poor mans form of tessellation' gives the assets
(cars, environment, etc) a bit of relief and more definition.
Also added smaa (so disable in game AA).

The screenshots contain AO (ambient occlusion) this is applied by
a slightly tweaked shader made by Pascal Matthäus aka Euda.
AO works rather so-so, and is quite expensive gpu wise.

Just in case you are wondering why I am using the ultimate asi loader
in this case without it the game crashes on startup, due to reshade
and a similar attempt with sweetfx, causes the game to crash on shut down.

The ultimate asi loader allows reshade to function without a hitch.

- uninstall

if version 1.0 or 1.1 is installed remove the following folders and files:

dumps
shaderoverride
sweetfx

d3d9.dll
d3d9.dll.hxdb
d3d9sfx2.dll
dx9settings.ini
SweetFX_preset.txt
SweetFX_settings.txt

- install

Copy the contents of the zip file to the install folder of
terminator salvation, the folder which contains TerminatorSalvation.exe.

- optional install

The following instructions are only needed
if you do not like using unverified dll's you can:

download helix from
http://helixmod.blogspot.com/
and place following file in the install dir of terminator salvation
d3d9.dll

Note:
This package contains a 'd3d9.dll.hxdb' this is the debug version
which allows shaders to be found in game, usage rename d3d9.dll to
d3d9.dll.o then rename d3d9.dll.hxdb to d3d9.dll and in some cases
set UseEndScene = false to UseEndScene = true in the dx9settings.ini

download the 'ultimate asi loader' (32bits) from:
https://github.com/ThirteenAG/Ultimate-ASI-Loader/releases

then copy the dinput8.dll 32bits version to the install dir
of terminator salvation.

download reshade from
https://reshade.me/  (preferably version 4.9.1)

Note:
Because this package uses the 'ultimate asi loader' take care and
first rename the existing d3d9.dll (helix) to d3d9.dll.hx then
install *only* d3d9.dll (32bits) to the install dir aka folder
of terminator salvation.

Rename:
d3d9.dll
to:
reshade.asi

Rename:
d3d9.dll.hx
to:
d3d9.dll

Then copy the reshade folder plus ReShade.ini and reshadep.ini
contained in this package to the install dir of terminator salvation.

Note:
dx9settings.ini of helix contains the name of the linked proxy dll
in this case leave it empty ultimate asi loader chains reshade.

- verify

To test the shaderfixes you will have to start and the restart
the game without the d3d9.dll example rename it to d3d9.dll.o
and restart the game.

For reshade simply press 'F1' in game to toggle
the shaders on or off.

- tested

Tested with version 1.0.100.11380 of terminator salvation
on win 7 and win 10(1903) / nvidia 1050gtx ti

- performance

reshade / helix / forced ao usage 1080p@60fps*
without - clock   974Mhz gpu usage ~67%
with       - clock 1174Mhz gpu usage ~77%
approximately 30% increase (1050gtx ti on win 7 / win 10)
max gpu: 1772Mhz gpu usage 100%
*) Game is capped to 60.7 with fast sync through nvidia inpsector
   ao adds roughly 20%

- further tweaking

If you like you can compare the modified shader(s), Dumps contains
the original shader, to alter values. The folder 'shaderoverride'
contains the modified versions.

Note helix works differently then 3dmigoto please search for a
tutorial or start looking here:
http://helixmod.blogspot.com/2010/12/how-to-guides.html

Specific shaders can be disabled by simply removing them
from the sub folders contained in 'shaderoverride'.

Most shaders <shadernumber>.txt have
a descriptive remark at top of the file (see shader list).

- tips

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/terminator_salvation