This mod was made with the intention of improving the graphics of C&C 3, and replaces several of the C&C 3 shaders. The changes are mostly made to high and ultra high settings, and have little or no effect on lower graphics settings. The mod is compatible with most other C&C 3 mods, and can be used with other mods as described in the readme file. The mod is still in a Beta stage, so contact me (Chronosheep) or leave a reply if you experience any issues. For modders: You may include these shaders in your own mod, but if and only if you give me proper credit, and link to this ModDB page in your readme file.
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Hello World!
This is a little pet project of mine, which I have been thinking about releasing for quite some time.
ChronoShaders is a shader mod for C&C 3, which is aimed at making C&C 3 look better and more realistic. In addition, it fixes several graphical glitches.
Changes include (but are not limited to):
- Fixed the "hovering infantry" shadow problem
- Added soft shadows
- Improved lighting in many ways (hemispherical ambient lighting, ambient specular lighting, per-pixel lighting in all object shaders, improved diffuse lighting and much more...)
- Removed recolor glow effect on many units
- Fog now affects particles (smoke etc)
- Distortion effect scales with distance
Note that these changes are mostly made to high and ultra high settings, and have little or no effect on lower graphics settings. If you cannot run C&C 3 at high or ultra high settings, this mod is not of much use to you.
The mod is compatible with most other C&C 3 mods, and can be used in combination with most other C&C 3 mods. Installation instruction for both standalone use and with other mods is described in the readme file in the download. For you other modders out there: You may include these shaders in your own mod, but if and only if you give me proper credit, and link to this ModDB page in your readme file.
Want to see what it does? Check out some comparison images in the image gallery.
Now, what are you waiting for? Go ahead and try it out! Beta version 0.5 can be found here:
Note that the mod is still in a Beta stage, so contact me (Chronosheep) or leave a reply if you experience any issues. Also note that the water shaders have not been touched in the current version. I might get around to these at a later point.
Known issues:
- Some (very few) roads become quite shiny. This is EA's fault, as they used a far too bright specular map on those few roads.
Chronosheep out.
Files
ChronoShaders 0.53
Full Version 2 commentsAnother bugfix patch. Fixed a bug that caused certain particles to be rendered incorrectly. Thanks to Madin for the heads up.
ChronoShaders Beta 0.52
Full Version 4 commentsThis is just a small patch. - Fixed a bug where fog was incorrectly applied to particles. - Added ambient lighting to particles. - Toned down specular...
ChronoShaders Beta 0.51
Full Version 2 commentsEDIT: New upload, fixed a bug that caused issues when used together with other mods. First Beta release of the ChronoShaders mod. See included readme...
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I do have an additional question though. Is it possible to write in additional code into the TW engine to mimic the shader in RA3?? and if it is a yes, then would it be a easy to intermediate task, or is it a hard to monumental task?? the reason I persist in this is because lets face it, RA3 is more difficult to mod... the in-game UI is terrible(too simplistic), and there are no tiberium/ore harvesting code built in, I have seen some smart guy able to port in this specific code, but since he/she not willing to share the knowledge, I would not know how even if I know coding. I am impressed with the shader though(when tune probably as seen by some modders with a better sensitivity), and I like the look of the water(I know is linking to the shader), and the code that allow you to build things on water and naval unit.
meanwhile, I will be taking c++ classic locally at my city. but until then, the itch about the fascination and wonder about coding game would never stop :)
p.s if you need people to get some graphic work to be done, be it 2d or 3d, matte painting,etc I am available, this is my rather short demo: Youtube.com
and IMO, the so-called RNA is just a new architecture to organize the real-time rendering, not an actual improvement. The most appealing RA3 feature for me is just dynamic-lighting and improved physics.
Well, the difference lays at, we don't have the source code of RA3 shaders. And the improvement of visual through purely shader editing can be limited and unstable. For example, adding a SSAO effect may need all Screen, Depth and Normal buffers, but the C&C3 postfx shader interface seems provide only Screen and Depth samplers, so it can be quite difficult.
cool! I always wanted to do something like that!! how exactly do you do this?? do I need to know c++ or python to do this? and did you write everything from scratch or did you port in the component from an existing source? and finally, is it possible to port the RNA part of RA3 into TW??
Many thanks!!
This is Awesome!!
Keith
I rewrote many of the shaders from the game.
The source code for the original shaders was extracted by jonwil, and can be found here Cncmods.net
The shaders are written in HLSL, which is very similar to c++.
I'm afraid the RNA part of RA3 is a part of the engine itself, and we don't have the source codes for any of the game engines. So no, not unless you can persuade EA to release the game engine source codes.
great! thanks a lot!!
Nice work!
just perfect! i take it :P
This patch is good idea, similar ENB series :)
This is probably a very silly question, but is this in any way compatible with Kane's Wrath?
Yes it does work. I have tried it and it worked without mod browser. This is how to do it:
1. download the mod and unzip it.
2. put the "ChronoShader.big" file into the latest patch folder(for example : "1.0") in CNC KW "core" folder.
3. open "config" with text editor.
4. write this at the top: add-big ChronoShaders.big, and save.
5. open the game.
this method will also work on CNC3 Tiberium wars(if you want chrono shader as default shader configuration).
PS: there are some weird colors on some buildings if you apply the mod on Kane's Wrath though
Thanks!
I tried to do that with Kanes Wrath that comes with "Command and Conquer The Ultimate Collection" (Origin), but the game instantly crashes when I run it.
Have you tried this method on CNC3 TW?
The mod is not fully compatible on Kane's wrath though(because it wasn't meant to be). Some house colors are wrong and some building'skins are just blue
Never mind - I forgot that Kane's Wrath doesn't even have a mod browser, so it can't work. Darn.
Moddb.com