Dark Souls - Internal Rendering Resolution Fix V0.6 (DSfix)

Description

Unofficial* high-res. patch for Dark Souls on PC.

This is an interception d3d9.dll that you place in the same folder as the Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition game executable. It intercepts the game's calls to the DirectX 9 API and changes them as necessary to enable a higher internal rendering resolution.

*Use at your own risk.


Developer Notes:

Please read this whole post before downloading anything!

As most of you may know, the Dark Souls port for PC has a fixed rendering resolution of 1024x720. I couldn't believe this when it was first rumoured, and when it turned out true I vowed to do my best to fix it.

What is it?
It's an interception d3d9.dll that you place in the same folder as the game executable. It intercepts the game's calls to the DirectX 9 API and changes them as necessary to enable a higher internal rendering resolution.


How do I use it?
Place d3d9.dll and DSfix.ini into the game's binary directory. (The place where DARKSOULS.exe is)
You can open DSfix.ini with a text editor to adjust the desired internal resolution.


Will it work?
So far, this has only been tested on my computer, on the first half hour or so of the game. I can not and will not guarantee that it will work for anyone else, or not have any adverse effect on your game/computer. Use at your own risk! If you encounter any issues that seem like they could be caused by DSfix, let me know.


Why is it still blurry?
I don't know at this point in time. It's already clear that there is a lot more detail and less aliasing using an increased framebuffer resolution -- as you would expect! -- but there is some residual blur. I'm trying to work out if this is due to my method or something inherent in the game. I will certainly continue working on this.


Will it cause performance problems?
That depends on your system configuration. Usually, performance scales rather linearly with framebuffer size, and so far this game does not seem different. My 660 maintained a locked 30 FPS throughout ~ 1/2 hour of testing in the starting area of the game at 2560x1440.


Can I donate?
If you really want to donate I won't say no, I'm not particularly rich :P.
Go to my blog post about the fix here.


Some other points

I did not do the entire work for this in 23 minutes. I developed an interception dll framework during this week to prepare for the job. I did the actual work to make the game render at higher res in that amount of time though -- based on the framework -- and spent a few more hours testing and adding the config file.
Please refrain from disrespectful remarks like "lol Japanese development". There are plenty of Japanese developers that deliver technically excellent PC games
Buy Dark Souls if you like hardcore action RPGs.

- Durante


DSfix 0.6
Posted on 2012-08-29

There is more changed “under the hood” here than what is visible, but I managed to fulfill 2 popular requests:

Added a “borderless windowed fullscreen” mode. This is very useful for people with multiple monitors, or even if you just want to do fast alt-tabbing. You can switch from windowed mode to “fake fullscreen” and back using F8. It can also be configured as a startup setting in the .ini
Added a language override option in the .ini
Set it to e.g. en-GB to play the game in English without manually changing your system locale back and forth. (This is probably only useful for non-English users)

I also improved the code base significantly. Just as one example, previously adding a new setting, reading it from the .ini, making it available where it is needed and logging it required 6 or so lines of code in 4 different places. Now it’s just 1 line in 1 place.

Also, some compilation settings and manual optimizations were introduced that may make the wrapper marginally faster, but this most likely won’t have an effect on game performance.

DSfix 0.5

This is a maintenance release, and adds a few mouse-related features people were asking for.

Mouse cursor toggling with F9 should now be less finicky
You can toggle whether the mouse is allowed to leave the window with F10
(this is useful in windowed mode or in fullscreen with multiple monitors)
Both of these settings can also be set in the .ini
The fix introduced in version 0.2 for cut-off text/buttons has been reworked to be much less invasive — if you have seen any degradation in performance or functionality from 0.1 to 0.2 this should fix it (I haven’t seen any changes)

Please please remember to read the README.txt!