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502 downloads
These are the decrypted files required to launch the Games for Windows - LIVE edition of Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition from 2012 after a retail installation. DARKSOULS.exe fmod_event.dll fmodex.dll The versions of these files that the game installs are encrypted using GFWL's Zero Day Piracy Prevention service, which has been nonfunctional since between 2018 and 2020. This is not needed for the Steam version of the game, as it does not make use of GFWL or any of its' components since 2015. The password for the archive is: pcgw -
Version 1.1
18,108 downloads
What is this? Have you ever wanted to open the gesture menu by Left Trigger + Spacebar + Mouse Wheel Down? Now you can! The Dark Souls Input Customizer is the successor to the Dark Souls Mouse Fix and allows you to bind any action to arbitrary combinations of keys or buttons on the controller, the mouse or the keyboard via a simple GUI. In addition to a complete fix of the mouse controls, the mod also provides advanced options, such as separate sensitivities for bow aiming or the usage of of non-standard actions like Kick, the creation of input profiles, as well as dedicated support for the Steam Controller. Overview Description The Dark Souls Input Customizer (DSIC) offers full customization of the controls of Dark Souls. It uses a flexible input system that allows the rebinding of every action to arbitrary combinations of keys or buttons on the controller, the mouse or the keyboard. Although this can in part also be achieved with existing tools, DSIC is much more flexible and wraps it all up in an easy to use package, along with additional functionality that is specially tailored to Dark Souls. DSIC also fully includes the Dark Souls Mouse Fix, which does not have to be installed separately. Features Bind any action to an arbitrary combination of keys or buttons on the controller, mouse or keyboard Flexible options such as individual sensitivities for camera movement and bow aiming Non-standard bindings such as Roll-Only, Kick or Leap Attack Complete fix of the mouse controls with UI cursor support and no additional smoothing or acceleration Includes a GUI for easy configuration Steam Controller support Compatible with DSFix Instructions Supported Versions This mod is designed for the latest, fully patched Steam version and might not work when used with an older or otherwise modified executable. Install The mod does not make any permanent changes to the game or to Windows and can easily be removed. Install Durante's DSFix if you have not already Extract the contents of the DarkSoulsInputCustomizer.zip to the same folder. For example: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition\DATA" Look for the dinput8dllWrapper line in DSFix.ini and set it to dinput8dllWrapper DarkSoulsInputCustomizer.dll. No additional configuration of DSFix is necessary Start DarkSoulsInputCustomizerGUI.exe to set bindings and other settings as desired Start the game normally, for example directly through Steam. If you want to change the settings while in the game, see the Configuration section below on how to do that A few additional notes on the installation: See Loading Other Fixes/Mods/Injectors for information on how to solve conflicts with other mods that also use a DirectInput wrapper DLL You should hear a DSIC loaded message on game launch when the fix is installed correctly. This sound can be turned of in the config If you currently have the Dark Souls Mouse Fix installed, make sure to replace the line with dinput8dllWrapper DarkSoulsInputCustomizer.dll instead of just adding another one Uninstall Set the dinput8dllWrapper setting in DSFix.ini to none and delete the files of the fix Configuration Although the configuration using the GUI should be easy and straight-forward, there are some things to note: The GUI provides tooltips with additional information about a setting You can change settings while in the game by using the Reload Config binding. Just change the settings in the GUI as necessary, press save and then use the binding to reload the config in-game. You should hear a DSIC Reloaded sound message when the reloading was successful You may also want to enable borderlessFullscreen in DSFix for easier switching between the GUI and the game It is not necessary to unbind a key or button in the in-game settings to use it with the fix Movement And Camera Control The Movement/Camera Control setting determines how the camera and the basic movement of the character are controlled: Keyboard and Mouse: Enables raw mouse input for camera control and uses bindings for movement. Deactivates analog sticks and vibrations Gamepad: Standard controller behavior. Uses the left and right analog stick for movement and camera control. Disables raw mouse camera Steam Controller: Enables raw mouse input for camera control and uses the left analog stick for movement. This requires that the mouse is mapped to the right control pad in the Steam Controller software Note that this setting has no effect on any other bindings. It is entirely possible to use keyboard or mouse bindings in Gamepad mode an vice versa. This mod is all about customization and the input system is purposefully designed to be as flexible as possible. This should hopefully also help people who are using unusual controllers or are otherwise not able to play the game in the regular way. Non-Standard Bindings Non-standard bindings execute actions that usually have to be performed by using a context-sensitive key or a combination of keys. DSIC currently offers bindings for: Kick and Leap Attack Roll Only and Dash Only Auto Run Although they do not allow anything that cannot also be done manually, there has been some debate in the past over whether automation like this could be considered cheating. I am still not convinced by that and am currently of the opinion that the listed actions are primarily a matter of the controls and not the player's skill; especially since similar effects can already be achieved with external tools, such as AutoHotkey or severals different types of gaming software. Known Issues The Auto Cursor currently briefly activates the cursor when opening certain doors with keys. This is not easily fixable but should only be a minor issue, due to the short duration and small number of situations where this problem occurs. The dialog that pops up when summoning a co-op partner can currently not be controlled with the mouse cursor. All keybindings are currently disabled in the main menu. This is on purpose to prevent issues when navigating the menu and when entering a character name. Additional Information Antivirus Software Since this mod consists of an executable DLL file that uses "hacking techniques" such as injection and hooking, it could be classified as malicious by antivirus software. In that case, it might be necessary to add an exception rule to the scanner. If you lack the trust in random people on the internet -- and I would not blame you -- feel free to use a meta online virus scanner like VirusTotal to verify the file. GUI Requirements The GUI requires the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.7.1 to work; which should already be installed on most systems. If you are having problems starting the program, you can download the required version either through a recommended Windows update (Windows 7 and later) or at Microsoft here. Loading Other Fixes/Mods/Injectors To increase the compatibility with other mods or injectors that are using a wrapper DLL, this fix offers two methods for remote loading of additional files. Note that there might still be compatibility issues between the different fixes, mods or injectors that have nothing to do with the loading process. File method: The mod will load another dinput8.dll automatically if it has the name dinput8_Remote.dll. Just rename the DLL you want to load accordingly. Using this method will lead to an error if the renamed DLL is not itself a dinput8.dll. Folder method: The mod will also automatically load all DLLs regardless of their names in a dinput8_Remote sub-directory. Just create a corresponding folder in the install directory of the mod. This is the only way to load multiple (conflicting) files. Input Bindings The GUI allows the binding of an action to an arbitrary combination of keys and buttons on the keyboard, the mouse or an XInput compatible controller. The system purposefully does not restrict conflicts, so multiple actions can be bound to the same key. Key Names: In case of the keyboard there might be a discrepancy between the key that was pressed and the one that is displayed. This is because the names are automatically translated based on the keyboard layout by using a Windows function. However, the mod always uses the physical keys as they were used during the creation of the binding, independent of the name that is displayed. Modifiers: Modifier bindings can be created by just using the corresponding key combinations. If you bind one action to Space and another another to LCTRL + Space and a third one to LALT + LCTRL + Space, only one of them will be triggered when Space is down, depending on the state of LCTRL and LALT. The system is not restricted to the usual modifier keys ALT, CTRL or SHIFT. Any key or button pressed before another acts as a modifier for the next one. Note that the order of the keys or buttons is only relevant during the binding process to distinguish bindings with the same modifiers. In the above example, Space could be held down and the other actions triggered by pressing LCTRL or LALT afterwards. Acknowledgments I would like to thank Kaibz for his extensive testing, detailed feedback and valuable suggestions during the development of the alpha versions of the mod. Without him, creating the mod would have taken even longer than it already did. Additionally, I would also like to give a shout-out to the author of the original DSMFix for Dark Souls, which allowed me to enjoy several playthroughs of the game over the years. Finally, I would like to thank Durante, author of DSFix, who made the game playable in the first place. Without his work, everything I have done would not be worth much. Contact And Support If you like this mod and want to support the development or show your appreciation with a donation, you can find more information on my website. There you can also find out more about other mods that I have done and means to contact me if you have a question, want to provide feedback, bug reports and suggestions. -
Version 1.4.1
37,984 downloads
Important The Dark Souls Mouse Fix has evolved into the Dark Souls Input Customizer (DSIC) and will no longer be updated. DSIC generalizes the functionality of the mouse fix to other input devices like gamepads and the Steam Controller. It also includes bugfixes, adjustments to the GUI and additional features, such as the creation of input profiles. For the time being, I will leave the mouse fix up, because it is stable and totally usable on its own. However, since DSIC provides the same functionality with additional improvements, there should really be no reason to prefer the old fix over the new mod. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What is this? This fix makes Dark Souls use raw mouse input without any additional smoothing or acceleration. It offers a flexible binding system, automatic cursor support for the UI, improved targeting and an easy configuration using a GUI. Overview Description Important: This is a beta version. Although it underwent some thorough testing before the first public release, there might still be some issues that need to be addressed. If you encounter any problems see the Contact And Support section on how to get in touch with me Although there already is a mouse fix for Dark Souls, which did a great job in helping many people (including me) to play the game with mouse and keyboard over the years, it is not an optimal solution. Because it emulates a controller, there are still some issues with sensitivity, apparent negative acceleration and overall sluggish movement. Using the cursor in the UI is also a hassle, because it has to be manually enabled and disabled via keybindings. Instead of emulating a controller, this fix injects raw mouse input directly into the game's camera functions, thereby avoiding any additional transformations. It also provides an auto cursor feature which automatically manages the visibility and capture settings of the cursor depending on the current situation. Features True raw mouse input without controller emulation No additional smoothing or acceleration Flexible options such as individual horizontal and vertical sensitivities for camera movement and bow aiming Allows any action to be bound to any combination of mouse buttons, the mouse wheel or keyboard keys UI Auto Cursor mode that enables and disables the cursor when in a menu or when switching out of the game Improved target switching Includes a GUI for easy configuration Steam Controller support Compatible with DSFix Instructions Supported Versions This fix only works with the latest, fully patched Steam version. Important: The fix relies on the layout of the executable. Older versions or ones that otherwise have been tempered with probably won't work. This also means that if the game were to be patched -- which is very unlikely at this point -- it might break the fix and require it to be updated. Install The fix does not make any permanent changes to the system, the game or the configuration of the game and can easily be removed (see below). Install Durante's DSFix if you haven't already Extract the contents of the DarkSoulsMouseFix.zip to the same folder. For example: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition\DATA" Look for the dinput8dllWrapper line in DSFix.ini and set it to dinput8dllWrapper DarkSoulsMouseFix.dll. No additional configuration of DSFix is necessary Start DarkSoulsMouseFixGUI.exe to set mouse setting and keybindings as desired Start the game normally, for example directly through Steam. If you want to change the settings while in the game, see the Configuration section below on how to do that A few additional notes on the installation: You should hear a Mouse fix loaded message on game launch when the fix is installed correctly If you currently have DSMFix installed, it is not necessary to remove it. Just replace the dinput8dllWrapper dsmfix.dll entry in DSFix.ini with dinput8dllWrapper DarkSoulsMouseFix.dll It is not necessary to unplug the controller if you have one. You can even enable the controller on-the-fly by using the Input Mode Toggle binding (see Configuration) The GUI requires the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.6.1, which should already be installed on most systems. If you are having problems starting the GUI, you can download the required version here I would recommend increasing the FPS limit to 60 in DSFix for the complete smooth experience. Keep in mind that there are some problems with unlocking the FPS though. You can find more information about that on PC Gaming Wiki here Uninstall Set the dinput8dllWrapper setting in DSFix.ini to none and delete the files of the fix Configuration Although the configuration using the GUI should be easy and straight-forward, there are some things to note: You can change settings while in the game by using the Reload Config binding, which is per default set to the '-' key on the numpad. Just change the settings in the GUI as necessary, press save and then use the binding to reload the config ingame. You should hear a Mouse Fix Reloaded sound message when the reloading was successful You may also want to enable borderlessFullscreen in DSFix for easier switching between the GUI and the game Although it is not necessary to bind a standard action when you are happy with the ingame setting, it is strongly recommended to exclusively use the bindings in the GUI of the fix It is not necessary to unbind a key or button in the ingame settings to use it with the fix The GUI also provides tooltips with additional information about a setting Binding System The new binding system allows you to bind any action to an arbitrary combination of keyboard keys, mouse buttons or the mouse wheel. Instead of manually selecting a key from a limited set of predefined keys, the new system works reactively. To bind an action, double left click the corresponding box. When the box turns green, press the combination of keys you would like to assign. The combination is set once any pressed keys are released. You should be able to use almost any keyboard key, independent of the keyboard type or layout. The key names are dependent on the layout currently set in Windows. If you are using an English layout, the key names will be in English, while an AZERTY layout will lead to French names. Bear in mind that the key names are automatically determined by using a Windows function and not all keys have pleasant display names. A few additional notes on the binding system: Each key pressed before another acts as a modifier for the next one Any key can be used as a modifier key, not just ALT, CTRL or SHIFT There is no limit to how many keys can participate in a combination. You can set a combination involving half a dozen keys if you want to The order you are pressing the keys in is only important during the binding process to differentiate between bindings that involve the same modifier keys To unbind an action double right click the corresponding box Auto Cursor Mode The Auto Cursor mode automatically manages the state of the cursor behavior depending on the current situation: It captures and hides the cursor when ingame and not in a menu It releases and shows the cursor when in the main menu, in a system menu or when the window goes into background, e.g. when using alt-tab It overrides all cursor settings in DSFix Non-Standard Bindings Non-standard bindings perform actions that usually have to be performed by using a context-sensitive key or a combination of keys. They are provided for convenience as they could also be implemented by using external tools, such as Auto Hotkey. Although they do not allow anything that cannot also be done manually, purists of the game might not want to use them. Movement Bindings The keybindings to move the character differ on a technical level from those you can bind ingame. They should fix the problem of sometimes not being able roll when running diagonally and not moving the camera at the same time, which existed in the game since launch. Input Mode The input mode specifies the behavior of the fix: Mouse and Keyboard: Enables raw mouse camera and keyboard bindings, deactivates controller input and vibrations Gamepad: Standard controller behavior, disables raw mouse camera and keyboard bindings Steam Controller: Standard controller behavior with the exception that the raw mouse camera is enabled and the right analog stick is disabled Note that: The Auto Cursor setting is independent of the input mode. For example, it is possible to play with a controller and only use the mouse for menu navigation if you want to The input mode can be toggled with the Input Mode Toggle binding. The toggle order is the following: Mouse -> Gamepad -> Steam Controller -> Mouse -> ... You should hear a corresponding sound message when the input mode is changed by using the binding Additional Information What You Should Know Since the fix consists of an executable DLL-File, I could have put any harmful shenanigans in there. You just have to trust me that the file is clean. If you don't -- and why should you -- feel free to use a meta online virus scanner like VirusTotal to verify the file. Be aware however, that because the fix uses "hacking techniques" such as injection and hooking, it could trigger anti-virus software without being harmful. Known Issues The Auto Cursor currently briefly activates the cursor when opening certain doors with keys. This is not easily fixable but should only be a minor issue, due to the short duration and small number of situations where this problem occurs. Apparently the dialog that pops up when summoning a co-op partner can currently not be controlled with the mouse cursor (unconfirmed). Acknowledgments I would like to thank Kaibz for his extensive testing, detailed feedback and valuable suggestions during the development of the alpha versions of the fix. Without him, creating the fix would have taken even longer than it already did. Additionally, I would also like to give a shout-out to the author of the original DSMFix for Dark Souls, which allowed me to enjoy several playthroughs of the game over the years. Finally, I would like to thank Durante, author of DSFix, who made the game playable in the first place. Without his work, everything I've done would not be worth much. Contact And Support If you like this mod and want to support the development or show your appreciation, you can find more information on my website. There you can also find out more about other fixes that I have done and means to contact me if you have a question, want to provide feedback, bug reports or suggestions. -
System requirements Minimum CPU: Intel Pentium Core 2 Duo E8500 3.17 Ghz, AMD Phenom II X2 555 3.2 Ghz RAM: 2 GB HDD: 14 GB GPU: Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT, ATI Radeon HD 5870 Recommended CPU: Intel CoreTM i3 2100 3.10 GHz, AMD A8 3870K 3.0 GHz RAM: 4 GB GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 750, ATI Radeon HD 6870 The game is asking for a rather old components in its minimum requirements so it should run on a variety of older machines. Even recommended hardware specifications are not very menacing. Testing methodology Testing was done on a system with Core i7 clocked to 4.5 GHz, 32 GB RAM and AMD Radeon HD 6870 in 2560x1600 resolution. Unfortunately the game has framerate limiter set to 60 frames per second and this system is fast enough to run stable on 60 FPS regardless of settings thus making standard FPS measuring rather inconclusive. To circumvent this problem I was forced to abandon framerate measuring and measure GPU utilization which is in percents. In normal conditions (framerate not limited by the game, fast CPU) GPU is utilized close to 100% and framerate is fluctuating on complexity of the rendered scene. In this case however, maximum framerate is locked and my machine is able to keep framerate on maximum value of 60 FPS. To keep this framerate, GPU has to wait after it finishes a frame and this is lowering utilization. For example low end GPU is able to barely keep 60FPS so its utilization is 100%. Much faster GPU hasn't got many problems to achieve 60 FPS and it has to wait after each frame making its utilization only 60%. Keep that in mind when reading graphs in this article as lower value means better performance. Measuring was done by utility GPU-Z, version 0.7.7, with sensor refresh rate set to a half a second. The game lacks internal benchmark so test run in game was done in the main hub called Majula by running from obelisk to the camp fire, then to the pit and back to the obelisk. This run takes around a minute and produces roughly 120 data points. Recently released new Durante's utility GeDoSaTo wasn't used in this test as I was unable to produce consistent results with it and using it created game instability. And since game started using VAC as anti-cheat solution, there is a slight chance, that you can get banned. Developer of this tool considers that highly unlikely though. Video settings Basic video option consists of resolution, full-screen mode and auto detection. Windowed borderless mode is not supported out of the box and external utility, such as Borderless-Gaming, is needed. Again be careful of using any third party application as Dark Souls 2 is using VAC. List of available resolutions is taken from operating system, so vast variety of single monitor resolutions are supported (presumably even 4k). Unfortunately the game is again locked to 16:9 aspect ratio so multi-monitor support is achieved only by using Flawless Widescreen utility, which can get you in trouble with VAC. Additional graphics settings can be found in the next menu. List grew quite a bit since its predecessor which contained only anti-aliasing and motion blur toggles. Dark Souls 2 features settings for variety of popular effects, some of them can be set in a different levels. Almost every effect can be adjusted directly in game apart from texture quality and high-quality character rendering. These two are applied after reloading your save. Unfortunately there is no field of view setting but default field of view is set rather reasonably and didn't cause me any discomfort even after few hours of playing. Mute on focus lost cannot be set and is disabled by default and the game simulation is not even paused when alt-tabbing, which is highly unusual behavior. Although alt-tabbing is working perfectly from fullscreen mode and is not very slow. Performance Dark Souls 2 performed on my system very well as it has been outlined on methodology paragraph. CPU-wise the game is working on simulated dual-core system without any performance impact, however when limiting it to only single core the game was unplayable. Allocated RAM never exceeded 900MB, same with VRAM, even on max details. Loading a level is fast, although cold start has several annoying notifications requiring user's input. The game features three presets: Low, Medium and High. Again bear in mind these numbers are not representing frames per second, but rather GPU utilization. On Low preset the GPU is working only 50% of the time. High preset comes with 30% performance cost as the GPU has to work at 82%. [compimg]http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_29/gallery_13_29_14461.jpg|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_29/gallery_13_29_59459.jpg|864|540|Low|High[/compimg] Apart from massive background blur and ocean quality, image difference is not very apparent. Frankly I got a feeling, that some of featured graphical effects are there just to mask horrible objects in the distance and other low resolution/low polygon assets (see rocks and castle in this screenshot). PNG screenshot of preset in higher resolution: Low, Medium, High. Texture quality Texture quality can be set to Medium (presumably a console resolution) and High. There is very little (2%) performance impact when setting it on High. VRAM utilization also rose only by a 40 MB (620 MB on everything Low, 660 MB with TQ on High). [compimg]http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_29/gallery_13_29_10413.jpg|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_29/gallery_13_29_107901.jpg|864|540|Medium|High[/compimg] Surprisingly there is almost no image quality difference between Normal and High. Textures are significantly better on character models when viewed from up close, but that only happens on cut-scenes or very rare instances in the game. Some textures are very nice and seems to be in high resolution but many other textures are not which created bad contrast when these two resolution assets are placed close to each other. Tiling one texture on a large area is also very common unfortunately. Screenshots in full resolution: Medium, High, placement. Shadow quality Shadows are the most performance heavy in the game taking almost 20% of performance when turning on High. There are also Medium, Low and Off states. [compimg]http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_29/gallery_13_29_44851.jpg|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_29/gallery_13_29_41617.jpg|864|540|Off|High[/compimg] Higher setting means higher resolution of shadows, but only characters and few objects are casting shadows and only few items are considered light sources. I haven't found specific pattern what qualifies objects for shadow casting and lights as a light sources. Generally characters are casting shadows, but I've encountered few torch stands and pillars that also casts shadows. One pillar is casting shadows correctly, but pillar just next to it does not. And this inconsistency is prevalent also with light sources. Sun is considered light source, same with player lit torches, but camp fires and many other torches are not. Screenshots in full resolution: Off, High, inconsistency. Water surface quality Water surface quality is very performance cheap but very nice looking effect. With quality set to low, ocean is just dark and bland. Increasing quality to Medium or High increases GPU utilization just by 2% and ocean surface looks tremendously better. Unfortunately this effect is applied only to ocean and I haven't noticed any difference on any other water bodies. Screenshots in full resolution: Low, Medium, High. [compimg]http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_29/gallery_13_29_60997.jpg|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_29/gallery_13_29_461.jpg|864|540|Low|High[/compimg] Model quality and HQ character rendering I haven't noticed any difference in model quality settings, performance impact was only 1%. High-quality character rendering is turning on cloth animations, otherwise there is no noticeable difference. Performance impact is below 1%. Anti-aliasing The game features only FXAA which is low quality post process blur filter. There is some jaggies reduction, but also fine details on textures are lost as whole picture is blurred. It is the cheapest anti-aliasing solution performance-wise, turning it on costs only 7% performance. Samples on the right are anti-aliased. Screenshots in full resolution: Off, On. Ambient occlusion Ambient occlusion setting has only two states - on and off. Implemented solution is not performance demanding (costing only 3%), but also doesn't look particularly good. [compimg]http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_29/gallery_13_29_9312.jpg|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_29/gallery_13_29_59902.jpg|864|540|Off|On[/compimg] Again I've noticed some inconsistency with this effect. On some scenes ambient occlusion is hardly noticeable, in others it is disturbingly strong. Screenshots in full resolution: scene 1 On, Off; scene 2: On, Off. [compimg]http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_29/gallery_13_29_95163.jpg|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_29/gallery_13_29_54775.jpg|864|540|Off|On[/compimg] Depth of field Dark Souls 2 is perfect example how depth of field effect should never be used. Depth of field can be nice and very powerful effect that adds realism to binoculars, camera viewfinders, gun sights and other devices, that uses lenses. Here we have blur filter on everything little bit too far or close without any context. Unfortunately Dark Souls 2 is not the only game, that is using DoF completely wrong. At least it does not affect performance very much. [compimg]http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_29/gallery_13_29_90153.jpg|http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/uploads/gallery/album_29/gallery_13_29_39126.jpg|864|540|Off|On[/compimg] By that comparison it is apparent, that this effect is used mainly for masking low resolution textures and object on the skybox. For better comparison open these screenshots in full resolution: On, Off. Controls Dark Souls 2 has been developed with controller in mind and Xbox controller works quite nicely right away. There are some problems with controller autodetection and multiple HID devices but that can be easily resolved by disabling every controller but one. There are few settings hidden in Game Options menu such as X, Y axis reversion, sensitivity and vibration strength. The only controller rebindable action is Jump, no other buttons can be changed. Keyboard and mouse support is much better than its predecessor, but it is still light years from perfect and miles from just usable. First of all there are Xbox button prompts regardless of having the controller or not. That is making learning the game extremely difficult as tutorial offers only information like "Pushing RB+LS makes triple jump". You can use our guide for some of the prompts. Every menu and option screen is screaming controller and is very hard to navigate with mouse as there is zero consistency. There are hidden sections that are activated by just hovering mouse cursor over them and getting from that section properly is also a nightmare. Let me give you an example with key mapping menus: Hitting escape key frees mouse from camera control and shows first menu and cursor. Hovering over icons shows drop-down sub menu. Clicking on Key Bindings brings appropriate menu. This menu consist of two sections: top selector of action groups and bottom section with actions and assigned keys. Hovering over top icons is switching between them nicely, but hovering over assigned keys locks this section and hovering over top icons is no longer working. So how to escape this menu a save changes? Logical solution would be hitting escape key with hopes, that would bring a dialog asking for saving any changes. Unfortunately escape key immediately shuts down every menu and all the changes are lost. Properly closing menu with saving is by action called "Cancel" or by clicking right mouse button and selecting back. This confusing behavior is prevalent in every menu screen. Technically you can use your mouse to navigate through them, it is just extremely frustrating. Another lovely new feature is double click binding. Some actions can be assigned to the mouse button double click. Interesting idea, horrible execution. Light left and right arm attacks are assigned to single click left and right mouse button respectively. Unfortunately after the game receives single click, it waits for potential second click, that could never come, thus delaying actions assigned to single clicks by a significant amount of time. Combat with these delays is very imprecise and again very frustrating. This issue has been briefly mentioned in the Official Bandai Namco Support Thread on Steam Community forums, but it has been since deleted from the first post. That suggests this will never be officially fixed, but few fixes are available in our Wiki article. Camera control with mouse is precise, and I haven't had any problems with it at all. Mouse acceleration is disabled by default and the game even ignores acceleration set by operating system so at least something is finally done right. Audio Audio options are accessible only from the game and not from main menu. The game features voice chat, that is thankfully disabled by default. Volume of music, sound effects and voices can be adjusted separately. Surround sound is supported by default, however there is no fine tweaking. On my system the game took surround sound setting from the operating system and correctly used 7.1 configuration. Sound mixing is little bit iffy, some effects are sent only to front speakers and ignores position of camera or player. Overall surround sound is implemented very well. Conclusion Performance in the game is very good but that comes with cost of not very striking visuals. Graphical settings offers only disputable visual changes. Resolutions are working correctly. Keyboard and mouse controls are barely usable and require extensive tweaking to work right so controller is again highly recommended. It seems that From Software haven't learned much from first Dark Souls and offers classic port from consoles. PC Reports are a series of quick first impressions regarding the technical aspects of a PC game. This report was written by PCGamingWiki contributor LDK. For an up to date account of Dark Souls 2 fixes and improvements, please visit its respective PCGamingWiki article. -
PC Reports are a series of quick first impressions regarding the technical aspects of a PC game. This report was written by PCGamingWiki contributor LDK. For an up to date account of Dark Souls 2 fixes and improvements, please visit its respective PCGamingWiki article. Dark Souls 2 is third installment of the "Souls" series but only second game on PC platform. First Souls game on the PC, Dark Souls, has been very rushed port with some controversial limitations, locked 720p resolution, locked framerate and awful mouse and keyboard support. Developer From Software promised proper PC version of Dark Souls, we are going to look, if they succeeded this time. Dark Souls 2 was released on April 25, 2014 for Windows and is available through several digital distribution channels. System requirements Minimum CPU: Intel Pentium Core 2 Duo E8500 3.17 Ghz, AMD Phenom II X2 555 3.2 Ghz RAM: 2 GB HDD: 14 GB GPU: Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT, ATI Radeon HD 5870 Recommended CPU: Intel CoreTM i3 2100 3.10 GHz, AMD A8 3870K 3.0 GHz RAM: 4 GB GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 750, ATI Radeon HD 6870 The game is asking for a rather old components in its minimum requirements so it should run on a variety of older machines. Even recommended hardware specifications are not very menacing. Testing methodology Testing was done on a system with Core i7 clocked to 4.5 GHz, 32 GB RAM and AMD Radeon HD 6870 in 2560x1600 resolution. Unfortunately the game has framerate limiter set to 60 frames per second and this system is fast enough to run stable on 60 FPS regardless of settings thus making standard FPS measuring rather inconclusive. To circumvent this problem I was forced to abandon framerate measuring and measure GPU utilization which is in percents. In normal conditions (framerate not limited by the game, fast CPU) GPU is utilized close to 100% and framerate is fluctuating on complexity of the rendered scene. In this case however, maximum framerate is locked and my machine is able to keep framerate on maximum value of 60 FPS. To keep this framerate, GPU has to wait after it finishes a frame and this is lowering utilization. For example low end GPU is able to barely keep 60FPS so its utilization is 100%. Much faster GPU hasn't got many problems to achieve 60 FPS and it has to wait after each frame making its utilization only 60%. Keep that in mind when reading graphs in this article as lower value means better performance. Measuring was done by utility GPU-Z, version 0.7.7, with sensor refresh rate set to a half a second. The game lacks internal benchmark so test run in game was done in the main hub called Majula by running from obelisk to the camp fire, then to the pit and back to the obelisk. This run takes around a minute and produces roughly 120 data points. Recently released new Durante's utility GeDoSaTo wasn't used in this test as I was unable to produce consistent results with it and using it created game instability. And since game started using VAC as anti-cheat solution, there is a slight chance, that you can get banned. Developer of this tool considers that highly unlikely though. Video settings Basic video option consists of resolution, full-screen mode and auto detection. Windowed borderless mode is not supported out of the box and external utility, such as Borderless-Gaming, is needed. Again be careful of using any third party application as Dark Souls 2 is using VAC. List of available resolutions is taken from operating system, so vast variety of single monitor resolutions are supported (presumably even 4k). Unfortunately the game is again locked to 16:9 aspect ratio so multi-monitor support is achieved only by using Flawless Widescreen utility, which can get you in trouble with VAC. Additional graphics settings can be found in the next menu. List grew quite a bit since its predecessor which contained only anti-aliasing and motion blur toggles. Dark Souls 2 features settings for variety of popular effects, some of them can be set in a different levels. Almost every effect can be adjusted directly in game apart from texture quality and high-quality character rendering. These two are applied after reloading your save. Unfortunately there is no field of view setting but default field of view is set rather reasonably and didn't cause me any discomfort even after few hours of playing. Mute on focus lost cannot be set and is disabled by default and the game simulation is not even paused when alt-tabbing, which is highly unusual behavior. Although alt-tabbing is working perfectly from fullscreen mode and is not very slow. Performance Dark Souls 2 performed on my system very well as it has been outlined on methodology paragraph. CPU-wise the game is working on simulated dual-core system without any performance impact, however when limiting it to only single core the game was unplayable. Allocated RAM never exceeded 900MB, same with VRAM, even on max details. Loading a level is fast, although cold start has several annoying notifications requiring user's input. The game features three presets: Low, Medium and High. Again bear in mind these numbers are not representing frames per second, but rather GPU utilization. On Low preset the GPU is working only 50% of the time. High preset comes with 30% performance cost as the GPU has to work at 82%. Apart from massive background blur and ocean quality, image difference is not very apparent. Frankly I got a feeling, that some of featured graphical effects are there just to mask horrible objects in the distance and other low resolution/low polygon assets (see rocks and castle in this screenshot). PNG screenshot of preset in higher resolution: Low, Medium, High. Texture quality Texture quality can be set to Medium (presumably a console resolution) and High. There is very little (2%) performance impact when setting it on High. VRAM utilization also rose only by a 40 MB (620 MB on everything Low, 660 MB with TQ on High). Surprisingly there is almost no image quality difference between Normal and High. Textures are significantly better on character models when viewed from up close, but that only happens on cut-scenes or very rare instances in the game. Some textures are very nice and seems to be in high resolution but many other textures are not which created bad contrast when these two resolution assets are placed close to each other. Tiling one texture on a large area is also very common unfortunately. Screenshots in full resolution: Medium, High, placement. Shadow quality Shadows are the most performance heavy in the game taking almost 20% of performance when turning on High. There are also Medium, Low and Off states. Higher setting means higher resolution of shadows, but only characters and few objects are casting shadows and only few items are considered light sources. I haven't found specific pattern what qualifies objects for shadow casting and lights as a light sources. Generally characters are casting shadows, but I've encountered few torch stands and pillars that also casts shadows. One pillar is casting shadows correctly, but pillar just next to it does not. And this inconsistency is prevalent also with light sources. Sun is considered light source, same with player lit torches, but camp fires and many other torches are not. Screenshots in full resolution: Off, High, inconsistency. Water surface quality Water surface quality is very performance cheap but very nice looking effect. With quality set to low, ocean is just dark and bland. Increasing quality to Medium or High increases GPU utilization just by 2% and ocean surface looks tremendously better. Unfortunately this effect is applied only to ocean and I haven't noticed any difference on any other water bodies. Screenshots in full resolution: Low, Medium, High. Model quality and HQ character rendering I haven't noticed any difference in model quality settings, performance impact was only 1%. High-quality character rendering is turning on cloth animations, otherwise there is no noticeable difference. Performance impact is below 1%. Anti-aliasing The game features only FXAA which is low quality post process blur filter. There is some jaggies reduction, but also fine details on textures are lost as whole picture is blurred. It is the cheapest anti-aliasing solution performance-wise, turning it on costs only 7% performance. Samples on the right are anti-aliased. Screenshots in full resolution: Off, On. Ambient occlusion Ambient occlusion setting has only two states - on and off. Implemented solution is not performance demanding (costing only 3%), but also doesn't look particularly good. Again I've noticed some inconsistency with this effect. On some scenes ambient occlusion is hardly noticeable, in others it is disturbingly strong. Screenshots in full resolution: scene 1 On, Off; scene 2: On, Off. Depth of field Dark Souls 2 is perfect example how depth of field effect should never be used. Depth of field can be nice and very powerful effect that adds realism to binoculars, camera viewfinders, gun sights and other devices, that uses lenses. Here we have blur filter on everything little bit too far or close without any context. Unfortunately Dark Souls 2 is not the only game, that is using DoF completely wrong. At least it does not affect performance very much. By that comparison it is apparent, that this effect is used mainly for masking low resolution textures and object on the skybox. For better comparison open these screenshots in full resolution: On, Off. Controls Dark Souls 2 has been developed with controller in mind and Xbox controller works quite nicely right away. There are some problems with controller autodetection and multiple HID devices but that can be easily resolved by disabling every controller but one. There are few settings hidden in Game Options menu such as X, Y axis reversion, sensitivity and vibration strength. The only controller rebindable action is Jump, no other buttons can be changed. Keyboard and mouse support is much better than its predecessor, but it is still light years from perfect and miles from just usable. First of all there are Xbox button prompts regardless of having the controller or not. That is making learning the game extremely difficult as tutorial offers only information like "Pushing RB LS makes triple jump". You can use our guide for some of the prompts. Every menu and option screen is screaming controller and is very hard to navigate with mouse as there is zero consistency. There are hidden sections that are activated by just hovering mouse cursor over them and getting from that section properly is also a nightmare. Let me give you an example with key mapping menus: Hitting escape key frees mouse from camera control and shows first menu and cursor. Hovering over icons shows drop-down sub menu. Clicking on Key Bindings brings appropriate menu. This menu consist of two sections: top selector of action groups and bottom section with actions and assigned keys. Hovering over top icons is switching between them nicely, but hovering over assigned keys locks this section and hovering over top icons is no longer working. So how to escape this menu a save changes? Logical solution would be hitting escape key with hopes, that would bring a dialog asking for saving any changes. Unfortunately escape key immediately shuts down every menu and all the changes are lost. Properly closing menu with saving is by action called "Cancel" or by clicking right mouse button and selecting back. This confusing behavior is prevalent in every menu screen. Technically you can use your mouse to navigate through them, it is just extremely frustrating. Another lovely new feature is double click binding. Some actions can be assigned to the mouse button double click. Interesting idea, horrible execution. Light left and right arm attacks are assigned to single click left and right mouse button respectively. Unfortunately after the game receives single click, it waits for potential second click, that could never come, thus delaying actions assigned to single clicks by a significant amount of time. Combat with these delays is very imprecise and again very frustrating. This issue has been briefly mentioned in the Official Bandai Namco Support Thread on Steam Community forums, but it has been since deleted from the first post. That suggests this will never be officially fixed, but few fixes are available in our Wiki article. Camera control with mouse is precise, and I haven't had any problems with it at all. Mouse acceleration is disabled by default and the game even ignores acceleration set by operating system so at least something is finally done right. Audio Audio options are accessible only from the game and not from main menu. The game features voice chat, that is thankfully disabled by default. Volume of music, sound effects and voices can be adjusted separately. Surround sound is supported by default, however there is no fine tweaking. On my system the game took surround sound setting from the operating system and correctly used 7.1 configuration. Sound mixing is little bit iffy, some effects are sent only to front speakers and ignores position of camera or player. Overall surround sound is implemented very well. Conclusion Performance in the game is very good but that comes with cost of not very striking visuals. Graphical settings offers only disputable visual changes. Resolutions are working correctly. Keyboard and mouse controls are barely usable and require extensive tweaking to work right so controller is again highly recommended. It seems that From Software haven't learned much from first Dark Souls and offers classic port from consoles. PC Reports are a series of quick first impressions regarding the technical aspects of a PC game. This report was written by PCGamingWiki contributor LDK. For an up to date account of Dark Souls 2 fixes and improvements, please visit its respective PCGamingWiki article. Click here to view the article
