Beginner's guide to the installation of Dark Souls: PtDE

As you know it, Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition is the port of the game on PC. It was initially not meant to be, but a petition brought the game to the PC platform; FROM SOFTWARE, however, had no experience with PC ports, and this port is unanimously recognized to be a mess on several points: PC optimization, but everything about the online experience.

I have seen several players brought to Dark Souls recently, mostly on PC. You might be one of them. But not all of those players are aware that several mods and tools exist, to make the players have a great experience, far more enjoyable that on consoles (what was that? What lag in Blightown are you talking about?). to make the game look nice, feel nice (if you're not stuck with a keyboard and mouse), with a kinda functioning matchmaking. al

Durante's DSfix

This mod is the father of all mods. Vanilla DS:PtDE (vanilla meaning not modded) barely gives you any access to any graphical options. Activate a messy fullscreen mode, activate or deactivate the anti-aliasing (AA), motion-blur, and the resolution. The said resolution, however, cannot go above 720p, and the FPS are locked to 30 if you have a good enough computer, 15 otherwise. This mod fixes all that, and much more. It even replaces the default fullscreen mode with a nice, actually working borderless windowed mode.

How to install it?

1. Launch the game. Go to the options, and deactivate the in-game anti-aliasing. If you want to use the borderless windowed mode, which I highly recommend, set the FULLSCREEN option to OFF.

2. Download DSfix latest version. Currently, it is 2.4.

3. You should get a compressed file named something like DSFix 2.4-19-2-4.zip, or something similar. Open that file, and drag all the content of it to your installation folder. It should be something like C://Program Files (x86)/Steam/steamapps/common/Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition/DATA, or something similar.

4. Now you can see several files. The ones we will be interested in is the file called DSfix.ini. Open it with a text editor (the Notepad will do, though I highly recommend the use of Notepad++ instead).

5. Before doing any modification, launch the game. It should be working. If there is a problem, delete the files DSfix.ini and DINPUT8.dll, and go back to 1; check that your DSfix version is actually the most recent one.

The next step will be to configure the DSfix. I know that modifying a text file might be scary for some of you, since doing it wrong might prevent the game from starting; to you, I advise the use of Morten242's UI for DSfix. It's just a graphical interface which modify the file: download it and drop the content of the compressed file the the same place as the DSfix.

How to configure it?

I won't go against a gaping dragon to explain what does what (go against a gaping dragon, go in-depth, see what I did there?). I'll just explain the main options. If you want something more thorough, I'll advise you to check at sajtt's Guide.

• Graphic options You have basically to categories there. The first one is the internal rendering resolution of the game, the second one is the display resolution. Basically, you'll just want to set renderWidth to your screen width, renderHeight to your screen height. Example: for a 16:9 Full HD screen, you'll set renderWidth 1920, renderHeight 1080, presentWidth 0 and presentHeight 0. If, however, you think that the AA is for filthy paesants and that your rig can take it, you'll use a rendering resolutions to something higher than your screen resolution, and the display resolution to the one of your screen; be sure to keep the screen ratio (4:3, 16:10, 16:9, 21:9 or whatsnot.)

• Depth of Field If your rig can take it, I'd advise you to set this value to the one directly above your screen height. Do not, however, put the same value as your vertical resolution! If your rig cannot take it, set that value to the one below. Example: you set the renderHeight value to 1440, either because you have a QHD screen or because you think AA is for paesants. Then you set dofOverrideResolution to 2160. With that value comes the DoF additional blur, which has to be set accordingly to the dofOverrideResolution.

• Framerate This is where the fun starts. Here, you have two options: unlockFPS and FPSlimit. The first one unlocks the FPS, the second one sets the FPS limit. First, everyone should set unlockFPS 1; it does nothing wrong. The tricky part is with the FPSlimit. When you set that value too high, it creates problems with the way collisions are computed in game, creating various bugs: your rolls or your jumps don't go as far, and you have a non-negligeable chance of passing through the floor when you're sliding down a ladder. According to sajtt, this bug occurs as soon as the FPSlimit goes above 30; according to the PC Gaming Wiki, however, this bug can be avoided if you set the FPS limit the 59. That's my pick, and I never had any problem with that.

• HUD options This is a part I love. This option allows you to modify the in-game HUD size and transparency. On any screen with a resolution higher than HD, the HUD seems grotesquely big and pixelated. Even using a HUD texture mod will not improve greatly that, since the HUD will still be as big. Displaying a smaller HUD is a solution. To enable the HUD modifications, set enableHudMod to 1. My two cents about it: I like to set the HUD as it is, just smaller, so to set hudScaleFactor to 0.8, and leave the rest untouched. However, this setting is not perfect! Activating the HUD modifications actually makes the bosses' healthbar bugged: instead of displaying the healthbar, it only displays a yellow rectangle, which gives almost no indication at all about how much health the boss has. My third cent about it is then: use the HUD modifications if you like it, and deactivate them when you're fighting a boss; to do so, press the right shift key. Pressing the right control key will hide the HUD, which looks nice and all, but you don't really want to use that except when you're taking screenshots, do you?

• Mouse cursor options First, do not think about it, set the lines disableCursor to 1 and captureCursor to 1. The first one allows you to not have your mouse cursor in the middle of the screen (that's how bad that port is), the second one allows your cursor to stay in the screen.

• About borderless windowed mode If you want to use it, which, again, I recommend, you will have set the in-game fullscreen option to off. Then, set the borderlessFullscreen line to 1, and, all the way down, forceWindowed to 1 as well.

• Texture override This is another thing I love about this mod. It allowed the game to have a modder base, as it was not given at all from the start! The option enableTextureOverride will simply replace the in-game by the textures that you will have put in the folder dsfix/tex_override. If you play the game in a higher resolution that 720p, especially, all the fonts and UI are so low-res that it hurts my heart. Fortunately, the Nexus has tons of texture files: HUD, UI, armors, faces... Check them out. I, however, have a few recommendations:

  • backfoggen's High-Res UI and Subtitle fonts and iwa360's Xbox360HD Interface Icons to get rid of that filthy pixels in the UI
  • Toology86's DarkSoulsHD Texture Pack, if your computer is up to it.

lebber's Mouse fix

You're probably somewhat masochistic since you want to play Dark Souls. However, playing Dark Souls: PtDE with a mouse and keyboard is more than being the casual masochistic: you might as well ask to get tied and whipped for hours watching Blue Is the Warmest Color, and want to masturbate all along. But, maybe you cannot afford a controller, or do not want to buy one because PC Masterrace... Well, anyway, you're wrong, but that's not my point. My point is that lebbers got your ass covered, to help you take off the notches of the whip, thanks to his DSMfix. It's basically something that helps you handle the mouse a little better. It's not great, but it actually allowed a friend of mine to finish the game without an controller (we had to lock him up for a few weeks but he's feeling better, now, thank you).

Be careful, though, and do not use this mod if you're using a controller! This will just mess things up.

How to install it?

1. In the DSfix.ini file, change the line dinput8dllWrapper none to dinput8dllWrapper dsmfix.dll

2. Download the DSMfix

3. Open the compressed file and drag the content of the file to DATA folder, the same as the DSfix

Now you can open dsmfixgui.exe and change the settings according to your taste. As for the keyboard, the DSfix comes with a file called DSfixKeys.ini, which allows your to rebind keys. As I never had to use any of those, and therefore have no recommended settings.

/u/eur0pa's PvP Watchdog

You might have heard about that, and if you didn't, here it is: the online on DS:PtDE is a mess. Some say that it might be because the game's online initially worked through Games For Windows Live, platform which has been taken down and replaced by Steam; I don't know if that's true and if the game used to work well, but that's besides the point. If you summon or get invaded by a player with a too long Steam alias, the game will simply crash. It also has issues to simply get online. I won't get into detail, since I don't know much about that. What I know is that the connection works on a peer-to-peer basis, and that peer-to-peer connection is established thanks to servers put up by Steam, which are related to something called nodes. As far as I understand it, a node is simply some sort of network ramification through which your connection is established; the more nodes you "have" means the more players you're actually connected to.

Happy thing that, again, the modding community has thought about something; and in this case, it was a fellow redditor, /u/eur0pa. What does it do? A short list would be:

• It tells you how many nodes you're connected to, and allows you to take the maximum number of nodes from 21 to 32.

• If you're hosting or are hosted, it gives you the Steam alias of the hosting or hosted player, and the ones present in your world at the same time.

• It fixes the "namecrash bug", which means your game won't crash because a Steam username is too long.

• It tells you when a player is cheating, based on any incoherence between the player's level and stats. It also tells you so, and allows you to kick him out of your world.

• It prevents you from being cursed, prevents your equipment to get broken, and all sorts of things that an online opponent is not able to do without cheating.

So basically, it's a must-have as long as you play online, especially if you want to invade the shit out of other players. All these information are displayed in a very small overlay, in the top left corner of your screen, that you can hide by pressing F9.

How to install it?

1. Download it

2. Extract the content of the compressed file to your Dark Souls DATA folder. Again, the same as the DSfix.

3. Same as the DSfix, it comes with a whole range of options, all configurable through a file called dspwsteam.ini.

As I think the mod works very well as it is, I never had to change anything in it. Therefore, my only advice is: leave it as it is. The only thing you might want to change is the maximum number of nodes you can connect to; I have, however, heard that some might have had a few issues with that, and never tried it myself. Actually, if I have more than 0 nodes in my game, I'm usually happy with that!

/u/Wulf2k's Dark Souls Connectivity Mod

As mentioned above, but I feel like I want to emphasize on this, the online on DS:PtDE is a mess. For years, players have struggled to connect with a specific friend. As the fellow redditor /u/Wulf2k probably wanted to do that as well, he created a tool. And because he apparently has some kind of Ron Swanson vibe, he called it the Dark Souls Connectivity Mod. And because of that Ron Swanson vibe, he did not stop here and made of this tool an essential.

How to install it?

1. Download it from his home page (on the left panel, DSCM - Connectivity Mod). There's also another version on the Nexus, but it is usually outdated.

2. Extract the content of the compressed file anywhere. Somewhere you can easily acces is better.

3. Launch the game, THEN launch the DSCM.

How to use it?

A picture is worth 1000 words, and that good, good man made a video about it, so check it out. Since his video is 5:12 long, that would be 312 seconds, times 25 since because there are approximately 25 pictures a second, which would be 1560 words. You can also check his original post, where he explains a few other things. Thanks to this, if the online is actually working on Steam's and From Software's ends, you should be able to connect with a friend in a matter of seconds or to get a few nodes in a matter of minutes.

Submitted by Hydroel | #Specialdealer Special Offer Online Shopping Store 2016