Peter Thoman, the modder better known as "Durante" and for his mod that vastly improved the visual quality of the original Dark Souls' PC port, released a new graphics mod today — this time for From Software's sequel, Dark Souls 2.
The release, which is currently in an initial public alpha state, Thoman warns, brings with a host of graphics enhancements: texture modding, ambient occlusion, anti-aliasing and depth of field and post-processing effects. And while the tool is timed with the release of Dark Souls 2, which Thoman recently scrutinized from a graphics standpoint, the mod is being designed to work with a number of games.
Thoman calls his mod GeDoSaTo, or the Generic Downsampling Tool. He explains on his personal blog that after developing graphics fixes for Dark Souls and Deadly Premonition, he "saw a world in which everyone was free to downsample any game, unbound by the restrictions of their monitor or display driver. One where people could downsample at high refresh rates, and where the quality of the scaling in real-time was finally equal to that achieved in image manipulation programs.
"What about providing a set of tools, which would allow anyone, without low-level knowledge of Windows programming or even access to a compiler, to perform game-specific modifications and improvements such as DSfix, AGmod or DPfix?" Thoman wrote. "Why not also enable talented artists to use their craft on any game, not just ones designed to be modifiable by their creators?"
GeDoSaTo, Thoman explains, tells a game that a certain resolution is supported but "will actually use a different resolution in hardware, while pretending to use the other resolution to the software client. The final image is then downsampled (in a very high quality fashion) before being displayed on the screen."
The result, as outlined in an article on PC Gamer, is a better looking version of Dark Souls 2 for Windows PC.
Version 0.1a of GeDoSaTo is available to download via Thoman's website, where he details the development and his goals for the mod in greater detail, as well as some of its current limitations.
For more on Dark Souls 2 and its newly launched PC port, read Polygon's review update and watch our Overview video.