Dragon Age: Origins

File information

Last updated

Original upload

Created by

Shrutesh

Uploaded by

Shrutesh

Virus scan

Safe to use

About this mod

A ENB/SweetFX based lighting enhancement for Dragon Age Origins. Updated to 1.1!

Permissions and credits
As always it is very likely that the problem you are facing already has a fix mentioned in the 'Common Issues' section, so please check there first!


Anti-aliasing needs to be disabled from the Dragon Age Launcher in order for this mod to work, the mod has SMAA implemented, and you can force AA from your graphic card control panel.




What is this mod?
These are just some custom settings for Dragon Age Origins that use Boris Vorontsovs’ ENBSeries (ENBSeries v0.076a for Dragon Age) and SweetFX by CeeJay.dk. I had initially planned for a more comprehensive overhaul, however due to the limitations of the DAO ENB (it was never finished), those plans had to be abandoned. However these settings are atleast an upgrade over Vanilla, so I am releasing them.

Basically this mod adds:
  • Sharpening through Lumasharpen
  • DPX
  • Subtle Bloom
  • Tonemapping and Contrast adjustment
  • SMAA


Note that the ENB is not 100% bug free, especially the DoF may act weird in cutscenes, so I have uploaded two versions, one uses ENB+SweetFX, the other is only SweetFX. Whether or not the ENB actually contributes to visual quality in the exteriors is questionable, but it does make the interiors much more vibrant. Using the ENB version is not necessary.

Do you need this mod? I do not know. I have uploaded all screenshots in a Before-After format so that you can decide for yourself. Also all screenshots have been taken with Preset1 (busy weekend!), there are another 3 presets that you can check out for yourself..!




Installation:
1) If you are using the ENB version, you need to download these ENB files. If you are using the NON-ENB version, just skip to point 3.

2) Unzip the downloaded ENB file; and copy the contents to your "Dragon Age\bin_ship" folder (Where daorigins.exe is)

3) Download the file uploaded here, extract it, and copy all the files inside the ‘Core’ folder to your "Dragon Age\bin_ship" folder, overwrite when prompted.

4) The second folder 'SweetFX Settings' contains various presets, if you want to use them, just copy the "SweetFXsettings.txt" in the selected folder to "Dragon Age\bin_ship" and overwrite the default one.

5) Open DAOriginsConfig.exe and DISABLE Anti-aliasing, SweetFX does not work with DA:O's AA; I have enabled SMAA in SweetFX, if you need more AA, you can force it from your graphic cards control panel.

6) Run the Game! "Shift+F12" toggles ENB, "F11" toggles SweetFX.



Common Issues:
  • Pressing F11 does nothing - You have not disabled Antialiasing from DAOriginsConfig.exe
  • CTD before the game starts - Mostly you have an overlay enabled, MSI OSD, FRAPS, etc will cause issues with SweetFX/ENB.
  • Disabled AA but F11 does nothing - All on screen displays should be off, esecially FRAPS overrides SweetFX, so sweetFX does not work.
  • Very Low FPS - If you are on a mobile GPU (Optimus laptops especially), don't use the ENB version, the ENB will cause your game to start using the intel card instead.
  • You need the latest version of Direct X




My game looks nothing like your Screenshots!!
I have shared my Nvidia Control-panel settings in the Images section, of course not every card can run the game fluently at those settings, but any new card should be able to. I do not use any texture mods, the terrain and landscape textures are vanilla.

Thankyou, and as always, I just am a tweaker, I only change numbers, the hardwork is done by Boris and Ceejay.dk who provide these excellent tools that allow us to customize games to out tastes!