IV Released [IV/EFLC] Sweet Autumn

[iiCriminnaaL 4,345]

The purpose of this mod is to enhance the overall atmosphere of Liberty City and give it a clearer and smoother vision, with properly increased saturation and far clip, as well as more realistic colors of sunlight and shadows for the overworld. All while still maintaining the charming atmosphere and gritty tone of the game.

 

So, here's the summary of the done enhancements:

• The world's overall vision is now far clearer and smoother than in the default game, including every hour of every weather. Not to mention that it's now consistent between all hours and every weather.

• Far Clip has been increased in all weathers.

• Sunlight and shadows are no longer overly saturated, which applies to all weathers.

• Wind and fog have been noticeably increased in every hour of weathers Windy and Foggy, respectively.

• Fog has been reduced in the night hours of weather Extra Sunny.

• Recolored the blue sky of the sunsets of weather Extra Sunny to orange.

• Recolored the orange sky of the sunsets of weather Sunny to blue.

• Rainy nights are now black.

• Drizzly and Stormy nights are now blue.

• Instead of showing only in Extra Sunny and Windy like in default, the moon now shows in every night hour of every weather, starting from 21 (9 PM) instead of 22 (10 PM).

• The sky now has more realistic colors and lighting in all hours of every weather.

• The sun now has more realistic colors in all hours of every weather.

• Clouds now generally have more realistic colors and lighting in every hour of weathers Extra Sunny, Sunny, Windy, Cloudy and Foggy, as well as the night hours of Rainy, Drizzly and Stormy.

• Clouds have been slightly reduced in weathers Extra Sunny, Sunny and Windy.

• Clouds have been slightly brightened in certain day hours of weather Cloudy.

• The values of the water's color, reflection and transparency have been balanced in every hour of each weather.

• Temperature degrees have been enhanced to be slightly more realistic.

• The edges of the world's objects (more noticeably fences and leaves) now look smoother.

 

Preview screenshots: (Clean Color Correction Filters version - not completely up-to-date, but not too different neither)

Spoiler

 

Download

Edited June 16, 2020 by iiCriminnaaL 49

[iiCriminnaaL 4,345]

Updated:

• World's lightning colors have been generally made a little more realistic and balanced than in the first release, especially at night.

• Instead of being greenish, night times of 'Cloudy' are now blackish.

• Sky's color and brightness have been balanced during several times in weathers 'Extra Sunny', 'Sunny', 'Sunny Windy' and 'Cloudy', including night times.
• Clouds have been reduced in 'Extra Sunny', 'Sunny' and 'Sunny Windy'.
• Clouds have been slightly brightened in a couple of day times in 'Cloudy'.
• Sun's color has been changed from yellow to white during certain times in weathers 'Extra Sunny', 'Sunny', 'Sunny Windy' and 'Cloudy'.
• Clouds' colors have been generally made more realistic in a couple of weathers.
• Shadows' colors have been balanced during a couple of times in weathers 'Extra Sunny', 'Sunny', 'Sunny Windy' and 'Cloudy'.
• Balanced the water's color in every hour of each weather.

Edited October 25, 2018 by iiCriminnaaL 49

[[...] 5,983]

Can you provide any screenshots of your modification, so people who are about to download it could know how the mod looks like?

[iiCriminnaaL 4,345]

36 minutes ago, (Ambient) said:

Can you provide any screenshots of your modification, so people who are about to download it could know how the mod looks like?

It's actually planned.

 

When I first posted it, I didn't have time to take screenshots. I got more free time recently, but I've kept making some minor updates and such. I'll consider taking some screenshots when I'm sure I won't touch the mod for a time.

[iiCriminnaaL 4,345]

It's been a while since my last post.

 

Anyway, a lot has changed. Fixed certain times of several weathers being either too dark or too bright, recolored the 'Rainy' nights to black, 'Drizzly' and 'Lightning' to blue. 'Far Clip' has been reduced compared to the last build, but still higher than the default value. Light and shadow colors been enhanced more realistically in all weathers as well. Lastly, fixed the issue of having the weathers 'Sunny Windy', 'Foggy', 'Lightning', and to some extent 'Rainy' and 'Drizzly' look blurry in a strange way.

 

Still lazy to take some screenshots, but might do it sometime. 😜

Edited June 1, 2019 by iiCriminnaaL 49

[Jinx. 8,031]

Gonna install it later. CleanIV is too oversaturated at times, and this is just perfect for me.

[Jinx. 8,031]

Sorry for the double post, but I wanna share a pic.

 

 

Not having any pic does this mod injustice, imo. You really need to do some. It's not that hard to press printscreen and upload somewhere.

Edited June 1, 2019 by Jinx.

[iiCriminnaaL 4,345]

8 minutes ago, Jinx. said:

Sorry for the double post, but I wanna share a pic.

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

Not having any pic does this mod injustice, imo. You really need to do some. It's not that hard to press printscreen and upload somewhere.

Definitely not hard, but I was thinking of taking pics for several times of every weather. Felt a little lazy, you know. 😜 But I'm thinking of doing so sometime soon.

 

Thanks for the pic. 😉

Edited June 1, 2019 by iiCriminnaaL 49

[iiCriminnaaL 4,345]

• Refined certain weathers from appearing way too blurry and/or bright in certain hours.
• Made some minor enhancements to the brightness of the horizontal line of weathers Extra Sunny, Sunny, Windy and Cloudy.
• Made some minor enhancements to the water's color, reflection and transparent value in certain weathers.
• Removed the horizontal line off the Cloudy nights since it appears somewhat greenish in the black sky.
• Cloudy weather has been made cloudier during the most of the day hours.

Edited June 4, 2019 by iiCriminnaaL 49

[iiCriminnaaL 4,345]

• An appropriate balance has been set between the values of Gamma, Gamma Far, Exposure and BP Threshold (connected to blur and smoothness) throughout all hours between all weathers, which gives a generally smoother vision that is more consistent between all weathers, as well as a more appropriate and consistent amount of brightness and contrast.
• Reduced the value of the Color Correction (which is still grey to give a clean vision) so that brightness and contrast will look best suited at the default display settings.
• Enhanced the height and brightness of the sky's horizontal line during the day hours of weathers Extra Sunny, Sunny, Windy and Cloudy.
• The sky's color of weathers Extra Sunny, Sunny, Windy and Cloudy is now more saturated during the day hours.
• Instead of tending to red or orange as their default colors, clouds have been recolored to pure white/grey (depending on the weather and hour) in certain hours of certain weathers, with their color being affected by the sky and sun.

[iiCriminnaaL 4,345]

• 'Sunny Windy' nights are now less bluish than before. Somewhat similar to 'Foggy'.

• The sun now has more realistic colors and brightness during all hours of every weather, and its values are now somewhat more consistent between the weathers.

• Increased the sunlight's brightness in several day hours of every weather, more noticeably in 'Rainy', 'Drizzly' and 'Lightning', as well as their sky.

• Fixed a few weathers looking too blurry, bright or dark in certain hours (again).

Edited July 1, 2019 by iiCriminnaaL 49

[Jinx. 8,031]

I think the visualsettings' file format is wrong. It's a .dat in the archive. Also cloudy barely looks cloudy since the last few versions.

Edited July 8, 2019 by Jinx.

[iiCriminnaaL 4,345]

3 hours ago, Jinx. said:

I think the visualsettings' file format is wrong. It's a .dat in the archive.

There's actually two visualsettings files, one with .dat format and one with .xls (which I haven't done any changes to).

 

3 hours ago, Jinx. said:

Also cloudy barely looks cloudy since the last few versions.

I reduced the clouds a little, but it still has more clouds than Extra Sunny, Sunny and Windy. But I'll see how it looks if I increase them.

 

EDIT: Increased.

Edited July 8, 2019 by iiCriminnaaL 49

[JoeVK78 49]

I've been using VisualIV 1.8 and made a few tweaks to it to suit my taste, and stuck with it for 3 years, but I removed it today because I'm thinking about trying this out. I wish there were more screenshots of it, but I'm willing to give it a shot anyway.

[iiCriminnaaL 4,345]

2 minutes ago, JoeVK78 said:

I've been using VisualIV 1.8 and made a few tweaks to it to suit my taste, and stuck with it for 3 years, but I removed it today because I'm thinking about trying this out. I wish there were more screenshots of it, but I'm willing to give it a shot anyway.

I already thought of taking some screenshots, but didn't decide when exactly, especially since I update the mod every now and then. Even more, there're some minor enhancements that I make every now and then, but don't feel it's really worth it to mention them all.

 

Anyway, I hope you'll like it 😉👌.

[JoeVK78 49]

Thanks, so do I! If I have any critiques or suggestions, I'll let you know.

[iiCriminnaaL 4,345]

Some new enhancements:

• Clouds now generally have a more realistic balance between brightness and darkness in weathers Extra Sunny, Sunny, Windy and Cloudy, especially during the day hours, as well as the night hours of weathers Rainy, Drizzly and Lightning.
• Increased the saturation of the sky's color in the day hours of the first four mentioned weathers.
• Some minor enhancements to the sky's brightness in the first four mentioned weathers.

[iiCriminnaaL 4,345]

• Foggy weather has been recycled. It's now a modified version of Windy, with several assets borrowed from the original Foggy weather.
• Some minor changes to the sunlight's values in weathers Extra Sunny, Sunny, Windy and Cloudy, which also include making the differences between Extra Sunny and Sunny more noticeable and somewhat more significant than before (still not too much different, though).

[iiCriminnaaL 4,345]

Some minor updates:

• Sunsets of weather Extra Sunny now have orange skies. As for the default game, it's this way with the Sunny weather instead.
• Drizzly nights are now soft blue instead of black. This helps making it slightly more different to the Rainy weather.
• Some minor enhancements have been done to the sky's color in all hours of every weather.

[TWIST_OF_HATE 371]

Some screenshots is definitely needed ))

[Davve95 331]

Sounds awesome. I wounder why they made IV so dark and boring. 

Btw, yeah I agree with Twist of hate. Screenshot wouldn't be wrong. 

[JoeVK78 49]

I've been so busy lately that I managed to find time to install your last update, but didn't have time to check it out. And now another update is out! I'm taking a few days off the beginning of next week, so I'll definitely try to squeeze some testing time in. I need to clean up and redo my added vehicles and start a new game anyway.

[TWIST_OF_HATE 371]

I just tested this mod, but if you guys want to know some feedback, I don't know

I still have 1280 x 1024 monitor, and my PC handle IV not as good, as I could want, so for me it's hard to really spot a difference until I will buy a 4K monitor and high-end PC ))

But I noticed much cleaner trees and fences, similar to Dexx "Smoother Trees, Fences, Rails" mod.

Edited August 10, 2019 by TWIST_OF_HATE

[iiCriminnaaL 4,345]

4 hours ago, TWIST_OF_HATE said:

I just tested this mod, but if you guys want to know some feedback, I don't know

 

Of course. You're always welcome 😉.

 

4 hours ago, TWIST_OF_HATE said:

But I noticed much cleaner trees and fences, similar to Dexx "Smoother Trees, Fences, Rails" mod.

Yeah, indeed. It wasn't too long since I modified the stipple.wtd file, which is relevant to the smoothness of tree leaves and fences.

 

By the way, since I noticed that the few last updates heavily reduced the charming gritty nature which GTA IV is unique for, there're a few changes I've just recently made as well:

• Increased the Gama in almost every hour of every weather, and generally decreased the sun's light.
• Reduced the saturation of the sky's color in the daytime hours of weathers Extra Sunny, Sunny, Windy and Cloudy.

Edited August 10, 2019 by iiCriminnaaL 49

[JoeVK78 49]

I totally forgot to put in my two cents. I like it so far. Every update makes changes for the better. I like the fact that it's only a couple of files. Most graphics mods change a ton of files. As much as I like how amazing they look, they usually cause other problems like drops in frame rates and other glitches. I had one that increased the amount of fires, which made some missions like Three Leaf Clover impossible. Hard to pass that mission when Derrick and Packie keep running through fire until they're dead like idiots. I like the beautiful simplicity of this.

[iiCriminnaaL 4,345]

2 hours ago, JoeVK78 said:

I totally forgot to put in my two cents. I like it so far. Every update makes changes for the better. I like the fact that it's only a couple of files. Most graphics mods change a ton of files. As much as I like how amazing they look, they usually cause other problems like drops in frame rates and other glitches. I had one that increased the amount of fires, which made some missions like Three Leaf Clover impossible. Hard to pass that mission when Derrick and Packie keep running through fire until they're dead like idiots. I like the beautiful simplicity of this.

I'm glad that you appreciate it, bro 😉.

Edited August 12, 2019 by iiCriminnaaL 49

[iiCriminnaaL 4,345]

I've done a few changes that enhance the cold atmosphere of Liberty City's autumn season:

• The sun's light has been slightly desaturated in most daytime hours of weathers Extra Sunny, Sunny, Windy and Cloudy.
• In addition, the world's blue lighting color has been slightly saturated in the mentioned weathers, as well as the Foggy weather.

Edited August 16, 2019 by iiCriminnaaL 49

[JoeVK78 49]

Oh good, an excuse to not downgrade to 1.0.4.0 to try out DayL's IceEnhancer 3.0 edit. I'll be testing out the update in a little while.

[iiCriminnaaL 4,345]

Since I brought up the subject of Liberty City's cold atmosphere, I've reduced the sunlight's saturation far more than in the last update, in weathers Extra Sunny, Sunny, Windy, Cloudy and Foggy, from 9 AM up to 6 PM.

 

Another excuse not to downgrade I guess? 😜 @JoeVK78

Edited August 18, 2019 by iiCriminnaaL 49

[JoeVK78 49]

Lol yep! Although I have to admit, I still haven't installed the last update. I got sidetracked with other stuff and forgot.