Modding the water

[CHC]

Modding the water

So I've recently become very bugged by the water in this game, specifically how it changed in the B&W patch and now (a) does not give reflections at night and (b) has numerous geometry errors in places like the Novigrad canals.

I am trying to make a mod that will take the water and essentially revert it to the way it was before Blood and Wine - more reflective and without the geometry errors in places. I have uncooked both the newest version of the game as well as a pre-B&W version, but none of the meshes in the environment have actually changed.

Does anyone know what IS controlling the water's geometry and reflectivity? Replacing the water folders with older ones and then packing it into a mod doesn't have any visible effect, and I've used a directory comparison tool to check what DID change after the patch, but unfortunately it's just some random architecture and shadow meshes, nothing involving water.

Is all of this stuff hidden away somewhere deeper and if so is there a way to either cook and pack a mod that will revert it? Or can content folders be directly replaced in the actual game's directory?

I know that shaders are not accessible to modders, so I'm assuming it has to do with that, but even still that would not account for the actual geometry / tesselation on the water.

Thanks and please let me know if you might have ideas!

 

[GMSBS_Ghost]

Well, I have no idea about a possible way to control/restore geometry, but reflectivity is AFAIK controlled via .env files. They have a parameter called "fresnel" and probably others that you might have a look at. That's basically, why STLM water looks a lot more reflective than vanilla.
Hope this helps you a tiny bit.

 

[CHC]

Thanks for the tip - because of it I searched and found W3edit.exe, it's a great way to access the game files.

I've been digging through a bunch of the level files which seem to contain data for the water geometry in Novigrad, with explicit references to the "channel" and a LOT of coordinates for the water found there and in the brothel district.

At this point though I can't tell if altering the coordinates does anything or if the game simply won't mod that stuff. It's going to take a HUGE amount of trial and error though because there is no way to actually edit this stuff visually, it's all just guessing which way to tweak coordinates.

If anyone has any experience messing with .w2l files please let me know.

If anyone is willing to look into this with me, this is the issue I'm trying to fix:

 

[CertainlyStenchy]

You can modify the water in the .env files. Check the m_water variable and mess around with stuff in there for reflections/color etc. waterFresnel controls the reflections, and I've found that a value of around -1 makes the water more reflective.

The problem you're having though looks like a corruption issue. Try verifying game cache through steam/gog.

 

[CHC]

Thanks, I messed with the env files a bit but I'm really trying to access the geometry.

And it's not a corruption problem, the water is like that for everyone - go take a look! It started in patch 1.20, you can see it in Novigrad canals and by the docks.

There are an enormous amount of geometry files (mostly .w2l) and I'm having trouble figuring out which ones control where water is and is not in the world.

 

[CHC]

Gah - wasted wayyyyy too much time poking around in all of the levels files to try to figure out which ones (if any) determine where the edges of the water are.

I really wish CDPR could just make one last patch to fix this problem as it is very immersion-breaking and doesn't seem to be triggered by anything - it's just there.

If anyone has any idea of how to alter the borders of bodies of water, I'm all ears. Without any kind of GUI it's seriously tedious looking at only parameters in W3edit....

 

[blobbins]

With regard to your directory comparison, did you unpack with Quick BMS? It will extract more filetypes than the official mod tools. It's linked in the top sticky post.

 

[CHC]

I used BMS to extract content bundles from the patches and snoop around at what had changed. I'm mostly using W3Edit to pack the various mods I've tried but so far nothing is working in the actual game world. I'm kind of at my wit's end. I've even gone so far as to replace the terrain tiles that were updated in patches with their older versions to see if I could restore the canal water geometry to its non-bugged state, but absolutely nothing registers a change in the world.

I know that the changes are doing something however, as I've edited .w2l files to move around various items like ladders and things, and lo and behold, that works. Which is kind of novel.... but still nothing on the water. I really have no idea what files control where the water's bounds are. I suspect that terrain tiles do that but so far absolutely no luck in dealing with those, and there are hundreds and hundreds of them anyway.

Any help would be welcome! Mainly trying to find out how the water's edges are determined and how to edit that, but I suspect I'm in uncharted territory with regards to modding.

 

[CHC]

OK so I believe I have found what controls the water in each of the terrain tiles - it looks like it's "minwaterheight" in the novigrad.w2w file.

Now I need a way to:

a) know which terrain tile is which. Is there any way to find these out, like the coordinates? There are over 2000 tiles that comprise Novigrad, I just have no idea how they are ordered or which is which

b) pack a mod with a changed w2w file. Anyone have experience altering these files? I'm using W3Edit but I'm not sure if my changes are "sticking" when I export the mod.

Thanks

 

[perry92]

CHC could you give us an update on any of your findings with w2l files. I have recently discovered them and I believe they are capable of a lot.

Any pointers you can give would be greatly appreciated.

 

[verdwhisper]

Isn't this water in Novigrad fixed in the nitpicker's visual fixes?

 

[LukeSparow]

And isn't the water pretty much fixed quality-wise in Aqua?

 

[g_riggi]

Can anyone divulge the methods they've used to extract/modify the .w2l and .w2w files? I'm hoping to modify the Kaer Morhen terrain and it seems that these files establish positioning of the .w2ters as well as miscellaneous meshes.

If I'm incorrect, would anyone happen to know where the actual terrain meshes are (i.e. the Kaer Morhen valley/mountains) and how to extract them?

 

[GregorWladacz]

AFAIK there is no possibility to edit those files (yet).