f13.net

Disclaimer: I was made aware of this by Lucas, I hope he doesn't feel I am co-opting his discovery.

http://darkd3.com/ (http://darkd3.com/)

What this is:
Some sort of Direct3D post-processing black magic that slightly alters the colour palette to a more darker, grittier feel. Its degree of change is configurable.

Where it's from:
3dcenter.org A graphic cards news-site/forum. It's german and typically so: serious, dry and very geeky. Usually a reliable source of information.

Does it work?
Yes, I am using it right now.

Is this legal?
According to Jay Wilson (game director) it's not a cheat. Link to quote (german article) (http://www.pcgames.de/Diablo-3-PC-27763/News/Diablo-3-Darker-Pixel-Shader-Cheat-Bann-883472/)

Comparison creenshots under spoiler:

Cala

Disclaimer 2: It looks legit and non-bannable to me, but I take no responsiblity if it steals your credit card details and gets you kicked from B.net.

The sharpness filter alone makes it worth it.

In my opinion this just makes the game look worse.

I still have to make up my mind about it: art direction is great, the game is very colourful, althought, in my opinion, a little too "blurry", saturated. Infact, while I'm not sure about the more extreme dark d3 settings, I find the sharpening effect quite nice, because you can see more detail on the terrain and objects. Risk is that you dry out too much colour from the game and interface in general.

Infact, if you want to try this thing out but want to "play it safe", I recommend making a "none" profile with only "effect" and "sharpness" on and go from there. Use the "pause" key to toggle it on and off (when you unzip the settings in your Diablo directory, game will start with the Dark d3 settings already applied, so use the "pause" key to return to vanilla).

Finally, you can manually tune the settings by modifying the file called "darkD3_Settings.

What does this do to performance?

Honestly, I haven't noticed a significant drop (if any) with the framerate. Anyways, it's a very quick process: unzip some files in your main diablo dir, and delete them (as you can read in the readme of the .zip file) afterwards if you are not satisfied with the results; it will take a very short time (now, about loggin' back in the game is a whole different matter :P). Also, by clicking the pause button, you can switch it on and off (and click ctrl-r to check the framerate).

FYI Jay Wilson gave two differing responses about this in two days.  The first saying it could be a cheat, the second saying it was not a cheat, with the "Not a cheat" being the most recent interpretation.  Still, if my account is possibly on the line, I don't know that I want a tweet from Jay Wilson being my defensive ground on which to stand.

I don't see WHY it should be a problem, but I'm just cautious about it.

It's a DirectX mod... doesnt even have anything to do with D3.  Actually, him saying it was a 'cheat' can be determined to be a bit slanderous.  Next time maybe Jay should do some research before responding?

Slanderous?  :uhrr:

Many of the old school wallhacks for shooters were "just" directx mods. Whether something is cheat is not really a technical question.

I bet that legally their EULA allows Blizzard to ban you for connecting a mouse to your system if they feel like it. Them stating that it's OK means that they don't plan to do so for this particular piece of software.

Yah.  Twas my hardwork that went into either directX and/or the mod I'd look at it that way, especially if a decent chunk of my bottom line and time was wrapped up in it and moreso still if it actually improved the product.  Moderators need to be a bit more careful is all I'm saying.  They obviously responded before actually thinking.

As it stands now, those guys who did the mod probably lost/will lose a sizeable chunk of change just because of that one short forum post.  Not cool.

Kinda like a moderator taking a piss on a strat. guide you published before actually reading it and after it went to press.  But I guess now we get into IP issues and all that.  /headache

-5 FPS with the "sharpening effect" turned on, FPS neutral with just the colour changes. That's for my old ATI 4870 with everything turned on high in D3.