Independence War and ReShade

A quick guide to running Independence War (I-War) with ReShade in Windows 10.

Before using this guide it's suggested to take a look at the earlier 'Independence War: Running in Windows 10' article. The I-War version I use in this guide is the gog version, but physical retail copies and other digital versions should work as well.

A good starting point would be to get I-War running with dgVoodoo2 as described in the previous guide.

Changes to dgVoodoo2

There is a recommended change to the dgVoodoo2 setup. In the 'General' tab, in the 'Rendering' section, the 'Output API' option should be set to 'Direct3D 11 (feature level 11.0)', as shown in the screenshot.

All other options remain unchanged from the previous guide.

Adding ReShade

The latest version of ReShade is v6.4.1 (at time of writing) and is available from the ReShade website. The guide uses this latest version.

The ReShade installer was copied into my I-War installation folder and run. The installer only adds ReShade files to the game installation folder.

During the setup process you have to select the I-War executable (IWar.exe), not the I-War launcher executable (iwar_start.exe).

Then the rendering API is selected, (because we have specified dgVoodoo2 to use Direct3d 11), you should select 'DirectX 10/11/12'.

Once installed just click 'Finish'.

Running I-War with ReShade

I-War should be run using the same parameters as detailed in the previous guide. In summary:

<X:\installation folder>\IWar.exe" -b -16 -800x600

When I-War starts you should see the Infogrames intro video and the ReShade banner should appear at the top of the screen for a moment (see screenshot).

Congratulations, ReShade is installed and running, the Home key can be used to open and close the ReShade overlay.

Adding ReShade presets

There aren't any specific presets for I-War so I used those for Independence War 2: Edge of Chaos courtesy of Alakelele. They can be found on the Presets link on the ReShade homepage which takes you to the SweetFX Settings DB.

Selecting a preset with the ReShade overlay. — Selecting a preset

Download and extract into your I-War installation folder, it should be:

SweetFX_Settings_b'Independence War 2_ Edge of Chaos'_b'ReShadePreset IWAR2'.txt

Select the preset using the overlay controls (highlighted top right in the screenshot).

It should be saved when you close the overlay.

Adding ray tracing

I managed to get a hold of the CompleteRT v1.6.0.9 shader courtesy of Alakelele on the EoC Discord on the I-War Discussion # general channel. Download CompleteRT_1_6_0_9.zip and extract the contents to:

<X:\I-War installation folder>\reshade-shaders

Restart I-War and open the overlay, COMPLETE RT [COMPLETE_RT.fx] should be added to the list of shaders. Enable the shader and close the overlay to save.

The COMPLETE RT shader hints suggest using the ReShade_MotionVectors shader for good results, however this couldn't be found. The second suggestion being the qUINT_MotionVectors shader which was available, but seems to have been superseded by the qUINT_opticalflow shader.

The shader can be found on the martymcmodding/ReShade-Optical-Flow GitHub. Download as a zip and again extract the Shaders folder to the same reshade-shaders folder:

<X:\I-War installation folder>\reshade-shaders

Restart I-War and open the overlay, qUINT_opticalflow [qUINT_of.fx] should be added to the list of shaders. Enable the shader and close the overlay to save.

Configuring ray tracing

The shader order was changed to:

qUINT_opticalflow [qUINT_of.fx]
COMPLETE RT [COMPLETE_RT.fx]
The rest of the shaders remained in the existing order.

The only configuration I changed was the COMPLETE RT config:

'C_RT_UI_DIFFICULTY' was enabled (change 0 to 1) to show more options.
'Exclude Sky from RT' was disabled. After all we're in space, really it's all sky!

Once changed close the overlay to save.

The result

I'm not a ReShade expert at all, but with the EoC presets and some complete guesswork on my part, here is the result. This is what I managed, if you try this, feel free to experiment with ReShade, you may find better results!

A Routine Patrol with ReShade

Good hunting!