As of A17, HDHQ core and Extended have been rolled into one singular mod. it is now more than just textures, so as such I will be calling it HDHQ overhaul from here forward.
Features:
Brand New terrain textures in 4K/2K for A17
For A17 I redid all the terrain textures as necessary to bring into line with the new art work the TFP have created. I feel Ive achieved a much closer tie to the vanilla textures this time around.
[i currently still can not get access to the block textures. All block textures are vanilla and will remain so until I have time to rebuild the array (lots of work) or TFP provides a way to sideload]
Overhauled Lighting in all conditions
The lighting for A17 has been redone. A great deal of time has been spent to attempt to maintain a global style and colour palette while keeping individual biomes and weather distinct.
Due to this, I had to find new ways to achieve various goals. I think I have done this. The world is now much more vibrant, saturated, contrasted. You will be able to remove your reshade profiles you may have applied, only needing to keep it for Sharpness or AA injections.
Light now matters more. Much more. The direction of light and the intensity and which weather (and its intensity in the case of clouds) is active all play a major role, especially with stealth.
Because of this, you are immediately better at stealth than vanilla.(even without perks)
Clear nights have moonlight which is clean and bright. Cloudy nights have a muted moonlight. Rain and Snowfall nights have zero moonlight. As each weather state and its intensity transitions your stealth meter will decrease. Because of the way lighting works in vanilla, the opposite is true.
Because of this, cloudy and rain/snowfall nights are darker. I have provided a new Spotlight (requires no power, same receipe ingredients and level) that has much larger range than the vanilla spotlight. I have also provided a new torch (same model as vanilla but with new particle effect for the flame) as to mostly eliminate its flickering. This now only happens under rain and at a much reduced effect. If the torch flicker bothers you, this will fix it for you.
Reflections are now better as well due to the changes. As such you can turn some settings down if you run reflections and still have better quality than vanilla (imo).
Further to reflections. These and certain vanilla block textures in combination will/can [again machine dependant] cause severe fps loss spikes around buildings. My only advice is to run with reflections off until it is fixed, or I get access to block textures. With the new lighting, the differences are now minimised.
New Biome specific particle effects
This was necessitated by the lighting changes. Due to these new visual effects, Burnt biome and wasteland biomes have different appearances between day, twilight and night. Making for more varied and interesting visuals.
Seamless Biome Transitions - Great in RWG
That flip flopping you get in RWG because of biome blending, its gone. Biomes now transition between each other seamlessly. Biome effects will begin, and blend, on the edges of biomes giving a more cohesive visual style on the borders.
Biome Overhaul
Alpine (ex Snow), Hardwood Swamp (ex Pine Forest), Burnt, Desert, Wasteland.
As part of HDHQ extended I was endeavoring to make the biomes more distinct between them. Now with 2 less biomes in vanilla, I felt this was more important than ever. I have now changed the snow biome to Alpine. The Pine forest is now a southern hardwood swamp forest. Burnt features burnt versions of the swamp forest. Wasteland has new dead trees, while the oak trees are gone from the desert and replaced with whitethorn acacia's and large cycad palms.
Real forests
Real forests are here! To achieve this I had to leverage new features of 2018.2 as well as make all new vegetation for all biomes. I have made these trees very low poly for a starting baseline to guage performance across machines. As such they are 10x lighter than vanilla trees. I can render 10+ trees for every vanilla tree. Because of this, we now have real forests in 7 days to die. I have taken time to optimize everything as much as possible.
I have noticed in general (atleast on my system ) that you should have a higher average framerate. In some scenarios I gained as much as 30fps at the same resolution and settings. [very much situation and machine dependant]
With the new lighting, light really matters in the forest. Beware zombies behind trees and during twilight, lurking in shadows. Be ever watchful lest you get bit.
Exploration is now more important than before. You will need to get above the canopy in the hardwood forest and Alpine regions to scout locations, landmarks and other players bases. Its possible to get turned around in the forest. Making roads, runways and other thoroughfares will be key to faster travelling.
You can hide in the trees from vultures, unless they find a path to you...
The density of the forest however, will work against you in PVP. Clearing space to build will reveal your location to other players who are scouting from mountain tops or gyro's. The trees provide cover to attackers who seek your loot.
Gun Skins
Im not a fan of the gun tints so for now, as a start I have included 12 new materials for each of the guns. Ive taken extra care to balance these between reflections on and off.
Anodized Blue
Anodized Cyan
Anodized Green
Anodized Magenta
Anodized Red
Gold
Silver
Jade
Camo Digital
Camo Desert
Armor Jungle
Armor Winter
All the guns included are animated and added to the main weapon loot groups. You can not craft these weapons, only looting is the way to find them. Pray to RNGesus.
As this has been such a long project I have spoken to many people of the course of it. Instead of listing people and risking forgetting someone I'll say this.
If Ive spoken to you about anything unity/7days over the last few months, I thank you. For being there to bounce things off, or your advice. Thanks.
Known:
Guns use placeholder icons.
Seeds (jungle, alpine, acacia, palm) use placeholder icons. Growing needs further testing (copied pine trees framework so should work)
New Torch casts no shadows - Intentional for now.
INSTALLATION
RESET YOUR VIDEO SETTINGS IN GAME AND REMOVE ANY RESHADE PROFILE THAT EFFECTS VIBRANCE/CONTRAST/SATURATION
LEAVE GAMMA AT DEFAULT OF 38%
Drag Data folders from zip into main game directory, yes to overwrite.
If you hate my new environment, but would like to keep everything else, please use the included environment reset patch.
*Note - most of the FPS gains come from the new very light trees.
DOWNLOAD
DOWNLOAD FROM NEXUS