Curse Of Monkey Island - best graphic settings

[Propi]

Hello and welcome, fellow Members!

I've been struck with a nostalgia fever and dug out my Monkey Island 3 cds. I've successfully installed it and the thing runs without problems.

Now I'm thinking about tweaking the graphics a little bit - to make them seem less "rugged", if you know what I mean. Is there a way to apply some sort of anti-aliasing? I've been playing around with the settings but they seem to have no effect, aside from changing the aspect ratio. I run the game on a 1600x900 screen. Any tips for me?

[criezy]

This is a bit outdated (e.g. missing the OpenGL modes) but does the following help?
http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/User_ ... ic_filters

[Propi]

Thanks for the reply, but I have already seen that page. I fiddled a bit with a few of the filters, but unfortunately there were no results - aside from the aspect ratio change I mentioned.

Maybe the game is written in such a way that prohibits any drastic changes to the graphics?

[criezy]

One thing to keep in mind: global filters are only applied on low-res games (e.g. 320x200). Monkey Island 3 has a higher resolution (640x480) so you need to define it in the game specific options.

So in clear: select the game in the launcher and click Edit game (as described on http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/User_ ... in_ScummVM).

Graphics mode This allows us to change the graphic filter the game uses. This option has to be used to enable a graphic filter for a game whose original resolution is higher than 320x200 or 320x240 (e.g. 640x480), because the corresponding global option does not apply to them.

DO NOT do it in the global options by clicking on Options (as described on http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/User_ ... ng_ScummVM):

Graphics mode This allows us to change the graphic filter that ScummVM uses (e.g. to scale the game to a bigger resolution). The option has no effect on games whose original resolution is higher than 320x200 or 320x240 (e.g. 640x480) - such games should be configured separately.

[fischkopf]

Hello and welcome, fellow Members!

I've been struck with a nostalgia fever and dug out my Monkey Island 3 cds. I've successfully installed it and the thing runs without problems.

Now I'm thinking about tweaking the graphics a little bit - to make them seem less "rugged", if you know what I mean. Is there a way to apply some sort of anti-aliasing? I've been playing around with the settings but they seem to have no effect, aside from changing the aspect ratio. I run the game on a 1600x900 screen. Any tips for me?

Hi, I might be able to help you out.

Are you using Windows? If so, you could use this special ScummVM build that includes xBRZ scaling: http://sourceforge.net/projects/xbrz/fi ... p/download

It looks like this:
http://postimg.org/image/iij7wk2z5/full/
http://postimg.org/image/lu3qkmqkx/full/
http://postimg.org/image/4mazko6q9/full/
http://postimg.org/image/ugg6wphch/full/
http://postimg.org/image/5upoetjwx/full/
http://postimg.org/image/swfgc1yc1/full/
http://postimg.org/image/naf92rtht/full/

I'm also using Reshade with SweetFX with this config, which adds a slight cartoon shader, SMAA and Vibrance.

[raina]

I think your resolution of 1600x900 is preventing most filters from working as they operate on the original image's pixels multiplied by 2 or 3 horizontally and vertically. The 2x filters for example would scale CoMI from 640x480 to 1280x960 but this doesn't work (at least not in full screen on Windows) because the resulting image wouldn't fit on your screen and so ScummVM just doesn't apply the filter.

The OpenGL ones' main draw seems to be scaling for arbitrary resolutions, not necessarily image fidelity, so I don't know if those would do anything for you.

fischkopf's xBRZ might be the way to go as the screenshots are 1920x1080 which suggests to me it also supports arbitrary resolutions.

[fischkopf]

I improved the SweetFX config, the dithering is now decreased a bit and it improved color gradients, especially in very dark and very bright areas. The overall image is now a little smoother because I enabled FXAA, as this seems to work better for 2D games than SMAA, but most detail is still there. This should be used with the xBRZ scaler:

http://pastebin.com/AzMLZpib

I made some comparison screenshots, especially check out the stuff in the background and the sky:

standard bilinear upscale http://postimg.org/image/s2mhsg0xp/full/
xBRZ upscale http://postimg.org/image/dahs13v0d/full/
xBRZ+SweetFX http://postimg.org/image/l0ok68xbx/full/

xBRZ by itself looks nice for characters and some elements in the background, although it will create artifacts where a lot of dithering was used, that's where SweetFX comes into play.

[Propi]

Thank you a milion! The xBRZ version does wonders on its own, but I can't find a way run it with the SweetFX. Can you provide a short how-to - do I need to run both apps at once, or just the SweetFX alone?

[fischkopf]

Thank you a milion! The xBRZ version does wonders on its own, but I can't find a way run it with the SweetFX. Can you provide a short how-to - do I need to run both apps at once, or just the SweetFX alone?

Just extract the contents of the .7z into your ScummVM folder, then run "ReShade Setup.exe" and select your ScummVM executable, you only need to do that once. To use my settings, go into the SweetFX folder and replace the "SweetFX_settings.txt" with my version from pastebin. SweetFX should now be applied by default.

[fishcp2]

(I'm sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I've been looking everywhere for some help on how to play CMI in high resolutions with the best graphic quality possible and this seems to be the only place with proper tips/suggestions)


So, I tried the special ScummVM + xBRZ build you guys mentioned and it will always crash when selecting the 'OpenGL + xBRZ' filter. Besides, that build is 1.7 and the current ScummVM version is 1.9, so it may also be somewhat outdated.

Are there any good alternatives to xBRZ nowadays ?
My 'dream' is to have CMI running on a resolution as close to 1080p as the game aspect ratio's allows.

[Kasenshlogga]

I made a reshade config to remove most of the dithering in Curse Of Monkey Island! You can see the difference here: https://imgur.com/a/9HnXHmD

I uploaded it here if anyone wants to use my settings: dead link

Just extract into your ScummVM directory. ScummVM needs to be set to OpenGL mode and filter graphics should be off. If you want to tweak the settings you can press HOME (disabling deband shader will probably save performance). The config is optimized for 1920x1080 and may need adjustments at higher resolutions.

update 21/01/20
replaced 5xBR with a better upscaling shader
debanding shader disabled by default (no longer necessary)
added smart noise

[Kasenshlogga]

update 30/01/22

I made separate configs for 1080p and 4k. Use the according config depending on which desktop resolution you're using.
Also in included a 4k "soft" preset for a slightly more filtered look. Reshade can be configured by pressing Home and the effect can be toggled by pressing Scroll Lock.

https://mega.nz/file/WF0AxQpQ#2y77xycex ... N3wW-cBdcs

In order to use this just get reshade from reshade.me, point it to scummvm.exe and set both ScummVM and Reshade to OpenGL and paste my config into the folder and replace any files (if there are any). If you used an older config you can delete the old "curse.ini" Also make sure to install ScummVM to a folder where Reshade has write access (NOT "Program Files"!!).

[mchammered]

Hi Kasenshlogga

Thank you for your efforts to improve the graphics of COMI. Its one of my all time favourite games!

I'm having a bit of trouble implementing your config and was wondering if you could help me out please.

I have followed your instructions to the letter re: extracting your config into scummvm folder (not in program files) and setting scummvm and reshade to both use OpenGL, pointing Reshade to scummvm.exe and also disabled 'filter graphics' in scummvm, but it just doesn't seem to be doing anything.

Pressing 'Home' while playing the game also doesn't bring up anything.

I would really appreciate any advice on how to get this working.

Thanks mate!

[Kasenshlogga]

Hi Kasenshlogga

Thank you for your efforts to improve the graphics of COMI. Its one of my all time favourite games!

I'm having a bit of trouble implementing your config and was wondering if you could help me out please.

I have followed your instructions to the letter re: extracting your config into scummvm folder (not in program files) and setting scummvm and reshade to both use OpenGL, pointing Reshade to scummvm.exe and also disabled 'filter graphics' in scummvm, but it just doesn't seem to be doing anything.

Pressing 'Home' while playing the game also doesn't bring up anything.

I would really appreciate any advice on how to get this working.

Thanks mate!

Sounds like you did everything right. If Reshade has dropped a opengl32.dll into your ScummVM folder it should detect it. When you start up ScummVM, does it show a Reshade overlay at the upper edge of the screen?

I use the daily ScummVM build by the way, I forgot to mention that. Did you try it with the daily build?

One thing to note is that bringing up the reshade overlay can make ScummVM freeze up. ScummVM has this weird behavior where if you bring up the reshade overlay, the overlay and mouse cursor will update at whatever the current framerate of your game is. So if you open the overlay in the wrong situation (like in the ScummVM game selection screen) it will freeze ScummVM entirely. It works best if you start a game, go to some screen with lots of animations, like water or something and open the overlay there, so you can switch profiles and tweak the settings.

[Brandon8o]

Is there a general consensus on the best option here for smoothing out the graphics on modern displays?

For the method that Kasenshlogga is talking about, is that meant to be on top of using the xBRZ thing that is discussed earlier in the thread, or is that purely just using reshade and nothing else. And anyone have personal opinions about what yields the best result between all of these methods?

Thanks!