NieR: Automata - Game Mod - Automata-LodMod v.0.7.7.4 - Download

Automata-LodMod is a mod for NieR: Automata, created by emoose. If you end up enjoying this mod please consider supporting it’s creator through ko-fi.com

Description (in author’s own words)

Automata-LodMod is a wrapper DLL that can patch/hook several graphics improvements into NieR Automata, helping to improve graphics quality & also reduce some annoying graphical bugs.

This was started just to help with the annoying "LOD switches causing AO to appear through walls" bug that the 2021 update added, but over time has grown to include much more:

1. LODMultiplier: Modify LOD distances, or disable them entirely, helping to reduce model-swapping & AO issues (should help a lot with the AO-through-walls bug)
2. ShadowModelHQ: Allows using higher-quality shadows based on the real-time HQ models of objects (eg. shadows of trees can sway along with the tree)
3. ShadowModelForceAll: Can allow smaller models like rocks/grass & other objects to cast shadows (eg: https://slow.pics/c/GIa50v0A click image to compare)
4. DisableManualCulling: Allows disabling manual culling triggers used by the game to hide models/geometry, greatly reducing the number of pop-ins/pop-outs.
5. DisableVignette: allows disabling the on-screen vignette effect, this only affects the in-game 3D view, 2D things like menus seem to use a vignette texture instead, you can use ChaserJZX's Grid Vignette and Bunker Grain Removal? mod to remove the 2D vignette texture as well.
6. SkipIntroMovies & SkipBootingScreens: these work how you'd expect, should let you load into the game much quicker.
7. AOMultiplier: Can improve the Ambient Occlusion resolution, from the default 1/4 of screen res up to your full resolution, reducing shimmering/flickering a lot.
8. (In-game AO setting is now actually made functional, previously didn't seem to have any effect, useful if you want to replace it with a 3rd-party shader)
9. ShadowResolution / ShadowDistance: lets you change the shadow resolution used by the game, and increase the distance of the shadow cascades, allowing quality of shadows to be much improved. (eg: https://slow.pics/c/5P0FgpPz?, click image to compare)
10. ShadowFilterStrength: Can modify the strength of the bokeh filter used on shadows, so shadows can be made sharper/softer as desired.
11. CommunicationScreenResolution: Communication screens (3D renders of characters shown by your pod) can have their resolution increased, slightly improving quality.
12. HQMapSlots: Can increase the number of high-quality map slots used by the game, hugely improving the quality/distance of distant terrain (though sadly has many issues right now...), examples: https://slow.pics/c/Yd1UnR29, https://slow.pics/c/nKwmWW7K (click image to compare)
13. MovieMultiplier: allows using larger-than-1080p movies (1440p/4K tested), this is best controlled by movie mods themselves (LodMod will load in overrides from any LodMod.ini found in game subfolders, eg. data\movie\LodMod.ini, LodMod_MovieSample.ini? is an example INI for 4k movies, feel free to include with your mods!)
14. EnableH264: Adds H264 codec support for the games movies, improving quality of them while decreasing the file size!
15. TranslateEnable: translates some hardcoded Japanese text, in retail builds these are mostly just error dialogs, but on debug builds this can also translate a lot (~80%) of the Japanese debug menus for you, making them much more accessible to people.
16. FixJapaneseEncoding: converts Japanese Shift-JIS text over to UTF8 instead. In retail this will again mostly just affect error messages, but on debug builds this can fix the debug output given to any attached debugger too.

Note that these settings will have different performance impacts - unless you have a great PC you likely won't be able to enable everything here and still run at 60FPS!

If you already have performance issues this mod might not be for you, though if you just want to use it for the non-graphical improvements (improved movie support / translation / etc) all the graphical settings can be easily disabled in LodMod.ini however.

It could be worth trying out SpecialK's global illumination setting too, can help improve performance quite a bit. You can also downgrade to the 2017 build for a slight performance/latency improvement, the Support section below links to a guide for this.

(huge thanks to Kaldaien for SK's fast-load feature too, I've spent way too long looking at loading screens while making this...)

Download & Install

Latest download can be found in the files section, to install just copy xinput1_4.dll & LodMod.ini next to NieRAutomata.exe (rename DLL to xinput1_3.dll for the NA 2017 builds)

The default LodMod.ini is set up to just disable LODs, increase shadow distance, and disable manual culling - in effect this should get rid of the AO-through-walls issue, slightly improve shadow quality, and prevent objects from randomly popping-out, this shouldn't impact performance too much, but if it does you could try disabling DisableManualCulling (some have reported that keeping that disabled helped improve the FPS a bit)

All the features mentioned in the list above can be enabled/changed through the LodMod.ini, by default majority of them are disabled as some can have significant performance impact - it's up to you to choose what ones you want!

If you have any issues at all, please let me know about it here! I'm not that active on other gaming forums/chats, so if you post somewhere else I probably won't see it.

If game doesn't run or gives an error code when running it, make sure you have VC2019 redist installed: https://aka.ms/vs/16/release/vc_redist.x64.exe

Dev/test-builds & source code can also be found on my github: https://github.com/emoose/NieRAutomata-LodMod

Instructions:

Extract the archive to the folder with the game, where the .exe file that launches it is located.

• Last update: Wednesday, December 6, 2023
• Genre: RPG
• File size: 156.1 KB