HytaleClient_B9XtUhNCBg-trimmed.mp4
HytaleClient_QZFV3kOabG.mp4
A shader pack for Hytale: soft sun shadows, volumetric clouds, light shafts through trees and caves, reflective water, ray-traced bounce light and ambient occlusion, rain puddles, rainbows, a rotating star sky, lens flare and a filmic tonemap - with an in-game options menu.
Not tested online, use at your own discretion.
The native Linux build targets x86_64 Ubuntu 22.04 or newer, including Ubuntu-based distributions such as Linux Mint and Pop!_OS. It uses the Linux Hytale client and its SDL3 OpenGL renderer. Both native launcher installations and the official Flatpak are detected.
Close Hytale, then install the build dependencies and automatic hook from this folder:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install build-essential pkg-config libcairo2-dev fonts-dejavu-core python3 python3-pil
./install.shStart Hytale through your normal launcher or desktop shortcut. Aurora loads automatically;
launch.sh is now just an optional shortcut to the normal launcher.
The installer builds build/libaurora-sdl.so and installs it as the game's Client/libSDL3.so.
The original SDL library is preserved unchanged as Client/libSDL3.aurora-original.so.
The proxy forwards SDL calls and intercepts shader loading and presentation. Hytale's client
executable is unchanged, and no Flatpak overrides or environment variables are required.
Shaders and settings are copied into Client/.aurora/shaderpack, inside the game's own folder,
so the normal Flatpak launcher can read them. Changes made through the menu are saved there.
Reinstalling preserves the installed settings while refreshing the pack. Keep this source
folder for reinstalling after game updates; it is no longer needed to launch the game.
- After a game update: close Hytale and run
./install.shagain. If an update replaces the whole Client folder, restore any custom settings from your own backup. - Update Aurora: download the current source or run
git pullin your checkout, close Hytale, then run./install.sh --buildto rebuild and install the updated Linux hook. - Custom game location:
./install.sh --client-dir "/path/to/Client". - Custom native launcher: add
--launcher "/path/to/hytale-launcher". - Both versions installed: select
--backend flatpakor--backend native. - Rebuild:
./install.sh --build. - Uninstall:
./install.sh --uninstallrestores the original SDL library. Installed settings are kept inClient/.aurora/shaderpack. If the game already replaced SDL during an update, uninstall keeps that newer library.
DLSS on Linux: on NVIDIA RTX systems ./install.sh checks for native DLSS support, then
prepares and builds it in: Super Resolution, DLAA and, where supported, Ray Reconstruction. If
the check fails it installs normally and the pack's temporal anti-aliasing is used.
AU_DLSS=1 ./install.sh requires DLSS instead. Frame Generation is Windows-only. Linux DLSS
has passed its build and bridge checks but has not yet been verified in gameplay; see
Linux validation.
- Download the latest release zip from the Releases page and extract it somewhere permanent (the game loads the pack from this folder, so don't delete it).
- Close Hytale and double-click
Install.bat. - Start Hytale.
The installer offers the detected game, an executable picker that supports any drive,
or a pasted installation/executable path. It reads the game's shaders from your own HytaleClient.exe, and puts a small
opengl32.dll next to the game. Nothing in the game itself is modified.
Install and Update both remove the previous Aurora files and links before installing the new build.
Changed DLL hashes or stale receipts do not block cleanup. Recovery files are stored under the
Aurora package's backups/ folder, outside the game directory. If the destination
drive cannot create a junction, the installer copies the pack instead. Copied installs preserve
existing setting values on upgrade; edit that installed copy for hot reload. Installation failures
restore the previous client files, and the installed DLL is checksum-verified.
- After a Hytale update, run
Update.bat, or choose Update shaders for a new game version in the installer. It clean-installs and regenerates shaders from the new client. - To remove it, double-click
Uninstall.bat: Aurora's DLL, shaderpack link/copy, receipt, and old Aurora install debris are removed from the game folder. Junction targets are preserved; recovery files stay outside the game.
Requires Windows 10 or 11 and a GPU that runs Hytale. The pack is heavier than vanilla, especially the RTX preset; see Performance.
Press Home to open the compact left-side menu. Mouse controls depend on your platform:
Click General → Menu hotkey (or select it and press Right), release held keys, then press your preferred key. Escape cancels. Arrow keys, PgUp/PgDn and Pause remain reserved. The binding is saved across restarts and is not changed by profiles. Reset selected restores Home.
| Platform | Mouse editing |
|---|---|
| Windows | Hold Alt to click tabs and switches, drag sliders, and scroll. |
| Linux | Hold either Ctrl key for the same controls. Alt stays available to your window manager. |
While editing, mouse input goes to the menu instead of moving the camera. Release the modifier to resume normal control. On Linux, closing the menu or switching away from the game also restores normal input; pointer positions account for display scaling.
These keyboard shortcuts do not require Alt or Ctrl:
| Key | |
|---|---|
| Menu hotkey (Home by default) | Opens / closes the options menu. |
| Up / Down | Select an option. |
| Left / Right | Change it; hold to slide numbers. |
| PgUp / PgDn | Switch category tabs. |
| Escape | Close the menu. |
| Pause | Shaders off / on, for quick comparisons. |
Changes apply instantly; default values and slider markers are yellow, including On/Off switches.
Click the search box while holding the mouse modifier to search by setting label or define; Backspace edits
the search text only. Tab, Enter and Space do not navigate or change settings.
Enter only confirms text entry when naming a saved preset.
Changed values are mint, and the selected option's default is always shown in the footer. Settings are saved in
shaderpack/include/AU_Settings.glsl, which you can also edit by hand while the game runs (saving
the file reloads the shaders). On Linux, edit the installed copy at
Client/.aurora/shaderpack/include/AU_Settings.glsl.
The compact left-side menu leaves the centre of the game visible and does not capture movement or camera input unless the mouse modifier is held. Keyboard shortcuts remain available without it; typing in search captures keys until Enter or an arrow key leaves the search field. The vertically centred panel has category tabs, global search, per-category scrolling, and help for the selected setting. Reset selected resets only that option, never the entire pack. The ore sweep uses a continuous world-space band with a feathered highlight instead of triangle-by-triangle screen-space brightening. Its strength, speed and band width are in Ores & materials, separate from the ore's base glow and surrounding light. Ore blink strength and speed control a coloured glow pulse; zero strength restores steady glow. Ore animation selects blinking plus the soft glint, the original Hytale glint without blinking, or entirely steady glow. None of these choices disables the base coloured glow.
Open Profiles and click an entry, or highlight it with the arrow keys and press Right. Default restores the saved original defaults, kept separately from the quality presets. RTX and Non-RTX each offer Lowest, Low, Medium, High, Highest and Ultra. Higher levels increase shadow, cloud, reflection and lighting quality. The old Preset selector is replaced by this list; the shipped configuration still uses the RTX feature set.
RTX profiles include bounce GI and material reflections, using NVIDIA Ray Reconstruction with 77% Quality+ DLSS where supported. Non-RTX profiles use native resolution, the lighter lighting path and Original denoising, with DLSS off. Neither family enables Frame Generation or path tracing. Those remain available as manual settings. Builds without NVIDIA support use Original as the fallback for RTX profiles. Coloured area lights are enabled only by Ultra in either quality list; you can still toggle them manually.
Save current settings as... lets you name and save up to 16 custom presets. On Windows,
hold Alt while typing the name; on Linux, type without holding Ctrl. Press Enter to confirm,
or hold your platform's mouse modifier and click Save name. Presets are stored in
shaderpack/presets/ and retained during updates. Applying a built-in profile resets other
shader-menu settings to their defaults; saving a custom preset keeps your current settings.
To manage a custom preset, apply it, then choose Export saved profile or Delete saved profile.
Exports are named .glsl files in shaderpack/presets/exports/; repeated exports create new copies.
Deletion requires a second confirmation within five seconds, keeps your current shader settings and
never deletes Default, quality presets or exported copies. To import a shared export, copy it into an
unused shaderpack/presets/preset-00.glsl through preset-15.glsl slot, then reopen the menu. Do not
overwrite an existing slot. On Linux, use the installed Client/.aurora/shaderpack/presets/ folder.
The TAA reminder is the first entry in General.
Ores & materials → Surface detail & shading adds adjustable texture definition and roughness, specular antialiasing, directional ambient depth, matte foliage and outdoor sunlight. It defaults to On in all profiles. Individual controls are under Lighting, Ores & materials and Shadows. Details.
Sky & atmosphere → Biome & weather atmosphere keeps Hytale's fog, sky and cloud colours, including special worlds, without replacing Aurora's sunlight, ambient lighting or colour grading. Switch it off to restore the previous atmosphere. It defaults to Off in all profiles and reloads immediately. Details and research.
| Option | What it does |
|---|---|
| Shaders | Turns the whole pack on or off (same as the Pause key). |
| Brightness | Overall brightness of shaded areas and nights, like Minecraft's brightness slider: low is moody, high is bright. |
| Cave lighting % | The minimum light in places the sun and sky can't reach - caves, deep interiors. Lower makes caves darker. |
Outdoor sunlight balances direct sun against directional sky fill, protects bright diffuse textures and refines backlit foliage. It defaults to On from Medium through Ultra in both profile families, and Off in Lowest and Low. Each effect has its own slider. Sunlight bounce reuses the existing GI rays in the RTX family and path tracing; it does not enable GI in Non-RTX profiles. Shadows → Sun-sized soft shadows controls distance-dependent penumbrae and contact strength. These controls require Surface detail & shading, add no passes or history buffers, and leave biome atmosphere independent. Details.
| Option | What it does |
|---|---|
| Ambient occlusion | How dark corners, crevices and the spots under objects get. |
| Torch light | Brightness of light from torches, lanterns, lava and other light blocks. |
| Torch colour (warm to Hytale) | 0 gives every light a classic warm orange glow; 1 uses Hytale's own colour for each light (blue crystals, green lights...). |
| Emissive glow | How strongly glowing blocks themselves shine - lava, flames, crystals. |
| Block relief | Gives block textures a slight 3D surface, so stone, bricks and wood catch the light per pixel. |
| Relief strength | How deep that relief looks. |
| Foliage translucency | Sunlight shining through leaves and grass when the sun is behind them. |
| Scattering method | Surface approximation, voxel depth + accumulation, or foliage shadow dithering. Foliage masks and controls. |
| Sun highlights | Soft sun reflections on surfaces and a sheen on leaves. |
| Sky lighting | Classic or Sky-derived: walls and undersides lit by the sky actually drawn, warmer toward a sunset, with light bounced off the ground. Details. |
| Ambient occlusion method | Hytale's SSAO or GTAO: occlusion from the real geometry around each pixel, and sky light from the directions the sky is open. Details. |
New looks are off by default; the quality profiles switch them on by cost. Ores & materials also adds Rain soaking (absorbent blocks darken in rain) and Smooth material relief (polished stone, ice and metal reflect cleanly). Materials.
| Option | What it does |
|---|---|
| Shadow softness | How blurry shadow edges are. |
| Contact shadows | Small shadows for grass, plants and props, which Hytale leaves out of its shadow map. |
| Distant shadows | Shadows for trees and hills beyond the range of the normal shadows, so the landscape doesn't go flat in the distance. |
These only apply with the RTX preset.
| Option | What it does |
|---|---|
| Bounce light | Sunlight bouncing off surfaces: shade under a tree picks up green from the sunlit grass, a room fills with warm light from a sunlit floor, torch flames light the walls around them. |
| Bounce rays | How many rays per pixel the bounce light uses. More is smoother but slower; this is the biggest performance setting in the pack. |
| Bounce reach | How far (in blocks) bounced light travels. |
| Ray-traced AO | How much those rays also darken enclosed corners and the shade under overhangs. |
| Option | What it does |
|---|---|
| Stars | Off, Procedural (sparse generated stars), or Hytale (Hytale's own star texture with the milky way, turning across the sky through the night). |
| Star brightness | Brightness of the stars. |
| Star density | Size of the star field on the sky: lower gives bigger, fewer stars. |
| Night sky blue | How deep blue the night sky stays down to the horizon; 1 is a grey-blue. |
| Rainbows | A rainbow opposite the sun after rain, in the morning or evening. |
| Atmospheric fog | Haze that softens the distance. |
| Fog density | How thick that haze is. |
| Atmosphere model | Classic gradient sky or Enhanced scattering, shared with distant haze and cloud ambience. |
| Aurora | Complementary's aurora borealis on clear nights, in its Reimagined or Unbound style. Details. |
| Ground mist | Mist banks in valleys and over lakes, thickest at dawn, dusk and after rain, lit through the sun's shadows. Set Mist altitude near your valleys. Details. |
| Option | What it does |
|---|---|
| Volumetric clouds | Replaces Hytale's flat cloud layers with 3D clouds that the sun lights from inside. |
| Cloud amount | How much of the sky is covered. |
| Cloud speed | How fast they drift. |
| Cloud layers | One or two cloud layers. |
| Cloud shadows | Clouds cast moving shadows on the ground. |
| Cloud lighting | Classic shading or Detailed: self-shadowed interiors and sunlit edges. |
| Option | What it does |
|---|---|
| Light shafts | Volumetric rays of sun and moon light in the air. |
| Strength | Overall strength of the rays. |
| Forest / cave beams | How much the beams falling through gaps - between leaves, through roofs and cave openings - stand out from the general haze. 0 makes them plain haze. |
| Beam boost | Extra brightness for those beams. |
| Moonlight haze | Strength of the moonlit haze at night. |
| Coloured light fog | Torches, lanterns, glowing ores and coloured bulbs light the air around them in their own colour; walls block it. Requires Colored area lights. Details. |
| Option | What it does |
|---|---|
| Shader water | The pack's water: moving waves, reflections of the sky and the world, depth colour, sun glints. Off gives Hytale's own water. |
| Refraction | How much the water surface bends the view of the riverbed. |
| Shore foam | Foam along shorelines. |
| Underwater caustics | Rippling light patterns on surfaces while you are under water. |
| Rain puddles | Reflective puddles on open ground while it rains, drying up after. |
| Puddle strength | How many puddles form and how reflective they are. |
| Water colour model | Classic or Enhanced: light absorbed per colour, so each lake keeps its own tint, shallow edges stay clear and deep beds dim. Water clarity sets how far light travels. Details. |
| Option | What it does |
|---|---|
| Exposure | Overall image brightness. |
| Contrast | Difference between dark and bright. |
| Saturation | Colour intensity. |
| Vibrance | Boosts dull colours more than already strong ones. |
| Bloom | Glow around bright light: the sun, lava, torches. |
| Bloom strength | How strong that glow is. |
| Lens flare | Camera lens flares from the sun and moon. |
| Lens flare strength | How strong the flares are. |
| Sun glare | A soft glow around the visible sun. |
| Vignette | Slightly darker screen edges. |
| Temporal anti-aliasing | Smooths edges and cleans up the fine grain in shadows, light shafts and bounce light by combining frames. Turning it off makes those grainy. |
| Sharpening | Sharpens the image (0 is off). |
| Highlight colour protection | Very bright coloured light keeps its hue instead of draining to white. |
| White balance | Warmer or cooler, greener or more magenta, at unchanged brightness. |
| Adaptive exposure | The image brightens where little sky is in view (caves, deep interiors), up to Adaptation strength. |
Screen-space GI → Refined reflections (on by default) refines reflections so they no longer step and fade where screen space runs out. Details.
The biggest costs, roughly in order: the RTX preset (try fewer Bounce rays first), Volumetric clouds, Light shafts, and Shader water reflections. Non-RTX profiles use the lighter lighting path; lower quality levels reduce the other costs. The newer looks are light: on an RTX 5080 at 1440p, GTAO at Medium adds about 0.3 ms and Ground mist about 0.5 ms (GTAO, sky effects).
On Linux, ./build.sh builds build/libaurora-sdl.so (automatic loading) and
build/libaurora.so (optional manual preloading) with the system C compiler. It requires
build-essential, pkg-config and libcairo2-dev; shader preparation additionally uses
python3 and python3-pil. Build on the target distribution rather than copying a shared
library built against a newer glibc onto an older Ubuntu release.
On Windows:
The release includes a prebuilt opengl32.dll. If you would rather not run a DLL you did not
build, double-click Build From Source.bat instead of Install.bat: it compiles the DLL
from the C source in hook/ and installs that. The compiler (Zig) is downloaded once from
ziglang.org and checked against the checksum ziglang.org publishes; no Visual Studio needed.
From PowerShell: .\build.ps1 builds build\opengl32.dll, .\install.ps1 -Build builds and
installs. Without -Build the installer takes the newer of bin\opengl32.dll and
build\opengl32.dll.
Aurora replaces selected Hytale shaders as the game loads them, using an OpenGL proxy on Windows or an SDL3 proxy on Linux. The installer extracts the original shader code from your game; the executable stays untouched.
The shaders use the game's colour, depth, normals and lighting to render the scene. Changes made through the menu or shader files reload while you play.
- Black world with the UI visible, after changing a setting (often switching DLSS on):
update to 1.5.0, which fixes it. If DLSS itself delivers a black picture, 1.5.0 switches DLSS
off for that session and writes the reason to
hook.log; attach that file to your issue (DLSS diagnostics). - Linux looks like vanilla: close Hytale and run
./install.sh, then start it normally. CheckClient/.aurora/shaderpack/hook.logforautomatic proxy. Run./install.shagain after game updates../launch.sh --print-commandshows the optional launcher command. - Linux build dependencies missing: install the Ubuntu packages listed above. The installer does not install system packages or download a compiler for you.
- Linux menu too large or clicks misaligned: update the source, close Hytale and run
./install.sh --build. Use Ctrl, not Alt, for mouse editing. - Flatpak reports a missing library or glibc version: rebuild with
./install.sh --buildon the machine where you play and ensure the Hytale Flatpak runtime is up to date. - Looks like vanilla: press Pause once (the shaders may be toggled off), and check that
opengl32.dllsits next toHytaleClient.exe. After a game update, runInstall.batagain. - Something renders wrong after a game update: a shader that fails to compile falls back to
the game's own; the compiler log is in
shaderpack/errors/, andshaderpack/hook.logrecords what the hook did. On Linux these files are underClient/.aurora/shaderpack. Please open an issue with those files. - Antivirus warning: some antivirus tools flag DLLs that load next to a game. Use
Build From Source.batto build the DLL from the source yourself.
- Disable native TAA in Hytale's Graphics settings to avoid shaking and double temporal filtering.
Aurora Shaders is a modified pack based on Complementary Shaders by Complementary Development (https://www.complementary.dev/). It is distributed under the Complementary License Agreement, included unchanged in LICENSE.txt.