HiFi XI v0.38

One Ashita v4 plugin for a faster, better-looking Final Fantasy XI.

New since 0.19:

• HiFi XI draws the zone and the characters itself, from your own game files, in the game's place and the game's own look: the same meshes, textures, lamps, fog, swaying plants, doors and building interiors. On by default; /hifi nativezone off or /hifi nativechars off hands either back to the game.
• Per-pixel light with every texture's normal map, on the zone and on characters and monsters.
• Tone mapping, bloom and a colour grade over the world (Light and shadow -> Tone and colour).
• Sun shadows from the real meshes: characters and monsters cast their own shape, posed as they are that frame, even off screen; the zone's shadows come from the same meshes it's drawn with, with no zone file needed while HiFi XI draws the zone.
• Characters hidden only by what's drawn: whether a character or monster is behind something is answered from the frame's own depth, every frame, without waiting on the GPU. No more characters vanishing behind walls that aren't there.
• Clouds, round 3: a bigger, softer moon with its seas, tinted by the sky, and a game-like cloud style.
• Lamps fade out at the edge of their reach instead of ending in a hard circle.
• Water keeps its reflections up to the screen's sides, with no band of sky colour down them.
• Rain and wet ground in every open-sky zone.
• Fixes: no crash on zoning; HiFi XI's own drawing recovers after a stall or a zone change instead of staying off for the rest of the session.
• /hifi gamedraw zone|chars on|off switches the game's own drawing of either off, to compare.

Install:

1. Unzip hifixi-v0.38.zip into your Ashita folder.
2. Add /load hifixi to scripts\default.txt.
3. Your dgVoodoo output must be Direct3D 12 (OutputAPI = d3d12_fl11_0).
4. If ReShade's dxgi.dll is in your bootloader folder, move it out.
5. If you used hifps or drawcull, leave them out of your boot script: HiFi XI does their work and takes over their settings the first time it starts.

What it does:

• Above 60 fps: game speed tied to real time, a frame cap, and speed-ups. Hidden characters are found from what's drawn instead of waiting on the GPU. It also skips Ashita's per-draw dispatch, uses SSE skinning on any CPU, batches text, and drops repeated device calls. They're on in every preset.
• Longer view distance:
  • the world, characters and the zone's finer meshes drawn further;
  • the zone's visibility lists ignored, so far terrain doesn't pop in;
  • culling at the camera's own height of view;
  • square pixels.
• The zone and the characters drawn by HiFi XI, with per-pixel light, tone mapping, bloom and a colour grade.
• A richer world, drawn into the game's own frame:
  • grass that bends around characters, wears into paths and is cut by weapon skills;
  • ambient occlusion and surface relief;
  • sun and moon shadows from the zone's and the characters' own meshes;
  • water with reflections and ripples, out to the horizon;
  • weather of its own, and wet ground;
  • a smooth sky with a sun, stars and a moon in the game's phase;
  • night lamps and glowing things lighting what's around them.
• Each zone's data made on your PC from your own game files, in the background, the first time you enter it. Or make every zone's at once from the menu.
• One menu: /hifi, with Off, Balanced, High and Ultra presets and a tooltip on every setting.

Commands: /hifi, /hifi status, /hifi glows, /hifi gpu, /hifi nativezone, /hifi nativechars, /hifi gamedraw, /hifi off / /hifi on, /hifi reset.