I made a bloom removal mod for Syndicate 2012.

[Ambient_Malice]

My thread about Syndicate earlier this week made me start playing Syndicate again, and also made me start doing a bit of research on the game. One thing led to another, and ended with me reading some posts by a former Starbreeze developer who claimed that EA forced the "I wear my sunglasses at night" bloom and pervasive blue post-processing onto the game because "futuristic".

I decided to attempt to make a mod to remove the game's bloom. I was surprised how easy it turned out to be.

Despite thousands of people complaining about what is possibly the worst bloom in the entire FPS genre, so bad there's a perfectly justified article mocking it [http://www.gamesradar.com/56-eye-melting-screens-most-hilariously-over-the-top-bloom-lighting-in-video-game-history/], nobody had ever bothered trying to remove the bloom with HelixMod, a tool usually used for altering the rendering process of games to make them 3D compatible.

Download [https://oblivionisathand.wordpress.com/2016/08/18/syndicate-debloom-0-2-released/]

DeBloom takes this: (Are your eyes hurting yet? You get to enjoy another 6-10 hours of this, and this isn't the worst the game has to offer. Like, this is a game where incandescent bulbs burn brighter than the sun.)

And turns it into this:

And as a bonus, it reduces mouse lag, meaning more responsive gunplay with those deliciously booming guns.

You folks are partially responsible because I went back to replay Syndicate to confirm that, yes, Wolfenstein: The New Order did reuse its crouch sliding with no changes, and its melee system, and its weapon handling, and its enemy archetypes, and a bunch of other things that have slipped my mind.

The world is better, less blinded place now.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

Looks much better and will def. check it out if I ever end up playing it, thanks. Makes you wonder what some developers were thinking making such design choices. If they were truly forced to do this, then that Gamesradar article should be spammed to every EA exec from now until they publicly admit remorse for meddling in the affairs of game design and consumer preference.

 

[PonceyMcTosserFaic]

Nice! I remember getting that game when it was still recent, and the bloom actually made it a lot harder just to see the enemies let alone shoot them.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

It's still got that light-bleed effect in the far right, but it's bearable now and the image is now nicely clean and crisp. Makes me wonder how the game's visuals hold up when they're not vaporizing your eyes with brightness the intensity of 1000 hypernovas.

Anyway, kudos to you. Giving this a go.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

It's still got that light-bleed effect in the far right

I decided to take a fairly conservative approach, especially initially. The more shaders I disable, the more chance of bizarre side effects because the game used that shader for something important. The white haze from light sources on the edges of the screen isn't great, though, I'll grant. But I decided that it was unobtrusive enough to ignore for now. Same goes for lens flares and stuff. That kinda stuff is arguably just aesthetic. Wheras the "searing colour" bloom effects, which were all tied to a single pixel shader, were true "what the hell were you thinking?" material.

 

[Elijin]

On the flipside, that locale looks really dull once you remove the overbearing glow. Like it was designed with looking at it being difficult or distracting, so it didn't actually need to be good below the effect.