Arkham Asylum Refined

Introduction and features:

This started out as a heavily stripped down version of Arkham Asylum Reimagined. I played through Arkham Origins with FramesOfScreen's Reimagined preset ( with a few small tweaks ) and loved that as I thought it really fits that game's setting. However, while his Arkham Asylum preset is awesome, I think it fits the game a lot less, making it lose its original style and atmosphere in the process. On top of that, I think the added GI doesn't look very good in this game. And so I kept a few of the effects I liked initially, but started adding others on top and tweaking the remaining ones throughout my playthrough, ending up with this. I am satisfied enough with it that I think it's worth sharing so here it is.

My preset still uses a few of the same shaders as Reimagined, but the main features that changed are:

• Anti-aliasing - this uses a mix of SMAA with FXAA now

• Ambient occlusion - changed to MXAO

• Depth of field - kept the dynamic DoF from Reimagined but added a subtle static DoF on top, intended to better blend in Gotham in the distance

• Colour grading - close to the original game, but has a warmer look that indends to remove the heavily green coded image of the original

• Fake HDR - added on top to further clean up and add a darker tone to the overall look of the game

• Screen space reflections - added a subtle SSR effect that can improve the look of some scenes by adding reflections ( only Ultra preset )

The mod comes with 3 presets:

• Normal ( AAS-Refined-DR ) - most performance friendly

• High ( AAS-Refined-DR-High ) - same as Normal but uses a more complex version of MXAO with Launchpad normals that really brings out the details in the textures, particularly on characters; this does have an extra performance cost but I found it to be worth it and was the main preset I used

• Ultra ( AAS-Refined-DR-Ultra ) - same as High but has a subtle SSR effect added on top; this has an even greater performance cost and some scenes can look better while others worse due to the nature of this shader affecting surfaces in general; played very little with this and as such is not as heavily tested

Please note that MXAO differences between Normal and High are pretty hard to showcase in screenshots, but it is very much noticable in-game.

Some screenshots may also look slightly different than in-game as they were taken at different points and the presets were continously tweaked throughout the playthrough.

Installation:

1. Download and install Batman Arkham Asylum - Advanced Launcher (while not technically required, it will make things easier and is simply better)

2. Download the latest version of ReShade ( https://reshade.me/ )

3. ( Optional ) Download and install the latest version of DXVK ( \x32\d3d9.dll ) for a more stable renderer ( https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/releases )

4. Download the mod and copy the AAS-Refined-DR-Ultra.ini file ( regardless of each preset will be used ) to the \Batman Arkham Asylum GOTY\Binaries game directory

5. Run the ReShade installer downloaded in step 2

6. When prompted for the game, pick the .exe file for Batman Arkham Asylum ( ShippingPC-BmGame.exe ), either from the list or manually

7. When prompted for the API, pick DirectX 9 (or Vulkan if DXVK was installed in step 3)

8. When prompted for the preset, pick the AAS-Refined-DR-Ultra.ini file copied in step 4

9. Proceed until the ReShade installation is complete

10. Open the mod archive again, copy its contents to the \Batman Arkham Asylum GOTY\Binaries game directory and replace all when prompted

11. Launch the game in order to open the Advanced Launcher installed in step 1

12. Disable Depth of Field, Bloom and Anti-Aliasing

13. Make any other desired changes and start the game

14. Once initialized, open the ReShade overlay ( Home button by default )

15. Select the desired preset from the Home tab ( AAS-Refined-DR-High is recommended )

16. Switch over to the Add-ons tab and activate "Copy depth buffer before clear operations"

17. Enjoy!

Drawbacks: