Mass Effect 1. better textures/colours guide.

Soldato
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Before starting off I fully recommend registering your CDKEY from steam to use on Origin works even if you installed to steam already! although I would uninstall it before using origin. The origin version seems to have less issues running on win7/8 and comes pre-patched and includes some DLC for free!
Greetings all, recently I have been replaying Mass effect but when I first revisited it.. well it looked terrible! guess I have been spoiled by games like Crysis 3 and BF4 so here is a little list of tips to make it a much better experience
Confirmed working on Origin/Stand alone version, I have not tested steam personally but it should work fine although obviously directories will be slightly different.

High res texture mod:
Does what it say's on the tin, increases or makes textures better on most things possible,
http://www.moddb.com/mods/mass-effect-1-new-texture-updatesimprovements-mod
download latest via this page: http://www.moddb.com/mods/mass-effect-1-new-texture-updatesimprovements-mod/downloads

Had the very occasional crash with it but overall game looks 10x better with just this
[Disclaimer: Remember to save your game OFTEN , a crash can put you back quite far although It shouldn't crash too much]

the colours look a little off so we are going to use SweetFX to fix that and make it more cinematic.
Download SweetFX Configurator with SweetFX 1.5.1 included
http://ge.tt/api/1/files/64SMJpf/7/blob?download

Extract and run the configurator as administrator
click Add new game and you will want to go to the game directory>binaries and add the MassEffect.exe as shown here
0Rv9vbg.jpg

Now that you have it added you can either tweak around with settings yourself or try out a few different profiles as mileage may vary
Hit Save/Load config and import
Link to various profiles:
http://sfx.thelazy.net/games/game/162/
Link to my current profile:
https://mega.co.nz/#!B8sUzJzK!U816noZ8ehBSXcNDBqrsQj9nVEMk5vMKN-ykuUSc7hk

Now that's all done Keep SweetFX open and load up Mass Effect, scroll lock is default key for On/Off
Oooo It's so pretty! play around with in game Gamma settings for better effects. Improves 90% of cut scenes/dialog scenes but some are hit and miss. Overall the game in general feels more cinematic with SFX enabled.

Lastly lets deal with the jaggies
Now you can use the SMAA built in with SweetFX, I have not tested it with ME myself as I have a bonus for Nvidia users!
AMD users can attempt to force AA through driver or use SMAA.

Nvidia users only!
First off if you don't have it go grab Nvidia inspector
http://www.guru3d.com/files_get/nvidia_inspector_download,1.html
If you have never used it before run it and hit this button:
dF6ph9h.jpg
taking you to this screen:
2zBS7L0.jpg

Go ahead and start typing Mass effect where I have put a red line till you have the ME profile up
Here is what I'm currently using , the bits underlined are most important.
knburT5.jpg
Feel free to play around as mileage may vary, depends on your GPU and rest of your system.
However I feel SGSSAA and MSAA combined are very nice, even 2x/2x was brilliant for me!

Apply changes and you're good to go, It's beautiful right?
Unfortunately I cannot post screenshots of before and after the texture mod, just take it from me that it's a vast improvement
however I am able to post screenshots of SweetFX enabled/disabled
Warning very large, and the screenshots don't do it justice in the slightest.
Looks more subtle in the SS but in game the difference is immense.
Off
Od20TNP.jpg
On
1LV1lfr.jpg

Off
LJIcpgL.jpg
On
c3bILqn.jpg

Off
Hpjv2SQ.jpg
On
kuo0Jyx.jpg

Off
6X28TuS.jpg
On
kac90kU.jpg

Off
uI0Us8d.png
On
hc6lftY.png

Screenshots really don't do it justice!
It may not look like a big change but I can assure you it totally does the job

Bigger inventory(Remember to make a backup before editing!)
first locate your BIOParty.ini file in either

Vista: \Users\<your name here>\Documents\BioWare\Mass Effect\Config
XP: My Documents/BioWare/Mass Effect/Config


Now you need to look for these two lines:

m_nMaxInventoryItems=150
m_nMaxInventoryWarningThreshold=135

You can change them to a larger number.

For instance:

m_nMaxInventoryItems=750
m_nMaxInventoryWarningThreshold=700

I just increased it to 7500/7000 , game seems perfectly fine and I have over 2k Items at this point
 
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I have used the same combo in many games but this is my 2nd playthrough so 50-60hours now using the same forced AA combo. Albeit I have tried out different configs like 4x MSAA/4x SGSSAA and 8x/8x which was frankly beautiful but I would get FPS dips to 40's/high 30s so I settled with what I posted 4xMSAA/8XSGSSAA which looks amazing and keeps my FPS between 50-60 at all times.

This is with SLI enabled so as always Mileage may vary however I have tried the 4/8 combo in single card and it was fine for me
 
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