Base setup
Main game
- First thing to do is install the game in wathever way you want.
- After that run R3_Setup_DX8 once and then run the game.
- Here you should have DirectPlay already installed. If you don't have it installed already, a pop-up will show up asking you if you wanna download the component. Do so and then run the game, then exit.
- Now download Better Rayman 3 and install it in your game folder.
- Open your game folder after the installation ended and click on BR3_Config to configure the Better Rayman 3 settings. Default settings should be fine for now.
- Open d3d8.ini in the game folder and set FullScreen to 1. If Windowed Mode is enabled in the Better Rayman 3 configuration panel, this will allow you to suspend the game without make it crash once re-entered, as well as rendering the center floor part of the two open zones in the Land of the Livid Dead 3 with the right lighting.
- Now download Rayman Control Panel and run it as administrator. It should find your game folder automatically, if not, add it manually by clicking on Add game, select the game you wanna add (in this case Rayman 3), then your game folder. This offer a more unified interface to change the same tweeks, as well as providing additional features, so it's reccomended to use it if you also want to apply additional tweeks and improvements, otherwise you can skip this and use Better Rayman 3 only.
Better textures
- First download some upscaled textures. Better Rayman 3 HD is the best pack available at the moment.
- If the first link doesn't work, try with this mirror provided by deton24.
- Now you have two ways of installing the texture pack, both requiring Rayman Control Panel
- The quickest method is to to copy the tex32_1.cnt, tex32_2.cnt and vignette.cnt files inside the texture pack's folder and paste them inside the gamedatabing folder inside the game folder. Either delete the pre-existing files or overrite them to complete the process. Then open Rayman Control Panel, go to Rayman 3 and under Archive Explorer click Synchronize textures. Wait for the process to finish and you're done.
- The other longest method would be to open the game from Rayman Control Panel directly and then click on Open under Archive Explorer, select the root folders for each cnt files, right click on them and click on Import. Then select the folders with the corresponding names in the texture pack's folder, and wait for the textures to be imported. After you've done that for all three cnt files, click on Save Archive for each one of them. Then close the Archive Explorer tab and click on Synchronize textures. Wait for the process to finish and you're done.
Note: if your edition of Rayman 3 is either in slovak, polish or hebrew, download this font textures pack and replace the typoray3.png texture in the texts folder of both tex32_1.cnt and tex32_2.cnt files with your corresponding language one using the method above.
Better videos
- After higher quality textures download higher quality FMVs from the PS2 version. Once downloaded put all the videos in the videos folder inside the gamedatabin folder, and replace the pre-existing videos.
- Now download a collection of save files to have direct access to any level or secion that you want.
- If the first link doesn't work, try with this mirror provided by deton24.
- Once downloaded just put all the save files inside the SaveGame folder. If you've installed Rayman 3 from GOG, the SaveGame folder should be located in the path C:\GOG\Games\Rayman 3\GAMEDATA\SaveGame. If you've installed Rayman 3 from the Ubisoft Store or from the disc, the SaveGame folder should be located in the path C:\Users\(your Windows user name)\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\Ubisoft\Rayman 3\GAMEDATA\SaveGame, allthough the game folder will be in C:\Program Files (x86)\Ubisoft\Rayman 3.
There are a few things that can be adjusted using dgVoodoo, but it's very tricky and easy to mess up if everything hasn't been done correctly.
- First download dgVoodoo and then run it. Open the DirectX tab and leave everything as it is except for the dgVoodoo Watermark, that I suggest to uncheck. Click Apply and make sure it gets apply to the path in your AppData Roaming folder as well in order to work properly. Once done this, copy the file dgVooDoo2/MS/x86/D3D9.dll inside the game folder. Open the d3d8.ini file inside the game folder and set D3d8to9 to 1 and DdrawCompat to 1, then open BR3_Config.exe and disable Hardware Vertex Processing.
- If everything has been done correctly, the model of Rayman shrinking in his shoe and the model of Refulx's first final fight's phase should note be overbrighted anymore. In case you messed up something, particles in the game wold brake or the game would lag. Some times the splash screen does not get shown using this method.
The final improvements available are taken directly from the R3 4K UHD Alpha 0.2 by Hakyra and they regard some meterials fixes, with the additions of improved textures to make them work properly.
- First you'll need to download this zip file in which I already organized both the files and textures you'll need into dedicated folders. Once you extracted the zip file, it's time to actually apply the improvements. To do this, first copy the folders inside the Files folder and paste them in the gamedatabin folder. Then open Rayman Control Panel and open the archive, then import the folders with the respective names inside the Textures folder by following the same process described above in the Better textures section.
- Edited files inside the intro_17 folder make the windows inside The the Fairy Council section 3 transparent, making use of the hidden geometry they have behind to simulate a background (it requires the texture contained in the countil folder in order to work properly).
- Edited files inside the knaar_60 folder make Refulx's face in The Desert of the Knaaren section 5 to be rendered with the right additive material.
- Edited files inside the ten_map folder make the spirit tower in The Land of the Livid Dead section 3 to interval between two textures instead of using just one. This has been used to simulate a glowing effect similar to the one found on many textures in the original Xbox version. In this case, I first added a static bloom effect on the first texture and another less intense one on the seond one, so when the game intervals between the two of them, it effectively looks like the tower is glowing (it requires the textures contained in the lande folder in order to work properly).
- The textures contained inside the bonus folder make the sprites in the 2D Madness minigame much sharper. Most of them are just the original sprites from Rayman 1 but scaled by 4 or 8 times their original resolution, due to how the game renders those sprites in that minigame; smaller resolutions makes them blurier and with a green outline. The scaled sprites don't eliminate the problem; they just mitigate enough for it to not be noticed much.
Conclusion
This is how far we can push Rayman 3 configuration and improvements on PC right now, but is quite a ton of work, from a lot of places, and some times some of these fixes don't even work properly for some ungodly reason, even if you followed every step correctly. Hopefully we can add more and refine the existing ones, as well as simplify and streamline the whole process, but again, this is how things are for now.
I would like to mention that I also made another Rayman 3 setup guide, this time for the original Xbox version, which basically follows the same principles of this guide. You can check it out here if you're interested. As for the GameCube version, there isn't much material out there at the moment, and I'm not very familiar with the patching and setup of that version, but for now though, I'll provide you this guide, which basically covers all there is to it for that version. I'm not very familiar with any other versions of Rayman 3, so this is all I got about setup guides. Hope you will appreciate it.
