General SweetFX+Reshade+MasterEffect Preset for XXL 1.0

Game Version:

• Cities XXL 2015

Pictures By ObelicS

Spoiler: Comparison Default vs SweetFX/Reshade

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What is it?

It's an injector for DirectX games, it adds postprocessing effects to basically any game. I'd say it's like a live Instagram filter for videgames

Some of the effects it can add are:
Bloom (Makes bright lights bleed their light into their surroundings)
Lens flare (Adds a flare whenever you look directly to very bright objects, like the sun)
Lens dirt (Adds spots and dirt whenever you look at bright objects, like the sky. It simulates dirt on a camera lens)
Anamorphic lens flare (Adds the infamous horizontal lens flares, if you ever saw a movie directed by J.J. Abrams you know them pretty well)
Depth of field (Blurs objects out of focus, either close to the camera or far away.
Color correction A lot of options, from cinematic (Technicolor, FilmicPass), to Sepia, Sin City Style, etc. You can tweak them to get any look you want.
Ambient occlusion (adds darkening on corners or where objects occlude eachother. It's not very accurate and may look weird if not properly set. It's not compatible with the game's Antialiasing filtering)

And many others.

What does the zip file include?

The zip file includes Reshade-Sweet FX injector (use installer) and a master effect folder with files that contains a basic preset I've made for Cities XXL.

Is it compatible with Cities XL, Cities XL 2012 and Platinum?

Technically, yes. But this preset needs tweaking to look good on XL because it doesn't have a Skybox and it tends to be overly bright. Also I noticed some weird artifacts on XL during testing.

Does it affect performance?

Yep. It depends on the amount and type of effects you turn on.
Things like color correction are very "light", but others like ambient occlusion or depth of field may need more processing power, specially if you don't optimize the settings.


What effects the preset activates?

The minimum to make the game look a bit better, several color tweaks, bloom and lens flare. None of the "GPU demanding" effects are on, so it should be pretty "light". You can add, edit or remove effects easily by editing the MasterEffect.h file.

How do I install it?

Step 1

Pretty easy, unzip the file and go to
Step 1 - ReShade 1.1.0 with SweetFX 2.0 folder. Run ReShade Setup.exe

This window will popup. Click on Select Game and browse your Cities XXL Installation folder. Usually located inside Steam folder. The path may be something like this: YourDrive:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Cities XXL



Once is installed you don't need to run the exe anymore, you don't even have to launch the game by clicking on the button. Whenever you launch Cities XL, either from your desktop's shortcuts, Steam or whatever, it will run with SweetFX activated.

Step 2

Copy the content of MasterEffect folder inside the Game's intallation folder (the same where you installed SweetFX). It will prompt if you want to overwrite a few files (SweetFX's default files), click on OK/YES.


That's it. Run the game and you'll see a greeting text on the top left corner. You may also noticed that the colours are slightly different. That's because SweetFX injects the effects by intercepting the graphics that were already rendered by the game (or something like that). The user interface is also affected by the effects, so you may notice excessive bloom in some menus. If that really annoys you, you can hit Lock Scroll key -usually it's the key next to Print Screen- to turn SweetFX OFF.

Hotkeys, tweaking and other things you need to know.

Scroll Lock : Turns OFF the effects. You can turn them ON/OFF any time.
Print Screen: Takes a screenshot with the effects. (turn off the user interface first)
Home key: Toggles ON/OFF The game's User interface (menus, tool bars, etc)

Tweaking and editting the MasterEffect.h file:

To add, edit, or remove effects simply open MasterEffect with notepad or notepad++ (recommended)

In the first section of the file you can turn ON/OFF effects, 1 means ON, 0 means OFF.

In the second part you'll see the settings for each effect. Read the descriptions carefully, since they may give you tips about the values used.

Save the file and you're done.

You can edit the file while the game is running and SweetFX is ON. Just save the file and go back to the game. You can Alt+TAB to switch between the notepad and the game to see the results immediatly in game.

Other things you need to know:

To take screenshots with the effects ON, use print screen key (home key to turn off the UI, first)
Megascreenshots and screenshots taken by using the screenshot icon wont show any effect, the game will look default on them.

It may not be compatible with some screen capture apps, overlays like Steam overlay and similar.

For support and information about how to edit the effects, please check SweetFX-Reshade.me forums.


If you're incapable of reading instructions, please do not install this.

Installation Pre-requiste(s):

NONE