[Mod] Clear Borders

[Verteks]

Clear Borders mod aims to make the regime and zone borders more readable at all zoom levels without introducing overlapping textures or other visually distracting artifacts.

The mod is designed with these priorities in mind. The latest internal version (v11) achieves these the best. v8 places colors above visibility.

1. Zero texture clipping (aside from the bug inflicting highest zoom level)
2. Visibility on all zoom levels
3. Color support (based on regime relations)

More comparisons, information and the GIMP file used to make the borders are included in the download. Briefly, the mod replaces the border1-6.png textures in shadowmodgraphics, shadowmodgraphicsBIG and shadowmodgraphicsSMALL, and uses the more visible vanilla ZoneBorder1-6.png files for LightZoneBorder1-6.png instead.


Download: Clear Borders (v1) (released April 13th, 2025)


Thanks to Pymous, mroyer, rjosh and Khanti for inspiration and valuable feedback!

With permission from Pymous, I've included the Pymod Border mod and a modified version of it with color support based on regime relations. A few other border mods found from responses to Any border mods? topic have also been included to make comparisons and your own modifications easier.

The comparison picture includes other mods. I've included the mods I actively use and some recommendations for other mods in a mod pack.

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Installation

1. Go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Shadow Empire
2. (optional) Backup previous graphicsAlt (or just the border folders) if you've used mods previously
3. Drop a copy of the graphicsAlt folder from one of the mod versions into the Shadow Empire folder and overwrite any existing files

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Release Notes

The versions in the notes include internal versioning from the GIMP file. All fully functional versions are included separately in the download.

Clear Borders v1

• v8 - white with 1px black outline
• v9 - white with 3px black outline
• v9.1 - v9, w small texture 2px horizontal fix
• v10 - v8, w v9 at highest zoom
• v11 - thin white w thick black outline

[mroyer]

Thanks Verteks!

Thanks to ...

And also Vic for clarifying how the game-engine recolors borders at runtime.

It assumes white color 255,255,255 or grays... And multiplies by rgb value between 0.0 (0) and 1.0 (255)

[blueduck]

Thank you very much for your border. My old eyes were having a hard time seeing the borders. Now they stand out very clearly.
Steve

[majama]

I can add here my old green borders modified later to green-yellow (or mint green-mustard yellow).


They are not as contrasty as the versions above, but they work well for me and are visible better than the original ones in the game.
Please check it out. Maybe it will be useful to someone.

Download link:
https://mega.nz/file/KcISiZbb#qvnEq0Skr ... 2I6O6haCx4

Have good fun.