[FF8PC-Steam] Project AngelWing v1.0 - Field Upscale

[FatedCourage]

Project AngelWing v1.0
Field Upscale (Steam Only)

Download v1.0: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxTDk8nuGukdTmx2Z0liM0RUZkk

Download for Project AngelWing v1.0 hashmaps: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxTDk8nuGukdVUJwMjFUOEtlVEk

Finally going to post this here or I never will. This is something I've been putting a lot of time into over the past three months. And after that hell of an experience, I really want this out there.

So... What is it? Project AngelWing is a field upscale project using waifu2x and my preferred settings. It's not perfect, but any errors or bad upscaling I can fix later down the line. (Mostly, Esthar...) Plus, a lot of people were curious how well waifu2x did with FF8 backgrounds. So for those people, this is for you. Feel free to let me know what you think. Really wish I had more to say...

Note #1: While most errors are fixed compared to Project Eden, some still remain that I can't fix myself. You also lose out on smoother edges that you'd get with Project Eden.

Note #2: The hashmaps are all up. And yes, having the hash2map and collisions are vital for some things to work as intended.

Directions:

1.   Download Tonberry v1.61 or later http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=15945.0
2.   Install Tonberry and all of it's components.
3.   Extract the file provided and place all folders into the "textures" folder.
4.   Be sure to download Project AngelWing's hashmaps and put them in their intended places.

Examples:

Original/New





Video Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3WrE8Yj7r0E8DE8ZdITLmb2erpLs4jWZ

Special Thanks:

Omzy (Always)
Mcindus
Fraggoso

[Nedus]

I made some screens, first with project eden and then with angelwing. Some areas really look better now (sharpened, "less pixelated").

The only "downside" i've noticed is here:


The light sources look...well,no longer light sources, compared to project eden


(Don't mind the pixelation here. Apparently that's because i have the italian versione of the game and it has something to do with hashcodes. Not that i mind tho).

Exept for that, this looks awesome (to be clear: so far i've done very few screeshots-comparison, only inside Balamb's Garden).
Thank you for your work on this FatedCourage

[Maki]

That's really good one!

[Mcindus]

Can we get some Eden/AngelWing comparisons?

[Nedus]

Some comparison. Eden first.
I'm not a "graphics maniac", so Eden is good enough alredy. But AngelWing DOES improve some areas imo.
They look less blurry. Maybe not the graphical improvement of the century, but it does a fine job in making FF8 look even better.

Spoiler: show

[FatedCourage]

I made some screens, first with project eden and then with angelwing. Some areas really look better now (sharpened, "less pixelated").

The only "downside" i've noticed is here:


The light sources look...well,no longer light sources, compared to project eden


(Don't mind the pixelation here. Apparently that's because i have the italian versione of the game and it has something to do with hashcodes. Not that i mind tho).

Exept for that, this looks awesome (to be clear: so far i've done very few screeshots-comparison, only inside Balamb's Garden).
Thank you for your work on this FatedCourage

I'll look into why the lighting doesn't seem to work properly. It might only be limited to a few areas since the lighting does work in a majority of areas. Even areas in your comparison pictures for Eden/AngelWing. And yeah, AngelWing isn't an extremely vast improvement. Just a sharper image. And less glitches.

You're welcome.

That's really good one!

Haha. I'm glad.

Edit: Good news. I fixed the lighting for those areas. At least, they now work for me. I'll upload a separate patch soon for it.

Edit 2: Actually... On second thought, they appear to have been working correctly before, too. Does anyone else have lighting issues?

[Mirrorman95]

Real nice job here. I've been looking forward to these waifu2x backgrounds for a while now. Was maximum noise reduction used?

[Covarr]

This is one of the best looking upscales I've seen. I really appreciate that you've gone for a more natural look than some.

[FatedCourage]

Real nice job here. I've been looking forward to these waifu2x backgrounds for a while now. Was maximum noise reduction used?

Thank you. First pass was with no noise reduction. I only used the maximum on the second pass. Luckily, very little detail was lost from what I could tell.

This is one of the best looking upscales I've seen. I really appreciate that you've gone for a more natural look than some.

Thanks. Glad you think so. That was my goal from the start. If I would've went with UpRGB rather than UpPhoto, then I would've gotten what I like to call the "noodle effect". And on landscapes it's...horrible. Plus RGB mode somehow wipes away more detail when combined with noise reduction.

[Faendra]

Waouh, a better quality than eden and without loss of detail :O (Well for me). Actually it's more detailed and the pictures aren't distorted like some "upscale" we can see on others games. Really great job ! 

[Fendera]

wow thank you! looks great. I really like the sharpness

[FatedCourage]

Waouh, a better quality than eden and without loss of detail :O (Well for me). Actually it's more detailed and the pictures aren't distorted like some "upscale" we can see on others games. Really great job ! 

Thank you. Glad you think so! I made it a priority to make sure the backgrounds kept as much detail as possible with my settings.

wow thank you! looks great. I really like the sharpness

You're welcome. If there is one thing I'll commend waifu2x for is how sharp the images remain when upscaling. (Granted you don't go overboard with filtering.)

[LeonhartGR]

Nice FC! Well done mate.

[Recc42]

Thanks for the great work , i've been downloading a few mods for my FFVIII replay and you seem to have participated in a lot of them, thanks for the effort . I wanted to ask if its was possible that you or someone else create a torrent, since my internet is not fast enough or  stable enough to download a 1.3gb file The battlefield pack which was only 400mb~ took a while to download after many connection errors, any help would be appreciated .

[olearyf2525]

If we already have Project Eden installed will angelwing overwrite everything? Or should I look into deleting all the project eden stuff? Looks great, been waiting awhile for this. Thank you for all your hard work FatedCourage.

[FatedCourage]

Thanks for the great work , i've been downloading a few mods for my FFVIII replay and you seem to have participated in a lot of them, thanks for the effort . I wanted to ask if its was possible that you or someone else create a torrent, since my internet is not fast enough or  stable enough to download a 1.3gb file The battlefield pack which was only 400mb~ took a while to download after many connection errors, any help would be appreciated .

Haha. Yeah... I kinda have my hand in a lot of things on here. And you're welcome. As for a torrent... I've never actually done any of that before. But I should probably look into it and learn. Especially for people with not so great internet. (My internet is questionable at times, too. ) Because what's the point of going through all this work if not everyone can use it. So... I'll see what I can do.

If we already have Project Eden installed will angelwing overwrite everything? Or should I look into deleting all the project eden stuff? Looks great, been waiting awhile for this. Thank you for all your hard work FatedCourage.

You are correct. If you already have Eden, then AngelWing will overwrite it. I did tweak the hashmaps, though. So those matter as well. You're welcome. And thank you. I appreciate it.

I also need to go through the hashmaps and disable codes that cause glitches that can't be fixed and add more missing ones. So that'll be the next update.

[Recc42]

Thanks for taking interest in my request! i actually, after a few more attempts managed to download it using jdownloader, the issue was that with my crappy connection sometimes just dying out of nowhere, google drive wouldn't keep the progress of the download but jdownloader would.

The mod is great! the game looks great thanks to all the enhancements i've applied with all the mods and i'm ready for a replay of one of my favorite game of all time, thanks a lot for the effort you put into modding the game, this game means a lot to me and with these graphics refresh it feels new and shiny

[FatedCourage]

Nice FC! Well done mate.

Missed your post, but wanted to say thanks.

Thanks for taking interest in my request! i actually, after a few more attempts managed to download it using jdownloader, the issue was that with my crappy connection sometimes just dying out of nowhere, google drive wouldn't keep the progress of the download but jdownloader would.

The mod is great! the game looks great thanks to all the enhancements i've applied with all the mods and i'm ready for a replay of one of my favorite game of all time, thanks a lot for the effort you put into modding the game, this game means a lot to me and with these graphics refresh it feels new and shiny

No problem. I'll try and set one up once I know how. It'll be a good alternative for people. I'm glad you got it all sorted out, though. You're welcome. I'm sure all of us here who worked on these mods appreciate it. Enjoy the game!

[kaspar01]

Let's say I want to improve/customize a background..(bgsecr2 in particular)

Could anyone explain me how the bg is composed from an HD version of the image?
I see the png in this mod folder are splitted in many stripes/fragment but I can't get what's the logic behind it to try make my own HD BG

[FatedCourage]

Let's say I want to improve/customize a background..(bgsecr2 in particular)

Could anyone explain me how the bg is composed from an HD version of the image?
I see the png in this mod folder are splitted in many stripes/fragment but I can't get what's the logic behind it to try make my own HD BG

Apologies for not responding sooner. Been away on a road trip.

You need PuPu and the proper files to get the fields/backgrounds. I just combine the layers that seams match (you do this for every file), upscale those images (or however you plan to do it), use upscaled alpha channels of the same files (before you combined them) to cut out the excess and run it back through PuPu (import). I suck at explaining things. But I hope this is what you wanted to know.

[shinifamifx]

hi
how i to patch backgrounds for spanish ver. ?
regards

[FatedCourage]

hi
how i to patch backgrounds for spanish ver. ?
regards

Hello. I assume you mean to just install the mod? It should be the same for spanish as all the others. Not sure if the hashcodes will differ at all since I don't use that version.