Author Topic: [PC] Field background editor - Palmer (0.8b)  (Read 212663 times)

moses7

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Re: Palmer
« Reply #100 on: 2009-06-13 23:39:16 »
@Seifer
So you guys are capable of making high res background just by resizing them?

Does that means you don't have to recreate every image on the game?

So are we going to have high res backgrounds pretty soon?

The background you showed are already good. Not only that, they are also Original except they're HIGH-RES.
I'd like those rather than waiting for people recreating every single background for a long time.
The Official FFVII could have already appeared then.

EDIT: Oh man, my mistake. I thought it looks good because Mozilla resized them and made them smaller.
EDIT: I think these backgrounds just need painting after resizing instead of recreating them. That will enable you to make them faster.
« Last Edit: 2009-06-13 23:48:34 by moses7 »

DarkVenomandCarnage

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Re: Palmer
« Reply #101 on: 2009-06-13 23:49:43 »
Excellent work here Asirus!! I can't wait for someone to youtube "FFVII Remade" with all the mods here and make people think there really is an FFVII remake close to completion!!!

Why? Because the PC players won't need a remake! Look at it!
Palmer:Better backgrounds
AVHD Project:Better models! (CC,KH series, FF 8/9/10-/10-2, PRP, and APZ Cloud as placeholders)
ACC, CC, other sources, and Tech Demo:Better movies! (small pieces to be remade, but otherwise...)

Trenholm

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Re: Palmer
« Reply #102 on: 2009-06-14 02:24:55 »
Goddamn Aali you just keep on bringing in the awesome.  I hope this moves as fast as the OpenGL driver did.

DLPB_

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Re: Palmer
« Reply #103 on: 2009-06-14 09:12:19 »
Without more knowledge of Photoshop, the best I can do is Fractals (high quality settings) > Sharpen (adobe) > Auto Colour > Auto Tone  and possibly a vibrance/colour/brightness/contrast changer depending on picture

Here is what I have for the opening screen:

original (with standard resize):

http://i247.photobucket.com/albums/gg129/SeiferAlmasy2008/new-oldmethodenlargement.png


Enhanced:

http://i247.photobucket.com/albums/gg129/SeiferAlmasy2008/new-resize-sharpen-autocolourtone.png

Can someone give me a different picture to work with (I can't seem to use this program...?  keeps telling me it won't use a file size over 32 MB or something...probably just me though )
« Last Edit: 2009-06-14 09:16:27 by Seifer Almasy »

Kudistos Megistos

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Re: Palmer
« Reply #104 on: 2009-06-14 09:19:18 »
Without more knowledge of Photoshop, the best I can do is Fractals (high quality settings) > Sharpen (adobe) > Auto Colour > Auto Tone  and possibly a vibrance/colour/brightness/contrast changer depending on picture

Here is what I have for the opening screen:

original (with standard resize):

http://i247.photobucket.com/albums/gg129/SeiferAlmasy2008/new-oldmethodenlargement.png


Enhanced:

http://i247.photobucket.com/albums/gg129/SeiferAlmasy2008/new-resize-sharpen-autocolourtone.png

Hmmm, the detail is great, but what happened to the colour on the second one? It looks a lot more blue/grey.

DLPB_

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Re: Palmer
« Reply #105 on: 2009-06-14 09:41:12 »
That is auto colour and tone.  personally I think it is an improvement.  There is no way to know what the design team expected because that has been lost in the downgrading of the picture for the playstation.

The auto tone and colour part can be left out if needs be, the detail is provided by Fractals resize and then smart sharpen.

DLPB_

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Re: Palmer
« Reply #106 on: 2009-06-14 09:58:43 »

Kudistos Megistos

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Re: Palmer
« Reply #107 on: 2009-06-14 10:11:25 »
I like the middle one the most.  :-)

I feel that the colour in FF7 adds something to the atmosphere of game; it fells much warmer, something that you don't see in many games (especially today).

DLPB_

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Re: Palmer
« Reply #108 on: 2009-06-14 10:13:07 »
I tend to agree with you, but only because Midgar is supposed to be incredibly polluted (although even with that you could say it works)  Other areas of the game may benefit from tweaks to the colour or tone.  I need another background to experiment on.  That one is a bad choice

I dunno, see how people feel about all these options and methods, and then pick one.  My knowledge of enhancing is basic, there are probably ways to make this look even better
« Last Edit: 2009-06-14 10:14:43 by Seifer Almasy »

Kudistos Megistos

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Re: Palmer
« Reply #109 on: 2009-06-14 10:22:31 »
I tend to agree with you, but only because Midgar is supposed to be incredibly polluted

There's that too  :lol:

But I think that the rich, deep colours in FF7 add life and character to the game. When watching AC, I felt that it looked very washed out and watered down compared to the old FF7. CC wasn't so bad.

Of course, it may be that I've misinterpreted what you're trying to do with this, so it might help to see what some of the other scenes look like with colour tweaks.

koral

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Re: Palmer
« Reply #110 on: 2009-06-14 10:23:29 »
Middle one for me too  :-)
The last one is too blue, and like Kudistos said, the warmer tones of the originals suggest a different atmosphere than the cold blue of the last.
You might want to look at that scene in Crises-Core too.

In fact, we could argue that the atmosphere of a background would be reflection of cloud's emotional state at that point in the game.
For Cloud, it may be the first time he returned to Midgar, hence the "homely" feeling. He did spend a lot of time in the city while SOLDIER afterall

DLPB_

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Re: Palmer
« Reply #111 on: 2009-06-14 10:30:30 »
http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x74/beefpwnage/UntitledTVOO-1.png

However, this is whata  remake would most likely resemble in colour (and it does go more with darker and gloomier on the whole).  Yes I think we lose soemthing with a change of the brown tint, but at same time, the question is, was this deliberate or was it just a limit of technology :)
« Last Edit: 2009-06-14 10:33:36 by Seifer Almasy »

Kudistos Megistos

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Re: Palmer
« Reply #112 on: 2009-06-14 10:42:21 »
If it wasn't deliberate, it might be one of those cases where a mistake has led to an improvement  :-P

And I think it's best not to try and imitate what a remake would look like, since Squeenix have changed the visual style of FF7 quite a lot with the compilation along with the other changes they have made to the franchise (look at how different Cloud and Sephiroth look now from the way they looked in the original concept art). The new visual style probably wouldn't go well with the old atmosphere or the old characters.
« Last Edit: 2009-06-14 10:45:43 by Kudistos Megistos »

Fleet Command

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Re: Palmer
« Reply #113 on: 2009-06-14 14:35:14 »
The new visual style probably wouldn't go well with the old atmosphere or the old characters.
I believe there is more wisdom in this last statement of yours than most people (perhaps including yourself) realize. But suffice to say that there is a lot of wisdom in it.

However, let's stay on the crux of the matter: The Autocolor function in Adobe Photoshop is a deprecated function only used for photos that are taken in natural environments, with white light being predominant. It is only meant to correct a photography error as perceived by the human visual system. (Otherwise, if you take a picture from Antelope canyon and apply Autocolor to it, it will no longer be Antelope canyon. In such environments, you need to use either a Photo Filter or a Lense Filter.) But in Final Fantasy VII, a fully artificial environment, every tint, tone and contrast value is carefully and deliberately selected and applied. There is absolutely -- I repeat: absolutely -- no colorshifting error whatsoever.
« Last Edit: 2009-06-14 14:39:44 by FleetCommand »

DLPB_

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Re: Palmer
« Reply #114 on: 2009-06-14 15:14:10 »
 :-P  yes you are right that it can't really be applied to every screen, it would not work.

But vibrance settings can.  In some fields, the colour may be a little washed out.  There is no harm in altering that to have a little bit more saturation,

Any case, the main thing here is that fractals + smart sharpen has made these backgrounds work well at double and triple the original resolution.

Fleet Command

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Re: Palmer
« Reply #115 on: 2009-06-14 16:00:38 »
^ Indeed, that's right.

arew264

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Re: Palmer
« Reply #116 on: 2009-06-14 18:17:39 »
You don't want to try to make something like that in Python. It's a nice language, but it's just too slow for something large-scale.

arew264

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Re: Palmer
« Reply #117 on: 2009-06-14 18:28:46 »
The blender engine is getting better each day. I heard over at the blender artist forum, that in a months time blender will be able to make AAA games. Without too much lag! So making something like Final Fantasy VII with python...it wouldn't lag too much. And python slow? I have no idea, but they use python for the most games out there. So lag is nothing to worry about. Then there is logic too of course, and states..so yeah.

Blender can run a GUI and a renderer. Nothing is truly done in real time.

"but they use python for the most games out there."
I don't know where you heard that, but it's completely false. Most games out there are written in C++, some with assembly code interspersed because C++ alone wasn't fast enough. We live in a world of hardware accelerated graphics and physics, and languages like Python simply aren't suited to high-performance applications. You can try, and you may come out with something that works decently well, but for truly interactive experiences, Python simply doesn't cut it.

Again, I'm a fan of the Python language, but it doesn't really have a place in game development. It can be used as an external scripting language that's pulled in by a game engine (that's actually done fairly often), and it can be used to create content creation tools, but it doesn't belong in the game engine itself. Interpreted languages just aren't fast enough for that. Java can kind of get away with it due to bytecode optimizations, but take a look at Runescape and tell me how interactive it feels. There are lag spikes, there's general slowness, and that's just with minimal 3d quality. Try putting in real high quality models, animation, and possibly even AI code, and the performance cost of an interpreted language starts strangling your game.

Just to demonstrate my point:
Unreal Engine (as seen in games from FPSs to RTSs): C++
Quake 4: C++
Quake 3: C
Havok (as seen in Halo): C++

Those are a few major engines. Python is useful for quickly producing moderately functional applications, but when you start talking about game design, it takes a back seat to compiled languages.
« Last Edit: 2009-06-14 18:38:40 by arew264 »

arew264

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Re: Palmer
« Reply #118 on: 2009-06-14 18:46:55 »
Okay, you seem to be unclear on the concept. Blender provides a graphics renderer. It supports at least basic real time animation, and probably camera manipulation, but a game is not a renderer. There's complex realtime physics, there's events, there's AI, there's character interaction, there's pathfinding, there's environment loading and unloading, there's timers, there's scripting, there's a thousand elements that you never think you need until you realize that they're missing.
Look around. Commercial games aren't ever written in python, though they might use it for scripted events. And I don't know about you, but I haven't seen any killer python games on the market or in the open source community.

Also, Blender is a content creation application. In general, if it runs inside Blender, it's probably not a game. I'm not insulting Blender there; it's just not what it was designed for. Games, particularly RPG's, require a whole new level of immersion that requires a completely different application design. Blender can make and build, but it can't truly play.

Ok then I was wrong with python. But the programming language doesn't decide how fast the engine is. Blender is capable of making great games. Just look at these screens below. All made in blender. So you are joking right, that it wouldn't be able to make a Final Fantasy VII game. Of course it's maybe not the best engine for the genre. But it's possible.
Actually, the programming language is almost entirely responsible for deciding how fast the game runs, if hardware is kept constant. In C++, the code is compiled into a straight binary that can be run by the CPU directly. In Python, the code is written, possibly compiled to a bytecode-equivalent (I forget what Python calls it), and then loaded by an interpreter. The interpreter has to compile the code to binary before the CPU can process it, creating a large overhead that is simply used to process the code, not to run your game. That overhead isn't a problem in applications like Blender, or in the many places where Python has been used successfully. When you start trying to run many frames in a second, and a frame consists of more than rendering, that overhead becomes unacceptable.
If nothing else, a major reason Python can work well for rendering is that it doesn't actually render anything, it just passes the data on to libraries of the renderer, be it DirectX or OpenGL. Guess what those libraries are written in? Yep, mostly C or Assembly Language. DirectX might include some C++.

I will admit it's possible, but if a project tried to write a replacement game engine in Python, the project would be in grave danger from the day of it's inception. The QGears project is already pursuing a goal like this, and, interestingly enough, they're writing it in C++.

Quote
So stop babbling about blender wouldn't be able to make a Final Fantasy VII. Lol final fantasy VII was made for the PS1...blender can make late PS2 graphics...soon pS3...
Actually, I'm "babbling" from the many game programming books I've written. I'm babbling from the many programming design books I've written. I'm babbling from my programming experiences.
I do agree with you though. Blender can make PS1, PS2, and PS3 graphics. However, Blender is not a game, a game engine, or a part of a game in any way. Blender is a content creation suite, an excellent one at that, but that is its purpose, and nothing more. People may try to extend it, but it will at best perform marginally compared to real applications designed from the ground up for this purpose.
« Last Edit: 2009-06-14 18:58:54 by arew264 »

arew264

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Re: Palmer
« Reply #119 on: 2009-06-14 19:02:32 »
*sigh*
Read the first two lines of this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Blender

Better yet, I'll quote it:
"Game Blender is a sub-application of Blender, the popular free software 3D application, used to make games using Blender. The Game Engine was written from scratch in C++, including support for features like Python scripting and OpenAL 3D sound. Blender being programmed in C and Game Blender in C++ kept development strictly separated."

EDIT: Ok you know what you are talking about, and I don't understand what is the difference between the different languages. But blender engine is improving. Blender will soon not just be a content creation program..

That's beside the point. My point is that Python will not be a realistic language choice for a full engine rewrite of Final Fantasy VII. Game Blender is improving, yes, and that's proof that a C++ game engine can function very well.
I suggest you read the Wikipedia articles on Python and C++, and maybe do some research on the differences between compiled and interpreted languages.


Anyway, this has gone on way longer than it should have. I'll have to cite XKCD as to why I've debated this much: http://xkcd.com/386/
« Last Edit: 2009-06-14 19:21:36 by arew264 »

arew264

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Re: Palmer
« Reply #120 on: 2009-06-14 19:37:46 »
I'm familiar with the concepts and how the language works, but I mostly do D and Java, with some C++ on the side. I haven't actually coded anything in Python
I'll print out some documentation on it. If nothing else, I need to learn a good interpreted language besides Java.

I'm going to be gone until Thursday; should I print out documentation on Python 2 or 3? I would just get a book, but the public library is closed on Sunday.
« Last Edit: 2009-06-14 19:47:47 by arew264 »

ShinChan

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Re: Palmer
« Reply #121 on: 2009-06-19 11:59:36 »
Just to come back to resizing the original backgrounds to higher resolutions: I think with this Fractals Plugin it would really look 1000 times better than with the simple upscaling as it is done in the game at the moment!
Another idea I've thought of would be that we could also resize the videos! It would be a bit complicated and maybe quite much to do, but I think it would be cool :) We would have to extract every frame from the video, resize it with the Fractals Plugin and then make a video out of these frames again!
With both backgrounds and videos in higher resolutions, I think the game would look pretty damn good ;D

DLPB_

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Re: Palmer
« Reply #122 on: 2009-06-19 12:04:48 »
To do as you suggest would take a bit of effort but is doable.  The frames would have to be extracted from the PSX version (which was used to make the PC one).  Movie encoded into a lossless codec like Lagarith.  Then from there into Virtualdub which can extract all frames in 1 go.

From there, they would need to be batched in photoshop and then remade into a lagarith file in virtualdub and then encoded (to something like h.264).

It would work and is a good idea.  I will test it soon with an FMV.  I have a bit of experience with editing and will use sony vegas too.

There may be an even easier way than this and I will look into it

A better way would be square releasing the original files.  So they can look like this>




« Last Edit: 2009-06-19 12:08:47 by Seifer Almasy »

Fleet Command

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Re: Palmer
« Reply #123 on: 2009-06-19 12:43:17 »
Actually, I've heard there is program called Video Enhancer from thedeemon.com that resizes video. But, say, doesn't this onOne Software (producer of Geniune Fractals) produce a video resizing tool?

DLPB_

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Re: Palmer
« Reply #124 on: 2009-06-19 12:47:04 »
I think fractals is for photoshop...  I don't think so.

But fractals is the best when it comes to enlarging so I will now test a movie [resolution 2 X] :)  Will post it here soon.