Author Topic: FFVIII's Menu Gradients... (Read 15204 times)

ThunderPeel2001 · « **on:** 2013-11-26 11:59:52 »

I always wondered why FFVIII's gradients aren't as smooth as FFVII's? They're bits of purple, orange, red in there.

Consider this comparison (top: FFVIII / bottom: Photoshop equivalent)

Is it a design choice, or a limitation of the engine?

DLPB_ · « **Reply #1 on:** 2013-11-26 12:54:39 »

I always thought the colours were a design choice, but the banding itself may be caused by the fact there are limited colours. You see the same kind of effect in windows if you use 16 bit colour and not 32. I assume ff8 uses 8 bit which is even worse.

Covarr · « **Reply #2 on:** 2013-11-26 16:21:35 »

This is something that could easily have been fixed with dithering. The weird horizontal lines, especially in the center, make me wonder if maybe they were aiming for a brushed steel look and simply screwed it up colossally.

I may check this out against a CRT shader later on. I suspect it looked leagues better on old crappy TVs than it does on modern LCD monitors.

ThunderPeel2001 · « **Reply #3 on:** 2013-11-26 18:15:43 »

Yeah, it really does look like 16-bit mode in Windows 98 or something. Can't say I'm a fan.

It'd be awesome if someone "fixed" it

sithlord48 · « **Reply #4 on:** 2013-11-26 18:47:17 »

might wanna note that photoshop is most likley using 24 bit color mode (or 32 bit as windows calls) . take your gradent and make it use 16 bit color space you should have the image shown in the FFVIII image

Covarr · « **Reply #5 on:** 2013-11-26 19:10:57 »

Quote from: sithlord48 on 2013-11-26 18:47:17

might wanna note that photoshop is most likley using 24 bit color mode (or 32 bit as windows calls) . take your gradent and make it use 16 bit color space you should have the image shown in the FFVIII image

I doubt it. Photoshop is pretty smart, and would do a much better job dithering the image than FF8 did, and would probably have the sense to stick with grays.

nfitc1 · « **Reply #6 on:** 2013-11-27 00:48:11 »

I always thought it was a "large high-res texture doesn't scale down well" kind of problem.

Dark Phoenix · « **Reply #7 on:** 2013-11-27 02:45:23 »

I would bet it's based on a REALLY shitty photo of brushed metal, made worse by limited coloring. That banding screams "limited palette".

KnifeTheSky77 · « **Reply #8 on:** 2013-11-27 05:36:31 »

I'm glad someone pointed it out, I always thought FFVIII's menus looked really ugly. I always assumed the graphics were tailored with non-hd tv's in mind

ThunderPeel2001 · « **Reply #9 on:** 2013-11-27 16:55:52 »

I'm sure somebody should know what's going, technically, but whatever the issue, I hope they do something about it in the new edition.

LeonhartGR · « **Reply #10 on:** 2013-11-27 18:38:19 »

I'm sorry... are you talking about a HD remastered version...?

Kaldarasha · « **Reply #11 on:** 2013-11-27 19:44:10 »

It's been a while since SE has announced that there will be a re-release of VIII. Maybe they have learned from VII and do some real work on it. The engine of VIII has a lot more potential after all.

Covarr · « **Reply #12 on:** 2013-11-27 19:58:54 »

It's still being worked on. That's all I can say.

...because that's all I know. I wish I had secret insider information, but I totally don't

DLPB_ · « **Reply #13 on:** 2013-11-27 20:56:13 »

Quote from: Kaldarasha on 2013-11-27 19:44:10

It's been a while since SE has announced that there will be a re-release of VIII. Maybe they have learned from VII and do some real work on it. The engine of VIII has a lot more potential after all.

very unlikely. They will update a few things like that crap font they did, and if they hav the source code, perhaps other minor fixes, if not, it will be an Aali driver job again. They aren't going to waste resources for this when they will get tons of money for very small work. Same with ff7... the contempt they showed there releasing it with midi sounding oggs was laughable.

ThunderPeel2001 · « **Reply #14 on:** 2013-11-27 22:11:03 »

Quote from: DLPB on 2013-11-27 20:56:13

very unlikely. They will update a few things like that crap font they did, and if they hav the source code, perhaps other minor fixes, if not, it will be an Aali driver job again. They aren't going to waste resources for this when they will get tons of money for very small work. Same with ff7... the contempt they showed there releasing it with midi sounding oggs was laughable.

Not sure if you can be so cynical any more... The redid all the music for FFVII after fans complained on the Steam forums. I never would have believed it, but they did.

LeonhartGR · « **Reply #15 on:** 2013-11-27 22:14:26 »

Totally agreed with everyone...I wish there was a sequel though...

LeonhartGR · « **Reply #16 on:** 2013-11-27 22:18:05 »

Quote from: ThunderPeel2001 on 2013-11-27 22:11:03

The redid all the music for FFVII after fans complained on the Steam forums. I never would have believed it, but they did.

Do not rush... they did the exact same thing like DLPB and FBX in some point... and I'm positive the qhimm members work had higher level of quality.

ThunderPeel2001 · « **Reply #17 on:** 2013-11-28 11:52:05 »

Quote from: LeonhartGR on 2013-11-27 22:18:05

Do not rush... they did the exact same thing like DLPB and FBX in some point... and I'm positive the qhimm members work had higher level of quality.

FBX did it later. DLPB (and Assimi) converted the OST. Square Enix replaced it with the original PSX music (not the OST) -- so it was slightly different.

But regardless of the quality (which was fine, I have to say) simply the fact that they did it at all, blew my mind. Clearly there is money in SE assigned to making these games better... so I like to remain optimistic

Kaldarasha · « **Reply #18 on:** 2013-11-28 13:12:55 »

I'm not optimistic, but if they only want to make a re-release as they did with FF7 to make money, then we could buy it and play it right now. It's only a logical guess for me. The remastered version of FFX is finished, so they have some peoples, who could remaster VIII. I wouldn't bet on this, but the chance for this aren't that bad at all. At last, if they would polish up the game (and these gradients), they would also polish up the image of the Final Fantasy franchise and their image as Company.

DLPB_ · « **Reply #19 on:** 2013-11-28 13:33:00 »

It depends if they have the source code. If they don't then that's the end of it. They lost ff7's.

Aavock · « **Reply #20 on:** 2013-12-12 04:03:04 »

I've found the menu gradient texture and tried my best since it is a indexed colors bitmap manipulation, it sure does look better but I think I can do better:

Also, I find it surprising that no one is complaining about the "hi-res" font: unlike FFVII, the upscaled font texture was done from scratch so the shadows of each letters are almost non existant and it was very bad font choice since it's very thin and narrow. Unfortunately, the 2013 version disable the option of choosing between original and "hi res" menu textures (font, avatars and some other menu elements): it is now a default option.

Next thing I tried was re inserting upscaled textures (*.tex files @200%) back to the "menu.fs" (pretty much like what I did for FFVII, see here) using myst6re's Deling v0.7b but the program crash when clicking on it to show the preview. Is there any other *.fs repacker ?

LeonhartGR · « **Reply #21 on:** 2013-12-12 04:09:23 »

Looking forward to any improvement! Please take this into consideration as well!

Aavock · « **Reply #22 on:** 2013-12-12 04:29:31 »

Thanks LeonhartGR, I've downloaded this great project a while back; all improved and resized textures are *.png files so it won't work with the 2013 version unless a FFVIII "new to old" patch shows up but in the meantime I'm working with the original game file format; of course, results will never looks as smooth as png-24 files specially for the menu gradient but re-inserting upscaled *.tex files (@200/400%) will definitely help.

falkTX · « **Reply #23 on:** 2013-12-12 15:56:47 »

why not make the menu a single color?

I'm not sure how well it will look, but maybe it's worth a try.

Aavock · « **Reply #24 on:** 2013-12-15 20:26:38 »

There's a lot of potential watching this thread; after using Img2Tex, Biturn and Omega, I've realized that those tools were mainly created for FFVII (resized textures works fine with FFVII) and even if both games are using the same file format (*.tex), the header, wich contains the palettes and texture size, seems different. When trying to convert a resized *.tex file, the game will eventually crash on the game main menu.

Edit and import are no longer an issue; right now I'm looking for the hex values of the height and weight texture sizes.