I found a pretty nasty logical error in my code for layering the backgrounds, and so far it seems to have solved all the issues in my previous video (minus the masking of course). I have rebuilt all of Balamb already and it seems quite functional as is, the only issue I noticed was one where the flag still kind of 'disappears' for a split second, but I think I figured out why that is, so hopefully during this next batch of screens I'm making that issue will get solved. I am also generating all of the bg folder tonight, so if all goes well, I should be able to take 10 minutes tomorrow and make a video of Balamb at least with my current GAN generation and the new masks (THANKS TO SATSUKI), which although are still not perfect, are much better then they were, and tbh, I think it would be very hard to get better masks without actually rebuilding them by hand, which I clearly have no intention of doing myself.
With a little luck I'll also be able to include the entire Garden tomorrow in the video as well (that's the bg folder, which is rather large), but I'm generating the entire folder, so that would make up for a LOT of gameplay done, not just running around the Garden, but many battle scenes, stuff like when you go on that jaunt to make the Garden fly, etc.. etc.. So basically anything Garden related. Unfortunately however, I personally do not have any save games that far ahead, so all I can really show is basically what you can see from the start of the game, so a lot of screens I won't be able to show.
To be honest, even as the GAN is currently creating the images, it looks pretty good imo, in fact, even the NPC's are starting to fit in with the style, so I'm really pleased with the results so far, although there are some scenes with NPC's, like I was complaining about before that simply can't be fixed imo, without an artist redoing them.
So fingers crossed, and hopefully by tomorrow there will be a lot of new content to show off.
I'm making another shoutout to anyone who might read this. I'm looking for a way to be able to tp to any point in the game so that I can check out the screens and test them without being forced to complete the entire game. Even someone's SAVED games would do me a world of good for testing. I have only gotten to the point so far where you fight Seifer and the Sorceress for the first time (that's when I discovered FFVIII had mods, and have had tunnel vision for this background mod only since), so I'm still not very far in the game and can't see much myself. So if anyone has saved games I can use, PLEASE LET ME KNOW, or better if someone knows someway to cheat so I can tp around, that would be so much better. I'm sure some people know how to finish this game pretty easily, but I"m not one of those people, I tend to grind it out and it takes forever, so any help would be awesome, thx.
If all goes well, I will likely very strongly consider pushing the entire content out (should take a couple of days I'd think to generate every background image including the masking in the game) and release a beta version within a week probably. It's possible (if not likely) I'm being overly hopeful atm, but honestly, I feel it's just about ready for it, and if the bg folder generates with little fuss, I think it's a pretty safe bet that the rest of game will generate fine as well since the bg folder covers a lot of material. I'd be an idiot to think I still won't run into any more surprises, but maybe I'll get lucky.