Author Topic: FF7 Crisis Core Upscale Project  (Read 124994 times)

jons

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Re: FF7 Crisis Core Upscale Project
« Reply #125 on: 2020-09-08 18:22:04 »
Would you say now its at a point where you're satisfied with it? I've been itching to play but I've been super patient while you guys make it even more amazing.

Devina

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Re: FF7 Crisis Core Upscale Project
« Reply #126 on: 2020-09-08 19:03:53 »
I would say wait a week or two, I need to re-do Zack's low-poly models, then I'll post in an update when I think you should play it. Then I'll be 90%ish satisfied with the project, and I think you could bite then. All the major errors have been fixed AFAIK (we've done so much work in these past few months so either way, the experience you get in a couple weeks will be better than how it was originally was), but we still need people to play it and test it out anyway. I'm a bit disappointed by the lack of feedback, but I guess not everyone wants to make Qhimm accounts or something.

The 6 has been extended so it looks more as it should, and makes it more like the original.



The famous photo of Zack, Tifa and Sephiroth has been remade in HD (all the other photos during the trip have been updated, but sadly, they aren't in-engine so they aren't as HD as this one).





jons

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Re: FF7 Crisis Core Upscale Project
« Reply #127 on: 2020-09-08 21:43:30 »
Looks amazing. I'd be happy to help provide feedback and wait a few weeks. I couldnt figure out where the ULUS10336 folder was in PPSSPP though, so I'll probably need a quick instruction on how to do that haha. AMAZING work regardless! Keep it up!

FlynT

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Re: FF7 Crisis Core Upscale Project
« Reply #128 on: 2020-09-09 01:58:51 »
Looks amazing. I'd be happy to help provide feedback and wait a few weeks. I couldnt figure out where the ULUS10336 folder was in PPSSPP though, so I'll probably need a quick instruction on how to do that haha. AMAZING work regardless! Keep it up!

It took me a while too to figure out the correct folder location, but here it is.
For PPSSPP all files need to be copied into the following folder:

<Your PPSSPP Install Location>/memstick/PSP/TEXTURES/ULUS10336/

For RetroArch all files need to be copied into the following folder:

<Your RetroArch Install Location>/saves/PSP/TEXTURES/ULUS10336/

You can change the RegionID (i.e. ULUS10336) to some other ID but from my personal experience it seems to load only a few. As "eqprog" stated before, textures are swapped based on memory location, some will be the same other will not.

eqprog

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Re: FF7 Crisis Core Upscale Project
« Reply #129 on: 2020-09-10 17:19:10 »
It took me a while too to figure out the correct folder location, but here it is.
For PPSSPP all files need to be copied into the following folder:

<Your PPSSPP Install Location>/memstick/PSP/TEXTURES/ULUS10336/

For RetroArch all files need to be copied into the following folder:

<Your RetroArch Install Location>/saves/PSP/TEXTURES/ULUS10336/

You can change the RegionID (i.e. ULUS10336) to some other ID but from my personal experience it seems to load only a few. As "eqprog" stated before, textures are swapped based on memory location, some will be the same other will not.

Thanks. I will update the OP to include more detailed instructions. I guess I never considered that there would be different setup configs for retroarch or that people would have difficulties.

As far as being 100% finished, its hard to say exactly when that is going to happen. I think that the current experience feels rather good as is, there are just some funky looking textures due to poor upscaling. That being said, I don't think anything would ruin the experience for that average user, but if you're a purist, then wait. We'll eventually decide when its "good enough."

tl;dr: For the best experience, I agree with Devina that you should wait for the character models/textures to be finished (no pressure, Devina :wink: )

I managed to get three days off of work in a row this week (today-saturday) so I plan on getting some more work done.

Modified OP with more detailed installation instructions
« Last Edit: 2020-09-10 18:18:29 by eqprog »

uxu888

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Re: FF7 Crisis Core Upscale Project
« Reply #130 on: 2020-09-15 20:19:17 »
that looks very good ... thank you very much for your work, I'll give it to me ...

darrenxp77

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Re: FF7 Crisis Core Upscale Project
« Reply #131 on: 2020-09-18 00:56:28 »
I honestly appreciate the work and time you Devina and Eqprog are putting into this. Its one of my all time favs as a game and as a final fantasy. All the wait for the end product is worth it.
Do either of you have a cashapp, venmo, paypal, or any site or way I can personally send you anything for just putting time into this?. I truly appreciate the work, it wouldn’t be something big but even just any token of appreciation i want to send. This upscale is heaven sent and looks amazing so far

I tried to send a PM to either one of you but I kept getting an error message several times

Devina

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Re: FF7 Crisis Core Upscale Project
« Reply #132 on: 2020-09-20 08:46:43 »
Thanks for being patient the past 2 weeks. All of Zack's textures (except beachwear and finale) have been updated (as well as Cloud in the SOLDIER 1st class outfit). This means there should be no more animation errors in the game. His hair has also been fully desaturated.

eqprog, I think we should update the pictures in the OP since they no longer represent the version out now (especially Zack's clothing). Maybe a comparison so people can see the actual difference better.

If anyone has been waiting to try this pack out, I would say go ahead now. Just give us feedback and if anything bothers you (that isn't already on the current issues list), post it here. I also updated the namebox shadow so that it doesn't look so pixelated:



I'm going to probably focus on Aerith and doing that Banora logo, but I'll also probably post some minor environmental updates.

Thanks for the donation offer as well. I prefer to keep my Paypal private, but if anyone wants to PM me Steam gift card codes on this forum, I'd appreciate it. Just know that I live in North America as I don't think it's compatible between regions.
« Last Edit: 2020-09-20 09:40:00 by Devina »

Devina

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Re: FF7 Crisis Core Upscale Project
« Reply #133 on: 2020-09-20 19:21:39 »


I'm fixing the red and blue versions of this NPC right now, took me hours just to fix some of the errors here. >_<

The way the seams work on this model is evil so I had to align stuff.

eqprog

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Re: FF7 Crisis Core Upscale Project
« Reply #134 on: 2020-09-21 04:17:35 »
Yeah, they are pure evil. After I did the initial work with the updated thread texture and saw the way it looked in game I felt pretty defeated.

jons

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Re: FF7 Crisis Core Upscale Project
« Reply #135 on: 2020-09-21 19:47:29 »
Well I played through the entire game with your pack and honestly, it was pretty amazing. You seem like absolute perfectionists that will never be full happy with your work, but from an outsider average user perspective, this is the definitive way to play this game now. And you've probably helped extend the life of this gem that will be stuck on dead hardware for all time. So thank you, thank you soooo much for your work.

Devina

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Re: FF7 Crisis Core Upscale Project
« Reply #136 on: 2020-09-22 00:49:33 »
@eqprog: You should let me know if you see any errors like that since I like fixing that stuff.

@jons: I'm glad you had a good time with the game. I'm surprised you beat it so soon, did you play 9 hours a day or something? And yeah, I'm a bit of a perfectionist. If you had to give some constructive criticism, what would it be (that may not already be mentioned on the current issues list)?

Devina

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Re: FF7 Crisis Core Upscale Project
« Reply #137 on: 2020-09-22 11:01:09 »
Mr. Red and Mr. Blue are now re-done.
It's not 100% perfect but now when you look at it, you don't get weirded out as much by your first glance. I also removed the shadows above his gloves because that's not how shadows work in real life.



I redid some debris. Here's what it looked like before with weird black outlines: https://i.imgur.com/fGKDzFB.jpg

As you can see, it has a lot more detail now and makes the slums look grimier.
It's not often you can do stuff like this, but every bit of detail helps.
All you have to do is find some similar photo online and put it around 50 transparency and overlay it.





Some more debris.
Unfortunately, there's a weird pixelation error on the cube thing behind it.
I tried fixing it but it gives me that weird white transparency glitch.
It might take a long time to fix the stupid thing so I'll leave it for now.



eqprog

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Re: FF7 Crisis Core Upscale Project
« Reply #138 on: 2020-09-23 17:30:15 »
Thanks for the tip, that's a really great technique. My attempts at making gritty "texturized" surfaces by hand have all been pretty poor. This method seems much more effective.

I believe I can fix the "cube" thing. I'm sorry for my lack of activity lately. I've been keeping up with the thread at the very least, but i've been simply exhausted lately. Several call-outs at my job recently due to co-workers either getting CV or being possibly exposed by a family member (among other things people call out for) which has translated to many late nights.

Today I will:

  • Create a new screenshot gallery
  • Work a youtube trailer (pre-lim work)
  • Fix the cube thing - ps if I do this I'll try to document how I work with the transparencies just for educational purposes  ;)
  • Continue misc work on textures

Zakkura

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Re: FF7 Crisis Core Upscale Project
« Reply #139 on: 2020-09-23 20:13:48 »
Hi ! I'm new here. I just found your upscale project some days ago and I really love it. It looks great !! This is one of my favorite game, thank you for the hard work ! I'd be glad to help you if I can. :)

eqprog

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Re: FF7 Crisis Core Upscale Project
« Reply #140 on: 2020-09-23 21:58:50 »
Updated OP with new screenshots.

Agravaile

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Re: FF7 Crisis Core Upscale Project
« Reply #141 on: 2020-09-24 05:22:07 »
I'm not sure by how many are aware of that, but the PS3 could also do PSP emulation as a PSP remaster. So that bring the question, is it possible to use this project with a, say PSP2PS3 converter? Afaik, it should be fine as long as all of those textures are present inside the ISO, so in theory, there shouldn't be any problem. Could the textures be injected into the ISO and work correctly?

Thing is, that this emulator does increase internal res, so the game is basically rendered in HD, but the 2d elements, textures and UI are, obviously, kept the same. So this should work. It's just that i've no idea how to inject them into the ISO.
« Last Edit: 2020-09-24 05:37:08 by Agravaile »

eqprog

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Re: FF7 Crisis Core Upscale Project
« Reply #142 on: 2020-09-24 11:05:52 »
The short answer is no, the longer answer is yes, probably but one would need a bunch of developer tools that are hard/illegal to obtain and might not even work. You’d basically have to change all the models and their texture file directly which is very different from how texture replacement works on ppsspp. I don’t have a ps3 I could test it on anyways.

Agravaile

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Re: FF7 Crisis Core Upscale Project
« Reply #143 on: 2020-09-24 16:50:09 »
Ah, that makes sense! I believe you'd have to take every texture replaced carefully one by one which would take a very long time, yes. Maybe UMDGen could help. Still, at least an UI upscale would be nice, though. If someone is up to try this out, i'd be glad to test it out and also upload some screenshots with the result as i have the possibility to do so. I could give this a try but i lack the knowledge to do so :C

Anyways, thanks for clearing that up. Maybe someone will figure out a way to do this hopefully, as the PSP remaster is quite a comfortable way to play this. I didn't expect it would work this good.
« Last Edit: 2020-09-24 17:03:59 by Agravaile »

eqprog

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Re: FF7 Crisis Core Upscale Project
« Reply #144 on: 2020-09-24 19:08:02 »
Its really outside the scope of this project, and candidly speaking outside of my ability. I mean, thinking about it, it could theoretically work however there are a lot of unknowns. The Noesis utility can unpack the models from the UMD iso and photoshop can view them however I have no idea how one would "repack" them into the same format. The PSP as a platform is very restrictive in terms of texture dimensions *and* memory. For instance, I tried to take the upscaled FMVs and inject them into the ISO. After an exhaustive search I... acquired... the software used to publish psmf video files(playstation movie format) and it literally won't let me import the upscaled video because of the video resolution. I think even if someone managed to get a hold of the entire PSP SDK, implementing the higher resolution textures wouldn't be possible because Sony would have known well enough to force certain restrictions on the developer and therefore exporting such models would not be allowed.

Let's say someone managed to do this, you could use UMDgen to create a patch and modify the table of contents, sure. But honestly I don't think the PSP (and therefore an emulator) would know what to do with those files because it just isn't capable. PPSSPP texture replacement circumvents this by injecting textures into the PC's memory ("outside" of this emulation layer, if you will).

That's on top of.... having to probably have some sort of ps3 homebrew solution to get the modified ISO to run. If you really want to play it on your TV, perhaps consider using a chromecast type of device and steamlink? Its free. You could also try emulating it on android and casting it to your TV. There are lots of compatible bluetooth controllers which could be used this way.

Devina

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Re: FF7 Crisis Core Upscale Project
« Reply #145 on: 2020-09-25 00:56:39 »
Great job with the Nibelheim Inn, it looks a lot better, especially the floor. :)
I also like the church door.

I downloaded the newest update from Github so I think you should too so we're on the same page.

I added smoother black silhouettes for the DMW portraits, and got rid of the NOW LOADING texture.
I feel it's not needed since the load times are so fast on emulator compared to PSP, it looks like a small blue flash in the bottom right.
I feel it's distracting and less cinematic, and it's easier to just remove it entirely than upscale it.

I added nipples and a navel onto Zack like I did months ago in my earlier patch. No one can talk me out of this.
He looks too alien without them and Cissnei in the same scene has a navel, so it makes no sense for Zack not to.

Finally, this new update I did is a bit of a spoiler so don't open this unless you've completed the entire game.

Spoiler: show
When you find Gillian's body, the floor (both stone floor and rug) were not upscaled, because the room uses a different lighting set (so subtle, you barely notice it) for the room because the door is open. I restored it to use the original so it looks decent.



I also added the option for players to make the scene more gruesome in case this scene was censored somehow, just like how the scene where Sephiroth stabs Cloud was (probably) censored. It makes no sense for there not to be blood in that scene, so it was probably done so the game could keep its Teen rating (more demographics, more sales). That, or the developers thought finding an older woman's bloody body might be too objectionable to Western people (likely also the reason a statue in the game was modified to resemble Mary less in the Western release as to not offend Catholics as much) and turn them off from the story, while they would be less objectionable to blood during Zack's death in the ending. FF7 and Crisis Core are not cheery stories, there are a lot of dark and grisly aspects to them, so some people like me might prefer this change.

This also makes the plot make a little more sense because it turns out Angeal did not kill his mother, but rather, she killed herself in suicide. Angeal's Buster Sword has no blood on it, so it could serve as foreshadowing. It's never explained how Gillian killed herself. Without the blood, you have to guess she used a cyanide pill or something, but why would she have that as a villager? In this edit, you can guess she killed herself with a knife or a gunshot and may be lying on top of the weapon. In case this scene was censored and there was intended to be blood, you could also guess it was seppuku, due to the Japanese influences of the story. Gillian killed herself due to her shame, and I got the sense the Hewley family were meant to evoke a traditional Japanese family, especially due to Angeal's constant talk of dreams and honor.

Because not everyone may like this change, this is not the default so in order to make the blood appear (like I said, it will only appears when Zack finds her body, not when he meets her for the first time), you must change a line in textures.ini so control+F in the notepad file:

Before:
00000000c469d38fc69a056e = /textures/environment/ground/000000002e67574e617ca713.png

After:
00000000c469d38fc69a056e = /textures/environment/ground/00000000c469d38fc69a056e.png
« Last Edit: 2020-09-25 01:35:57 by Devina »

Zakkura

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Re: FF7 Crisis Core Upscale Project
« Reply #146 on: 2020-09-25 08:06:31 »
I looked in the priority folder yesterday to start helping with textures. I fixed this one in Mt Nibel. I hope it's ok. It's my first time using Github but I made a pull request for this if it can be useful.
Spoiler: show

Devina

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Re: FF7 Crisis Core Upscale Project
« Reply #147 on: 2020-09-25 09:46:59 »
I accepted the request. eqprog should be able to give you control over the project so you don't need to do pull requests all the time. Just be very careful not to overwrite any important data.

As for the texture, I think it looks good! Imo, it'd be better if you did more work around areas the player will likely revisit. For example, there's a few subpar textures around the Shinra Building. I think that stuff is more important than an object in a cutscene you might only see a few times.

Zakkura

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Re: FF7 Crisis Core Upscale Project
« Reply #148 on: 2020-09-25 11:39:29 »
Thank you for your feedback ! :) You're right, I'll check these type of textures first next time. I should be able to work more this weekend

eqprog

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Re: FF7 Crisis Core Upscale Project
« Reply #149 on: 2020-09-25 21:30:22 »
Submit a few more requests when you are able and I’ll add you as a contributor once I make sure you do quality work and I don’t have to worry about approvals. Thanks for offering to help!