Final Fantasy IX-2 (Complete)

[Lein]

Intoroduction

This mod's purpose is to restore Final Fantasy 9 to it's original state then enhance the game and turn it into a less "kiddy" game. Final Fantasy 9 while being the most beautiful looking and sounding game in the series is known to be very childish and at times silly. We're not 12 years old anymore and most of us probably can agree on that the game suffers from a lot of rubbish that should be thrown out or modified. It's important to note that this is just an idea and that the mod might not even be possible to create, but good ideas are good.

Port issues

The first thing this mod would fix are all the issues that came with the android port, this mod is not meant for android devices which is why the following "features" will be completely removed from the game.

•All the cheats, you'll not even find them in the config menu.
•Resized battle UI.
•Resized character menu.
•Changed font.
•Standard encounter rate restoration.
•All broken sounds will be fixed.
•No skipping of videos.
•No chat/card icons.
•Restored mist to the world map.
•New medieval window theme.
•No autosaving

New characters

This mod is going to enhance every one of the original cast members and turn them into more mature versions of themselves. This goes for all the villains and minor characters too, below are suggestions for possible modifications.

Zidane (Arl):
This guy is going to be made 15 years older, he'll not be have a raging boner for the princess instead he'll be a professional thief, cold and tough. His only goal is to get the job done, take the princess to the king then get back to his drink. In that respect he'll be more like Amarant just more of a no nonsense guy. He'll still be a blonde but he'll be wearing armor in battle and instead of knives and a two bladed sword he'll be using a bow.

Garnet(Lenna):
This girl will stay about the same age, but she'll get a new personality and hair color. She'll be a ginger with an attitude, instead of being insecure about how she carries herself she'll be a spoiled princess that is raging mad that some thief kidnapped her. Later on she'll soften up and become attracted to Zidane. She's also not be wearing that orange outfit but a princess's casual dress, think of sleeping beauty or snow white.

Vivi (Gauvain):
The black mages come from the earlier Final Fantasy games and while they're great looking for what the Final Fantasy games tried to achieve it's hard to take these living dolls seriously. He is also like eight years old which is kind of silly, who would take an eight year old with you on a grand adventure to save the world. Therefore he is going to be made into an old wise wizard, someone the party looks up to for guidance. He is often going to be arguing with Zidane about what's the wise thing to do but at heart he'll be kind and loving towards all of the party members.

Steiner(Glain):
He is going to remain the general of the knights of pluto, but every goofy aspect of this character is going to be scratched. He is going to be given a beautiful mustache and a beautiful armor, he'll be the perfect gentleman with a pipe in his mouth. He is very posh but also strong and he'll think little of Zidane the thief, he went after the princess to bring her back at the orders of the queen but often get distracted by bottles of fine wine, he is very stoic in his own way and not much phases him.

The Tantalus bandits:
These are going to be cruel bastards, they'll joke about raping the princess before handing her over to the king. Zidane is going to have to intervene to prevent this from happening, really bad guys. One of them will be slain at the hands of Steiner after the ship crashes.

The black mages:
These won't be mages but slaves that Kuja sold to the queen from the outer continent. Black tribesmen that are used as slaves by the queen. When the party encounter these people in Dali they're not going to be portrayed as innocent puppies, but what they are barbarians. On the outer continent they engaged in cannibalism and crude sacreficial rituals, the party is going to be surrounded by these rabid warriors after they uncover what is going on and has to flee on a ship.

King of Burmecia:
This man won't be a frog or an oglop. All that is going to be scratched, he is going to be a regal king who sent for Garnet because of the madness of Queen Brahne.

Queen Brahne(Maxine):
We'll have this woman lose weight, she'll have gaunt cheeks and she'll be dressed in a black dress. Ghastly looking old evil hag, we need a scene in which she whips some of the slaves she bought from Kuja for fun.

Freya(Ylva):
No she won't be a rat, she'll be turned into a very attractive blonde warrior. Her personality could stay as it is, she'll just be redesigned as will all the rats into more of a nordic viking type of society, a warrior society. They're famous for hunting dragons and are therefore a mighty people hidden in the mountains. Steiner will take a liking to her but she'll dismiss him for being too posh unlike her viking man Fratley.

Fratley(Ulf):
This man will be a huge bulking viking type of guy, if Freya was impressive this guy will look like a greek god, absolute perfection clad in a shimmering silvery armor, just as cold as before.

Prince Puck(Anders):
We'll change this boy into a little blonde farmer boy instead, no rats. But he can keep his attitude and age.

Beatrix(Igedine):
I think she could probably remain as she is, she is already of the more mature characters in the original game. A redesign is in order though, some new outfit, armor definitely.

Kuja(Thyme):
Kuja's feminine qualities must go but he'll remain a mage. He'll still be slightly posh but not as flamboyant, he'll be cold and silent and very much in control. He'll be wearing very fine clothes but they'll not be as revealing. In the original game he was very flamboyant, that will be replaced with an attitude of disgust around people. He will share certain qualities with the queen, he really hates those slaves he enslaved and wants to see the south continent burn, instead of trying to overthrow Garland he is going to be very loyal to him and in awe of his powers.

Quina(No name):
He'll not be a fat toad eater, he'll be a muscular wild man. Think Sabin/Gau in Final Fantasy 6, all the frog crap will be scratched. He is mute and can't speak so he'll just be this psycho animal that follows the party around everywhere.

Amarant(Megrok):
This guy won't be seen in any scenes until the party reaches the outer continent, he is actually one of the cannibals, he saw his people be enslaved by Kuja and he wants to ritually consume Kuja's flesh. He is going to try to eat the princess in the summoner village, there might be a scene where she has been undressed and her bum is in the air and this freak is going to start eating her but then Zidane comes and kicks his ass. He joins the party because...he knows the secrets of the lifa tree and is later tamed somewhat.

Eiko(Sigfrid):
This girl we turn into an old granny, very capable summoner and role model for Garnet.

Garland:
This man is going to remain as he is.

Thorn Zorn(Humbi Bumbi):
These jesters can remain as goofy as they are, might make them a bit taller though.

Lani(Odda):
A redesign is all that's needed.

Moogles:
Not sure what to do about these teddy bears, they'll have to go somehow.

Dr Tot:
Can remain as he is just obviously a more realistic design to this scholar.

Major story/scene changes

Almost every scene is going to be changed in some ways, but the most important changes that might alter the story a lot or might require lots of work are the following:

•The summoner village (She won't be eight, she'll not have moogles and "amarant" will try to eat the princess.)
•The black mage village (This will be the cannibal village, lots of gore and wild men trying to cook someone alive, complete redesign of the town needed.)
•The oglop/toad issue with the king, he is not a toad so many of the problems that arose because of his sickness has to be altered or removed.

Other modifications
All boss fights in the game will be made harder from the very start of the game and all the silly enemies will be redesigned. Every character in the game will have it's proportions fixed, no more characters with huge heads. They'll look more like Final Fantasy 8's characters, and no odd elephant creatures, everyone will be human. Cutscenes and dialouge will be altered and entire sections of the game like the love letter sequence and other such scenes will be cut. The music will be replaced with nice remastered music from the original game or by new sounds that are appropiate for the new theme. New scenes and locations rendered will retain the same resolution as the original backgrounds so they don't look out of place. The game will be forced to run in 640x480 mode so the resolution of the models matches the backgrounds.

GET TO WORK! 

[DanTsukasa]

Even if this were possible in the next year, it'd take you years to achieve this, its tantamount to making a new game entirely, you'll have to remake a lot of the games backgrounds, if not all of them in order to accommodate more realistically proportioned characters, which means the art style also has to change to be suited to that.

This, as nice an idea as it may be for some, is far beyond modding, this is making an entirely new game in the FFIX engine, including new animations and new models, a large chunk of this isn't possible with the current modding state, and most likely won't be for a long time.

[Fraggoso]

Do you want to accomplish that all by yourself? I suppose you're not a programmer and rely on other people to program tools for that needs?
This will be quite a life task, I guarantee that. All the models, texturework and animations needs to be done. All the backgrounds needs to be redesigned to fit the new models as well.
Dclem outlines the sound "problem" right now. So be sure to dive into 10.000 sounds file to see/hear what is what.

On the other Hand I'm not that touched by the new Party. Sounds very very generic to me.
Why not make a new game with something like RPG Maker (if you want to go 2D) or something like Unity/UE if you want to do it in 3D?

[dclem]

"kiddy".
Yes...  the Final Fantasy 9 we all know is... "kiddy"...?
I don't think it's kiddy at ALL.
We still love it, though.
17 years of love I'll say.

Everything DanTsukasa and Fraggoso say is 100% true.
It is IMMERSE.

With all that energy is best left making your own game with your own characters and your own story line; like I do.
FF9's plot and story is perfect the way it is.

*Reading that above, seeing the complete change of characters, is trying to rewrite FF9, so it wouldn't even be FF9 anymore.
Starting with Zidane, if he loses all interest in Dagger... omg, GAMEBREAK. What happens when he chases her in the Prima Vista and is taking by her beauty, and again in Evil Forest as he reminiscence about meeting her, and how she makes him feel; getting the drive to rescue her, not JUST to get her to Lindblum like ordered, but because, he likes her deeply.
Then the iconic You're Not Alone disc 3 scene...
And finding out he's Garland "Angel of death" meant to kill. Remove the roots, remains but a tree without a trace.

What is being said here is not Final Fantasy IX.
Ooo! Saw the new Quina, a muted animal who just follows the party?
How critical Quina is to the game, though; getting them to the road to the outer continent. FF9 Quina is golden. What use is a character that has no vital purpose other than to run around senselessly?

Long story short. Be best to turn this into:

your own game with your own characters and your own story line; like I do.

[Lein]

I don't think maturity is a bad thing, if you can redesign the character models and alter the dialouge a lot could be done to make the story and look of the game more mature. If it's possible to cut out portions of the code/cutscenes to get rid of certain sequences you could in theory make the game less kiddy. Tons of work for sure but I don't think we're talking years, more like months if you've got a team of people working on it. But it's not a realistic mod because of the modding tools that are yet to be created by programmers.

[dclem]

Mirror = Clone.

That's what I see here. 
The cause:

James believes he's a 16 year old tailed human Genome from Terra with a raging testosterone.
Steiner believes he's a middle-aged man sworn to protect the princess of Alexandria, and ponders of spending the rest of his life in servitude.
Jennifer believes she is a 16 year old princess heir to the throne of Alexandria. She's actually not new to the royal life. She was born and raised in Dalkia.
Kevin believes he's a strange glutton gourmand who's ultimate goal in life is to eat everything, frogs, and become the greatest gourmand.
Freya believes she's a dragon knight from 'Burmecia' in tragic love with a talking dragon named 'Fratley'.
Deniece believes she's a six year old girl orphaned from the loss of a grandfather and parents, last survivor of late ancestors and an extreme moogle lover.
Zach...?
Zach who?
Oh... Zach the arrogant one...

*See avatar for expression*

[Fraggoso]

I don't think maturity is a bad thing, if you can redesign the character models and alter the dialouge a lot could be done to make the story and look of the game more mature. If it's possible to cut out portions of the code/cutscenes to get rid of certain sequences you could in theory make the game less kiddy. Tons of work for sure but I don't think we're talking years, more like months if you've got a team of people working on it. But it's not a realistic mod because of the modding tools that are yet to be created by programmers.

Believe me, it'll take years not months.
Unless of course everyone has 12 hours a day 6-7 days per week to work on this full time.

You're asking to completely change FFIX as it's. That'll take serious time and engineering knowledge as well.

[dclem]

^ Yaasss!
That's the reality here!

[dclem]

I'm not saying anything out of spite, I'm a professional 3D Artist myself, I've been in the industry nearly 10 years, currently working in Japan with some ex-square enix employees, I've worked on projects with them, they work well, but even they wouldn't dive into something like this without a lot of wages because its a lot of work.

Couldn't have said it better; take it from someone with DEEP experience.
I've only been doing it for 4!

Hey...
you work with some Square enix employees, yes? Is it possible to let them know about how badly Silicon Studios destroyed our beloved FF9 with hordes of bugs, and they have yet to give a care to fix any of them? Just wondering, like, if Square even noticed this.
Yet they paid more attention to FFXII Zodiac age remaster; which is amazing don't get me wrong, but it's sad they kinda let FF9 go under the rug.

[Kaldarasha]

... currently working in Japan with some ex-square enix employees ...

I guess they don't care much about it.

[dclem]

can't believe i misread "ex" employee.
oh well. least they didn't complete give out.

[Lein]

A few others have pointed this out but this really IS years work, even remaking the games backgrounds and nothing more would take a year or two with a team of 5-6 artists, you have roughly 3-400 backgrounds in the game, so even at a rate of 10 backgrounds a week from 6 artists, all working fulltime on this, that'd still be around a year at minimum, and nobody is going to be able to fully create one of the games backgrounds 100% models and textures (most of which are custom made for the scene if they want it to look good) in just a week alone.

Then there are the areas which were only created in 3D As a blockout and then took a few weeks of 2D Paintover to finalise (the forest, the ice caves and a few other areas), then theres ANIMATING all those scenes, that'll take ages too. Since I'd assume at minimum you'd want the same level of animations as the original game, plus probably a little more right?

Redoing all the character models alone is a good 6 months of work with a quick team, then theres remaking all the animations too, which is like a years work in itself.

I think you underestimate how much of the backgrounds could be done more or less automatically in today's world. Yes remaking all the backgrounds would take more than a year unless you've got a team of maybe 10 professionals working on it, then it might take months. But that wasn't the main focus of my rant-y post. I was thinking more of the dialouge, characters and scenes.

Remodeling the main cast would take a few weeks at most and all the NPCs wouldn't be difficult, many of them share similar proportions to the main character, so in some cases you could just pull some vertexes around and give them new clothing. Rewriting the dialouge wouldn't be difficult and removing some scenes probably wouldn't be too difficult for programmers to do. Then you would already have a more mature looking game.

But none of this was meant to be serious, I thought to myself, what's the main issue with this game, oh yeah it's childish what would a mature version of this game look like. Then I wrote the post, just for fun, not because I want to attempt to do this. xD

[Fraggoso]

Okay... I'm out.
That even more childish then everything else I heard.

[Lein]

This image here, someone would have made a bunch of unique houses, this would have taken a week or two per house most likely, matching up with concepts, getting approval etc, thats just the outside, each tile is individually modelled, and on the ground, its possible its a solid texture, but its more likely that each stone there was placed, most likely with use of a script, I'd be amazed if stones or bricks were ever hand placed, even back then.

At your level, as a beginning, mimicking that scene would take months of work, that'd take me months too I think, at a guess, because theres a lot going on in there, thats a lot of models, a lot of uv unwrapping and a lot of texturing, and then nice lighting too.

I have actually done some rendering myself, both real time and actual renders. Unwrapping and texturing takes a lot longer if they're actual game models, because then you need to uv map every model and each model needs normal maps, some baked some not. Sometimes you need other maps such as gloss and subsurface maps. To uv map buildings, grass, trees, stones, a lot of work for sure. But when it doesn't have to be real time you can do it procedurally which is a lot faster. Performance isn't a factor either so you can just slap something on the model and see how it looks, don't look good just add another texture or modify the current one's coordinates. Texturing is a lot easier and faster when it comes to rendering.

What I mean by that you underestimate how much of it's done automatically I was talking about the minor details that people go woah, that's lots of work. Small stones, grass, leaves on trees, even vegetation. You can use particle systems to create thousands of grass strands in minutes, same with leaves and small rocks. Also a lot can be done in photoshop with the finished renders, do you need to create some dust or some smokey light or something, easy to do in seconds in photoshop. In the other thread the one about the Final Fantasy camera, if I had the camera setup correctly I would finish that background in hours. Cutting out the sprites so the character can walk behind for example a barrel is also easy. Because you can use render layers and render out individual models and them layer them on top of each other afterwards.

Here's a topic I made some time ago regarding the process of making prerendered backgrounds, it's very easy to do and quickly too.
https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?417917-Prerendered-game-(Resident-evil-Final-Fantasy-etc)&highlight=

I really do wish you the best of luck, and I'm interested in where this goes, but this needs some grounding or you'll quit early on because taking on a project too big, almost always results in the team quitting.

I'm not going to be doing this, it was just a fun idea I had. If I had a team of 20 people working for me and we had six months to do it and were paid we would get to work right away and meet the deadline. But as I said I wasn't talking about the backgrounds, I was talking about the silly game elements. However the mods I put in the list before the rant regarding the characters, that's a mod I'm sure some would be capable of creating, a mod that reverts the game back to the original experience and not the android/cheat bullshit.

[DanTsukasa]

Unwrapping and texturing takes a lot longer if they're actual game models, because then you need to uv map every model and each model needs normal maps, some baked some not. Sometimes you need other maps such as gloss and subsurface maps. To uv map buildings, grass, trees, stones, a lot of work for sure. But when it doesn't have to be real time you can do it procedurally which is a lot faster.

It's a bit easier than realtime for sure, but its not 'heaps' easier, FF9 has a lot of asset reuse, so a lot of things are actually modelled on all sides and then a rotated version is used elsewhere, alexandria is a good example of this, as are the countless rocks throughout the game.

Its faster, but its not leaps and bounds faster.

You can use particle systems to create thousands of grass strands in minutes, Also a lot can be done in photoshop with the finished renders, do you need to create some dust or some smokey light or something, easy to do in seconds in photoshop.

Leaves and small rocks, you could use particle systems for yes, you'd still need to model them and then have the particle system use them, achieving the perfect result is a lot of trial and error but this is the way I'd personally do it yes, else I'd do things in Substance Designer and Substance Painter with tessellation.

I'm also aware of render layers, the original game also used them, so that makes perfect sense.

However the mods I put in the list before the rant regarding the characters, that's a mod I'm sure some would be capable of creating, a mod that reverts the game back to the original experience and not the android/cheat bullshit.

Thats certainly possible, though, regarding the cheats, wouldn't it be easier to just not use the cheats? You aren't forced to use them, its entirely optional.

If I had the camera setup correctly I would finish that background in hours.
If I had a team of 20 people working for me and we had six months to do it and were paid we would get to work right away and meet the deadline.

This is the scene: (I've attached an imgur album I made for all the games static backgrunds, I have another for its animated ones, static alone makes up 357 backgrounds, including animated, which is 192 it means that the game comes in at 549 backgrounds)
static: http://imgur.com/a/A09TB
animated: http://imgur.com/a/ra3OU

In that first static scene, from a quick glance I can spot around 40 individual objects, chests, lamps, books, rug, candle, various other things on the shelves, plants and so on so forth, thats a LOT of objects, even modelling and unwrapping those 40 or so objects would take a week or two if you're a really fast painter and modeler.

This scene could be done faster than most though, this is true.

I doubt you could finish it to the same quality in 'hours', but finish it overall yes, certainly, things like the grain and the warping on the wood would take some time to get looking the same detail level, but not too difficult. The carpet I'd personally do in substance designer, drawing the exact same design/pattern would take a little time in itself. Bare in mind that is one of the games easiest scenes for sure, blocking it out alone is a 10-20 minute job at best if everything else is setup correctly, ie: camera.

I do really want to see how close you can get to the original image here though, that'd be an interesting learning experience, and also having it done would just be good for your portfolio if you intend to do 3D Art as a career in the future.

The entire prerender process is easy yes, its not difficult in itself, its only making the art thats time consuming, everything else is simply grouping and render layer stuff, that you could do with a script if you were regularly using the same 5-10 different depth levels all the time.

Making great art takes a long time, I'm sure you know this too.

That original background was 100% not made in a few hours, I'm 100% sure that background in itself probably took 2-3 guys a few weeks to a month.

Everything would be taken into zbrush so that you could stylize the high poly too.

[Lein]

A background a day wouldn't be unrealistic, chests, lamps, books, rug, candle, these are very simple objects. If you wanted detail on the rug you could just apply hair particles to a plane and have them be colored by a texture to display some pattern. Books are cubes, you just need to create one book and you've got them all, chests are also pretty much boxes, same with clocks, one clock could be modified into dozens if there's even that many in the game.

What stands out to me while scrolling through your link are all the carvings and patterns on the stone walls, all that detail would be difficult to REPLICATE, but if we're allowed to improvise and create similar but not identical patterns that stuff could be created in programs like zbrush. For example roots in Cleyra or stone walls, fine carvings could either be displacement maps or actually modelled, these are definitely the hardest. I'm not saying it's easy but the easier backgrounds you could definitely put together in 9 hours, assuming you've got the camera and everything ready.

Some of the harder backgrounds, all the architecture for example might take more than one day, but even then for example Alexandria, after you've made one house you could twist it around and use it for another and modify it slightly. A lot could be used more than once, this applies to trees, houses, walls, pillars, and all sorts of stuff. A group of 20 talented artists could definitely remake all the backgrounds in a year maybe even faster than that.

Remember the people who made the original game worked on it for a year, also you're not creating a 360 degree game, you've got fixed camera angles which means there can be a lot of cheating. But 1-2 days for every background is definitely possible, if you've got 20 people working on it that's 20 backgrounds in let's say three days. 549 backgrounds + animations, that's roughly a hundred days, you could add 50 days to that and you still would have completed it within a year. And that's assuming one background takes 3 days for a person to complete. Many of the objects could be reused for different scenes. We're not talking clean geometry either, you could replicate a rock, rotate it, resize it and it still would look as good as before because of the displacement maps and the textures that obviously wouldn't be uv mapped.

But yeah definitely impossible for a single guy to do, also matching the camera to the background as of right now makes it much harder to do this.

EDIT: The texturing and shaders for the materials would add a good amount of time to that, but shaders can also be replicated and reused. You just need one for each type of material, wood, stone, metal, grass etc.

[DanTsukasa]

A background a day wouldn't be unrealistic, chests, lamps, books, rug, candle, these are very simple objects. If you wanted detail on the rug you could just apply hair particles to a plane and have them be colored by a texture to display some pattern. Books are cubes, you just need to create one book and you've got them all, chests are also pretty much boxes, same with clocks, one clock could be modified into dozens if there's even that many in the game.

What stands out to me while scrolling through your link are all the carvings and patterns on the stone walls, all that detail would be difficult to REPLICATE, but if we're allowed to improvise and create similar but not identical patterns that stuff could be created in programs like zbrush. For example roots in Cleyra or stone walls, fine carvings could either be displacement maps or actually modelled, these are definitely the hardest. I'm not saying it's easy but the easier backgrounds you could definitely put together in 9 hours, assuming you've got the camera and everything ready.

Some of the harder backgrounds, all the architecture for example might take more than one day, but even then for example Alexandria, after you've made one house you could twist it around and use it for another and modify it slightly. A lot could be used more than once, this applies to trees, houses, walls, pillars, and all sorts of stuff. A group of 20 talented artists could definitely remake all the backgrounds in a year maybe even faster than that.

Remember the people who made the original game worked on it for a year, also you're not creating a 360 degree game, you've got fixed camera angles which means there can be a lot of cheating. But 1-2 days for every background is definitely possible, if you've got 20 people working on it that's 20 backgrounds in let's say three days. 549 backgrounds + animations, that's roughly a hundred days, you could add 50 days to that and you still would have completed it within a year. And that's assuming one background takes 3 days for a person to complete. Many of the objects could be reused for different scenes. We're not talking clean geometry either, you could replicate a rock, rotate it, resize it and it still would look as good as before because of the displacement maps and the textures that obviously wouldn't be uv mapped.

But yeah definitely impossible for a single guy to do, also matching the camera to the background as of right now makes it much harder to do this.

EDIT: The texturing and shaders for the materials would add a good amount of time to that, but shaders can also be replicated and reused. You just need one for each type of material, wood, stone, metal, grass etc.

I give up.

I wish you luck with the mod, and the project itself.

I still feel that you're dramatically underestimating the time taken.

You mention the people who made the original game worked on it for a year, they worked in it for 2 years, not 1 year. With a team with many years of professional experience, and various tools amassed from creating FF7 and FF8, (9 began development before 8's development had completed), also a team of almost 20 artists (probably 40 as I know team size doubled during production), most of which were American, the 20 there are from the Japanese team members alone, and thats just the leads for the various art departments. They weren't completing 1 background every 2 days, more at a rate of 1 background every few weeks, with bits reused to speed up later backgrounds, and other things being a few days blockout and then primarily painted over in 2D for some of the more complex areas, by talented artists.

Shaders can be reused, but given the art style, the vast majority of detail is coming from the textures anyway, not the shaders.

With all that said, a few more experienced artists have given their 2 cents, and you don't want to listen, and thats fine, its your project, and best of luck with it if you ever start it.

For the record: Displacement maps, normal maps and so on, still require good UV's, not to mention they require you to MAKE those displacement maps.

[DLPB_]

DanTsukasa is correct.  Unfortunately, a lot of modders start their mod without asking the most important question "Can I complete this?"  The answer here is no. I see many mods where the answer is "unlikely". Here it's "Astronomically unlikely".  FF7 is modded, to my knowledge, more than any other PS1 game I have ever seen (maybe the most of any game PS era onwards), and we still haven't even managed to get all the 3D models replaced (something that IS doable). The background mods for FF7 are nothing but wishful thinking, because, as DanTsukasa says, the original team had tons of super professional people dedicating every hour to a project that lasted at least 2 years. That simply isn't going to happen here.  Also, I am not sure how FF9 was made, but if anything like FF7, the backgrounds would have originally been full 3D. Literally every area was a 3d environment.

I, too, wish you luck.  But it might be wiser to ask yourself which goals you can realize and which are Santa Claus. Many things can be done - but I personally believe time should be dedicated where it can serve the best use. The same goes for FF7 - which has suffered a great deal due to the modding community having no rudder.

[Fraggoso]

He already said that he's not working on this "Mod".
It was only wishful thinking.

[Lein]

Not even wishful thinking, notice in the title (complete). Every flaw in final fantasy 9 removed, that was the idea. Anyway I'm happy that you give up, it would be big if you would also acknowledge that you're wrong, but that's probably too much to ask for. You keep mentioning professionals as if that's an argument, there might be other reasons it took them more than a year to produce these backgrounds First the backgrounds had to be designed, that might have taken some time then created which back in those days probably was harder than it is today. We don't know that it took them all year to create the backgrounds, maybe they finished early and then other people started to create cutscenes within the backgrounds.

This image was made in 46min from nothing, give this person 9 hours every day for three days and I can assure you it would look as good if not better than what current backgrounds look in the final fantasy 9 game. Have you ever modeled a house before, it's rarely harder than creating some base pillars walls/windows/roof. These segments of the house can be reused to create different types of houses of the same style. Have you ever tried to model a clock or a chest, these aren't objects you need to take into zbrush. Very simple objects, I'm going to give myself 10 min and model a chest....


10 MIN LATER

Yes it's far from perfect but if it takes 10 min to create this chest, how long would it take to create the first scene on that theatre ship, I think three days is very realistic, I'm quite sure I would even be able to do it in one. You say it would take weeks for multiple people, you got to be kidding me. The nature scene was created in 49 minutes and I created this chest in 10 min, if I was given 30-40 min for this chest it would have proper materials and decent looking carvings, and definitely a proper lock. This chest would also just be in the background so it's not like it has to be super detailed. One background in three days is something any professional is capable of doing. The harder scenes which are architecture heavy with stairs and railings and sculptures, those might be exceptions, mainly because of the sculptures. But there are like four/five areas in the game with that much detail. Kuja's desert palace, Oilevert, Memoria and possibly one of the cities. Not sure why we started to argue about the backgrounds since that had little to nothing to do with the first post, areas wouldn't have to be remade only because the characters received more realistic proportions.

[Kaldarasha]

Go on and see how you manage to deal with 900+ backgrounds (FF7 has 600 so it's a fair assumption). Your biggest mistake in your calculation is the fact that somebody will do this 9h per day. Make a Kickstarter campaign and gather money then you may convince some artist to work on that, but without a payment you only get some kiddies (it's a nice project to get some skills) who would like to do it and this will not reach the quality of the original. However, if you start a campaign then you need a good layer since I doubt that SE allow that such a project exist. Another problem that exist, a team needs a team leader, else it is a bunch of people which upscale the images, but everyone with his own style. This makes it inconsistent in any possible way. As example Mayo Masters new BGs for FF7 (http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=15975.0) are different from the original and the BGs I have seen from other artist do also differ from each other in style. Now, if you start to complain about the style difference I can assure you that it is a good way to reduce the manpower for the project. But if they got money for the job then they won't be discouraged so much by these complain and may change their work.

If it would be so easy as you said then why hasn't SE did it. I tell you, that would be an enormous project that eat likely $500000 and will need years to finish. Also, as I said above the whole logistic behind this is much more important than you think and this does also take time and money. What SE did with the upscale was the best solution, since new HD BGs will not bring more customers.

But there are like four/five areas in the game with that much detail.

I am calling that the best joke ever.

[Lein]

First of all this topic isn't even about replacing the backgrounds, so I'm not sure why you're  hung up on that little boy. The backgrounds made by team avalance look fine, proves that it can be done with little effort. Anyway since some of you likely have no experience in creating photo realistic scenery there's no point in trying to convince you that it's possible, you can't do it in three days, that's fine, others can. Also it's not 900 backgrounds, it's 549. Me and some other guy on steam is going to attempt to recreate some backgrounds when he gets his computer working, I'm sure he's more informed on how to rip walk meshes and cameras from the game. Then we'll make you some backgrounds and you'll go woah amazing. *Kneels before masters*

[Lein]

Woah man, people are offering advice, not trying to pick a fight with you, we can all discuss this without name calling right?

Little boy isn't name calling, it's just my impression of the guy, nothing wrong with being a little boy.

Your box is nice, I'm not about to downplay your talents, you obviously have some experience with Rendering and some experience with modelling and texturing, though, you're also using blender, so at a guess I'd assume its a hobby and not a profession (I know 1 studio that works in Blender, also in Japan surprisingly enough).

I'll just say that there is no difference between blender, maya or 3ds max. You can model a chest just as well in blender as you can in the other programs. They teach 3ds max and maya at school that is the only reason they're used by many people and blender is not, because people are familiar with the programs. Here's a model I've been working on for a day, not sure if that qualifies as professional work or hobbyist work. Professional and hobbyist are useless titles, there are people creating cartoon figurines that are "professonals" since they're being paid for it. But are they better than the hobbyist who creates highly realistic figures? It might look good on a resume but it don't really matter.

In the original the planks are stylized, they don't have a premade texture thrown on them, each plank looks to be modeled individually (or possibly duplicated, its a little hard to tell), so I think its only an accurate comparison if you made the box the same way. Sure its a small prop but, if someone remade the bg's, why not have them at 1080p or 4k? Then we'd see all those details, otherwise all the work put in is wasted.

Duplicating planks isn't hard and some type of texture must have been thrown or painted onto them. If you have unlimited time or let's say a day you would model every one of those planks on the chest. Model as much as you can, don't rely on textures, on games it's the other way around. As for rendering the backgrounds at a higher resolution, there's no point. The original backgrounds are 960x640 and the characters don't either warrant that amount of detail, they would look out of place if they would run around on a high res background that looks like a photo with their manga eyes.

I think if this cant sway you that getting the same quality level of the original FF9 in just a few days isn't realistic then I don't think anything can honestly.

Maybe we could try it, you're a professional, maybe you could try remake a background too for fun? Then we'll see how long it takes.

Making that from scratch in Blender, Maya or 3DSMax however would take dramatically longer, and you'd need to have almost all of it in the same software so that you can confirm things line up, and that the correct renderer is used at all times, since Blender/Max/Maya's renderer is of a different quality to VUE.

Recreating a scene like this would not be as difficult as you think, it looks like tons of work but a displacement texture on a subdivided wall followed by 15 min of sculpting on the displaced mesh would result in something of similar quality. I think three days is enough, much could be done in photoshop too and when it comes to texturing. If you've uv mapped the models and put some basic textures on them you could from the angle of the camera paint directly on top of them from within the 3d application. To get more of a painterly and unique look to the scene. You can also use particle systems to create moss and dirt and mushrooms on trees or whatever.

Something like this would be more time consuming, all the fine details on the walls, the stair and all the other stuff. Is it doable in three days, hmmm probably. The carvings on the walls could be done with the curve snap tool inside of zbrush or by other means. What would be most difficult would be to match the scenes perfectly to each other, when everything is circular I wonder of how much use photo matching is. But maybe they rendered all the scenes with an identical focal length. They probably did because that's likely what the real time characters are rendered at.

Back on topic, regarding the Battle UI and character menu, I'd be interested in seeing what size you're imaging for these, are you thinking just like the original PSX game?

Yeah more like the original, the reason I'm on this forum is because I gifted the game to a friend and after seeing all the issues with the game I wanted to mod all the issues away, but that's not possible yet. 

EDIT: Oh no some guy decided he has to approve of all my posts before they're posted, he's very powerful. 

[Kaldarasha]

What would be interesting would be to replace the BGs with a real 3D mesh. That would mean that you doesn't necessarily need to keep  the same level of detail. And forcing the game to run in DirectX12 mode you may could create some really nice effects. But then you need to be the owner of the textures or have at last permission to use and share them for such a project.

[Fraggoso]

The game isn't running in DX12.
So think some backgrounds would be even easier to draw nstead of rendering them.

FFIX has some fields where ups along looks incredible (scene with hard egdes and buildings). Flora and Fauna doesn't look so good.

And we're talking backgrounds because this would eat up the most time and you would need to redo them if you insist on swapping out models. That's the biggest grudge I've personally with the FTVII models. The backgrounds don't look good with them in it as they seem to be bizarre proportioned.