Author Topic: FF7 Crisis Core Upscale Project (Read 157505 times)

eqprog · « **Reply #100 on:** 2020-08-07 17:37:46 »

Sure, I can work up a template for it. I’m not much of a lore guy so I’d be worried about adding any text.

No worries about the inactivity. I needed a break, too.

I’m also thinking about trying to reorganize things based on their location in the game. Maybe it’s not exactly necessary at this point but I think that would make things easier to work with - less searching around for textures and it would be easier to prioritize our work. It should be easy to do, just need to modify my programs a little bit and basically play through the game again. I kinda held off on that because I kept working on things that stood out to me. Maybe it’d be better to play through and just make a more complete list.

ff7maniac · « **Reply #101 on:** 2020-08-09 21:39:58 »

this mod is compatible with the French version ? ^^

eqprog · « **Reply #102 on:** 2020-08-09 22:07:24 »

I have no idea. You could try it... Sorry I don’t have the French version of the game.

eqprog · « **Reply #103 on:** 2020-08-14 02:18:19 »

Still working on it, here and there. I tried my hand at fixing Sephiroth's hair but I think it needs a lot of work from someone more experienced.... so that's on the backburner for the time being.

I spent a lot of time fixing up the briefing room today. Not quite finished, however.

edit: I realized I didn't upload the version with the new textures...

Devina · « **Reply #104 on:** 2020-08-15 07:12:05 »

I had success with fixing Cissnei's bangs a while ago (haven't posted my updates yet on Github tho) so I can take a crack at Sephiroth later. For now, you should avoid work on Cissnei, Sephiroth and Tseng because I want to desaturate their clothes and fix their bangs.

I finally finished Zack's clothing so I'll leave the porting to you (you can try porting it to the soldiers and Angeal):

https://filebin.net/18bzbmalryh2zn2i

I also erased a wrinkle because one section looks iffy too much.
I'm not 100% satisfied with it (if I do any more work on Zack, I feel like I'll have an aneurysm), but it hides the issue.

I also made the decision to desaturate all of Zack's gloves and boots for consistency purposes for now.

I would advise against any more organization, I think the current system is do-able for now.

I think the monitor definitely looks like an improvement, you just have to remember it stays the same for the entire game so you can't really add anything specific like "Bombing at Junon" or something or else it'll look like there's a bombing at Junon for the whole game.

Arthandas · « **Reply #105 on:** 2020-08-23 11:37:23 »

I don't know why but this pack causes a lot of stuttering. Every few seconds the game will stutter and for a brief moment drop to around 90% speed. This happens even if I stand still in an empty room. I know it's not my hardware since I can run it at 10x res with 60fps hack at rock solid 100% speed and the game keeps stuttering even if I drop the res to 1x. For reference, I have i5-7500, gtx 1060, 16gb ram, win10 and a ssd. Also, I'm playing the European version.

My ppsspp.ini:

Spoiler: show

Devina · « **Reply #106 on:** 2020-08-25 01:59:19 »

This pack is for the NTSC-U version so that could be an issue. Also try disabling 60 FPS, or turn on "retain changed textures" in the options.

I did some work in the Shinra Building lately (I've yet to publish it tho).

The tree no longer has floating pixels:

I didn't like how the MIA was covering Genesis' face:

I'm not a purist so I added a Midgar design in the completely empty glass case in the exhibit room.
I will rarely, if ever, do things like this. I feel like it adds so much to the rather empty feeling in the room:

I had to revamp the entire information board because nothing on it was readable, so I scrapped it in favor of this:

It's still a WIP, but I made sure the information on it is canon (enough).
I need to double check if "Mako" is uppercase or not.

eqprog · « **Reply #107 on:** 2020-08-25 04:17:50 »

Looks great Devina! Thanks for your continued contributions. I’m off of work tomorrow so hopefully I can get at least a few things done.

As far as performance issues, only the NTSC-U version is supported at this time. Honestly it is likely to be the only version ever supported. I simply do not have the time to test every version of the game. The way that PPSSPP replaces the textures depends on memory location - in other words the textures will have different memory values for different versions of the game. I’m not saying it’s impossible to do a conversion - it’s just outside the scope of what I’m willing to do. Theoretically, I could create a table of hashes from all the dumped textures and cross reference them with dumped textures from other versions and try to convert it but I will be leaving that to someone else to figure out.

Devina · « **Reply #108 on:** 2020-08-26 10:59:38 »

I just did some things:

-Noticed Angeal's mother was missing an upscaled frame so I added it
-Tseng now has proper desaturation on both his low and high poly models

I submitted all the work I mentioned above, and I also did some other stuff:

I added designs for the reactors and put in green lines to symbolize mako (which the remake says is lowercase so I edited the infoboard too). It's a very simplistic design, but very powerful imagery so if anyone plays this before remake, it can help them understand the world better.

The Highwind art has been improved (I found a better version online) and I added a small blurb about Cid to make the room feel more like an exhibit.

I'm done the exhibit room for now so I think you should go take a look at it. If you take a look at the Hardy Daytona by examining it, you'll notice the circles on the rim of the tire look bad. I also think the lines on the bottom platform of my Midgar exhibit looks bad and uneven so I'd appreciate it if you could improve that. The directory in the lobby still needs to look more readable, and I think the metal detector entrance looks bad. I'll leave those to you too.

For now, I'm going to focus on fixing Cissnei's and Sephiroth's models, and I think I might also do work on Angeal's house.

Devina · « **Reply #109 on:** 2020-08-28 08:35:59 »

Some updates:

Cissnei's bangs look much better now. I tried doing the end of her hair but when I touch it, I get weird small white artifacts on them so I'll have to leave them.

I noticed Lazard's HD model was missing glasses this whole time! I restored them (I'm not sure if they're missing in his lower model, we'll have to check). I desaturated his jacket and added filter. In order to get his jacket color:

0d004f (photo filter) density 100, preserve, saturation 50

His jacket (and well, all the other characters really) could use an HD overhaul like we did for Zack's outfit, but I don't want to get into that right now. If anyone does, they're welcome to.

The Shinra logo behind Lazard is weird. I guess you might've tried making it look more 3D eqprog, but it messed it up. I had to do some trickery edits to make it look more normal.
It only appears for like 2 seconds and I think this is the only major shot we get of it the entire game (in gameplay, you can't tilt the camera up to see it).

Finally, two things people can help with.

The fence in the very beginning of the game looks poorly upscaled. It has Japanese on it, but I don't know what it reads. If anyone does, please tell me:

I noticed Sephiroth has an animation frame glitch when he says "you're late".
I tried isolating the texture but it seems to have already been upscaled apparently?
If anyone knows how to fix it, please do.

JBedford128 · « **Reply #110 on:** 2020-08-28 09:05:14 »

Quote from: Devina on 2020-08-28 08:35:59

It says "安全第一". It means "Safety First" and is used on Japanese safety signage. The cross derives from the green cross used as a symbol for safety in Japan.

eqprog · « **Reply #111 on:** 2020-08-28 21:18:07 »

The shinra sign in Lazard’s office is actually 4 different textures. Two for the text and a separate one for the shadows. Tldr I started it and didn’t finish it.

Devina · « **Reply #112 on:** 2020-08-29 12:23:47 »

Thanks for the text, the fence is better.

A clock in the Nibelheim inn actually looks like a clock now:

Sometime soon, I think I should go on a desaturation binge (going through all the folders and looking for textures with obvious chromatic aberration) and fixing them. Some stuff in the game was hit pretty badly, like this wooden railing which looks like it has red and blue paint:

I found out the issue with Sephiroth, the ones in the priority folder just look like they were upscaled differently so I'll need to do some copy pasting + desaturation work there. Seems to be a common issue (character textures in the priority folder means they have animation issues).

Devina · « **Reply #113 on:** 2020-08-29 12:49:56 »

I found some Japanese warning text on the highway that could use deciphering
(I think it's the last blurry Japanese in the game AFAIK):

JBedford128 · « **Reply #114 on:** 2020-08-29 14:02:50 »

I figure it says:
非常事態発生・・・全線閉鎖中
閉鎖中　　　WARNING

meaning "An emergency has occurred - All lanes are closed // Closed - Warning"

Devina · « **Reply #115 on:** 2020-08-30 12:35:01 »

Thanks, you're really helpful.

I changed the Shinra logo at the train station so it looks older:

The original intent was to make it look older, to convey Shinra isn't just some new company that began a few years ago but decades. It was only bright red because it's one of the first textures I changed in the game and didn't have time to polish it. It now has a sepia tone and a dirtier look.

This texture project can't always be 100% accurate to the original as we've had to create flavor text sometimes (that's just the reality of working on a project like this), but this is an easy change, and I think it's important to be accurate where it should count. I want people to have faith that they can play our version and not have to worry about the "devs going wild with artistic changes" that often occurs when people make fan-made texture projects. Everything we change should be understandable as to why we do it.

I also realized Sephiroth has two texture sets, one where he looks normal and another where he looks unhealthy and has darkness around his eyes. I'm not sure where the change occurs (maybe when Angeal says Sephiroth looks unhealthy). I don't know if anyone else had realized this or if I'm one of the first since I haven't noticed anyone else point it out. It really is a cool and subtle little detail that would be nearly impossible to notice on a small PSP screen:

Devina · « **Reply #116 on:** 2020-09-01 13:18:18 »

I tried fixing Sephiroth's bangs but they're very hard to do. It's simply going to be incredibly difficult to make them look perfect. I was able to remove most of the artifacting by copying an upscaled version of the original onto the artifacts:

(original = top, middle = previous version, bottom = my version)

For some reason, there was a blob near his mouth so I removed it.
I also restored the skin color near his eyebrows.

Although it only appears in the game for like 3 seconds, I did Jenova's nameplate.
Jenova's nameplate now says what it says in Advent Children.
If the remake changes it for some reason (it's inconsistent), then we can replace it later.

eqprog · « **Reply #117 on:** 2020-09-01 15:43:10 »

Everything is looking very good. I apologize for my lack of inactivity recently. I had been working on the project in the mornings before going to my job mid-morning but I just haven't had the energy to continue doing so due to having to work overtime almost every day and getting home late. Because of this most of my contributions have been on my days off from my day job.

Today is one of those days however, so I am going to dedicate the majority of my free time to this.

eqprog · « **Reply #118 on:** 2020-09-01 21:36:32 »

I got about 38 textures modified today. I might get more done later on in the evening. I'm not going to post any screenshots but I mostly focused on fixing saturation issues with the textures in the opening scene of the game. I did modify the safety sign a bit by upping the resolution and using a different font with more anti-aliasing. The other one just looked too jagged for my liking.

Devina · « **Reply #119 on:** 2020-09-02 20:14:31 »

Looking nice, I changed my mind on upscaled textures higher than 4x, while I think we should stick to 4x, we can always go higher if the texture looks too pixelated at 4x for rare exceptions. I might re-do Hojo's lab text, the sign in the inn and the caution tape in Gongoga later.

I just noticed the sign directory says Shinra Building is in Sector 8 when it's actually in Sector 0, so you should change it when you re-do the directory to make the text more readable.

I think my area of expertise is just about over. I don't really enjoy doing stuff like environment like bricks. The only exception are the crates since I like seeing real wood, but you should be able to do stuff like that using free textures online.

I still need to fix Sephiroth's low poly model and I do plan on desaturating Cissnei's low poly model too. I was wondering, how would you feel if you let me handle all the characters for the next month or two? I can update Zack, all the SOLDIER uniforms like Angeal, try to polish everyone else, and so on. You can focus on environments and we won't need to be concerned about overwriting each other's work.

Something I would like to do is touch up the Banora White signs and logo.
I can't find an HD version of it:

Once I try making an HD logo, we can port it to the posters and Hollander's shirt.
It looks like there's supposed to be text in the circle but idk what it's supposed to say. Anyone have any ideas?

eqprog · « **Reply #120 on:** 2020-09-03 00:07:25 »

Yeah, some textures are at such low resolution even at 4x upscale that they still don’t have the fidelity id like.

Devine, you’re welcome to do whatever work you would like to do or not do. No commitments!

eqprog · « **Reply #121 on:** 2020-09-03 16:06:13 »

As far as the text in the circle goes (if you mean in the circle on the Banora logo), its really impossible to tell if its actually text or not. I would just put circles or some sort of stylish meaningless symbol. If you mean the part in the upper right of the image you posted, I believe that would be the bottom of the can of banora apples. I don't know if the player ever really sees that or not.

eqprog · « **Reply #122 on:** 2020-09-03 20:22:20 »

Minor update: I am about 99% confident that getting upscaled FMVs into the game is essentially impossible right now. The only hope we have is if the emulator comes to support straight up replacing video files. I made some progress, in a sense, in that I managed to track down some software that would let me rip the audio files from the FMVs and demux the video stream. I just can't get them put back together (with higher quality video).

During my searches I noticed a lot of the resources on this topic have simply disappeared. If anyone reading this has any idea how this can be achieved, please please let me know.

Devina · « **Reply #123 on:** 2020-09-07 20:47:38 »

Zack's hi-poly models have all been updated a little.

Angeal's hi-poly and low-poly models have all been updated.

I had to fix a weird bug here (also tried to make his facial hair look less painted):

Seph's hi-poly and low-poly models are updated so all animation errors should be fixed. It's not the best work, but I made the geometry and his belt better.

During the Jenova scene, his face goes from sickly, to healthy (when he sees Jenova) and sickly after, implying being near Jenova gave him some health and energy.
Upscaling all his unhealthy frames is too much, so to compensate, I made his eyes look darker just because I wanted to get this important point across.

(sickly/healthly/my edit)

There was also a missing frame during this scene, so I added it and updated textures.ini

Manakaiser · « **Reply #124 on:** 2020-09-08 05:41:50 »

Fantastic work overall!