Replacing 2D backgrounds?

[TerakRall]

Hi all, new forum member...is there any current tool for replacing the prerendered backgrounds in FF7?  I've been using LGPTools' preview feature and fooling around with some of them in Adobe Illustrator...here's an example:

Sector 5 Mako Reactor, before:
http://members.aol.com/ff7square/mako.jpg

And after:
http://members.aol.com/ff7square/mako2.jpg

I've greatly enjoyed using the mods I've found here; thanks to everyone for their hard work!

[EmperorSteele]

well, the thing is, the tool would need to take your new background, and slice it up into several squares of something like 16x16 pixels, which is how the backgrounds are actually stored (and why we get gridlines with various video cards: they can tell the background is chopepd up).  Also, anything that ever goes in FRONT of the characters (like the wall) would actually need to be a sepreate background file, I think.

So, given all of that, re-encoding new images into ff7-acceptable format may be tricky, and anyone with the tech-knowhow is too busy or has dissapeared, it seems.

edit: btw, your rendition of the reactor DOES look quite awesome =)

[Skillster/RedSarg99]

even though FF7 loads the backgrounds via its tiling system and then places "sprites" for stuff that overlaps the characters, is it not possible to just bypass it? and use a realtime program to just map a directdraw call under the 3d polygons? abit crazy, but something like that (like how fice's ff7music program intercepts midi calls and reroutes it to a winamp pligin) might be the only solution to beat the archiac methods used in ff7

[TerakRall]

See, I can do the image editing fine, but I lack any programming skills...if someone would be willing to try and find a way to use the new backgrounds, I'd be more than willing to edit the exisiting images...

Here's some more for you:

Aeris' Church:
Before - http://members.aol.com/ff7square/church.jpg
After - http://members.aol.com/ff7square/church2.jpg

Leaving Midgar:
Before - http://members.aol.com/ff7square/midgar.jpg
After - http://members.aol.com/ff7square/midgar2.jpg

[ficedula]

It looks like you don't have the most recent version of LGP Tools; that can filter out (most of) the black dots and show the transparency/lighting effects, too. Although you've managed to somehow pick one of the levels where it screws up if you do both...

It should look like this, anyway, by default:
http://www.sylphds.net/ev2/img/church1.png
http://www.sylphds.net/ev2/img/church2.png


Skillster: FF7Music's task is easy compared to touching the graphics. Playing tricks with the sound is straightforward because you don't need to 'replace' anything: just mute the midi and play something else instead. Video cards don't generally have the equivalent of a 'mute' to get rid of the original work and let you stuff your own things over the top  Especially since you want to kill some stuff (2d background) and not others (menus, character models).

I wouldn't dare say it's impossible given what else has been achieved ... but it /would/ require a (reasonably) large time investment compared to other hacks.

[The SaiNt]

FFVII draws everything into Quads, so I had some easy success in switching on bilinear interpolation, but it turns out all blocky since the background is treated as many 16x16 textures. So any interpolation tends to turn out really bad.

[James Pond]

Here's some more for you:

I would use the first one, but every other one posted after I wouldnt personally.

It just looks atrocious....  The colours are all off, and its heavily saturated.

[Kiggles]

Aye, whatever you're doing to most of those images, the results are terrible. Nice to see you trying to help out, but you are killing a tremendous amount of detail in those scenes.

Try editing by hand and determining precisely how much detail those original 320x240 backgrounds have before throwing on a filter and deciding it is better. I promise. The more you have to pay attention, the more you will understand you are killing the backgrounds.

Again, don't let this frustrate, or deter you from trying, but let's make sure that if we are going to apply improvements to the game that they are genuine improvements, much less don't produce results worse than the original.

[Skillster/RedSarg99]

by the way TheSaint, what else can you switch on/off on the texture quads?

[James Pond]

Aye, whatever you're doing to most of those images, the results are terrible. Nice to see you trying to help out, but you are killing a tremendous amount of detail in those scenes.

I have made this easily visible here.

if its not clear, Your one is on the right.

[TerakRall]

I guess I'll stop, then...

As I said in my first post, I was just fooling around with the backgrounds in Illustrator and wanted to see if would be halfway feasible to replace them in-game; I never pretended to have fantastic artistic talent or that these would be final versions.  Each of them took about 2 minutes to do because I just slapped filters on; if I were to do them for an actual mod I would of course take more time to make each one just right.

The backgrounds are the one thing that have been bothering me replaying FF7 with the Reunion Patch, Saint's high-res mod and the continual updates from the NPC Reconstruction project...I guess I was hoping that if I posted I could get someone interested in finding a way to do these backgrounds justice in higher resolution.

So thank you again to everyone who has worked so hard on these mods, and I will refrain from posting any more backgrounds.  See you all in other threads.