Here Are The HD-fied Backgrounds of The Game

[haaa]

Hi, these are the static ff9 backgrounds upscaled:

https://mega.nz/#!GxET2ZhQ!JYy_4wshsLKTkHJM0B2uLbIW7PpzPVwtez4Ix_b9Eds

Before and after samples:

http://i.imgur.com/k2zL5UU.gif

http://i.imgur.com/pzAbXX5.gif

http://i.imgur.com/zJKXAc4.gif

http://i.imgur.com/utRdF2m.gif

http://i.imgur.com/AunUCpD.gif


Hopefully someone with modding experince can use it to replace the in game ones.

[Altair]

These are really good! I'm surprised Square didn't put in the effort to do this, it would have made for a complete HD remaster of FF9.

Now we just need someone to fix the Sound FX

[Simone]

Not bad at all...

[haaa]

Originally posted by Xalvin:

These are really good!

Thanks, now we just need someone to put it in the game.

[Sekkuar666]

The backgrounds aren't really that great. Specially when it's supposed to give depth to the chracters standing in different positions or sitting on the scenario, it looks really fake.

Although, I gotta say the character textures looks amazing.

Maybe that's the problem, the characters looks way too good and make too much contranst with the not-as-good scenario.

[haaa]

The character textures and models were redone, so it is not surprising they look good compared to the backgrounds which were taken directly from the ps1 with almost no change.

Better than crappy characters in addition to the crappy backgrounds I guess.

[haaa]

Originally posted by Shirayuki474:

Who cares about backgrounds, 1 hour didn't last and I already cannot play this anymore... This sound... It is like playing FF VIII without Rose and Wine.

Sounds fine to me, not that I care about ultra high sound quality.

[KennyBones]

I haven't downloaded the whole thing, but did you extract the assets from the actual game? I certainly hope so, if not, you just did hours of work for no reason :p

The backgrounds in FF7-9 are separated in layers, with alpha areas in them. So the backgrounds are rarely just one image, they're several.

Looks good though! Is it a waifu filter on there?

[Aquaflute]

Someone pleeeeeeaaaaaase!!! I want those images in my game!!!!!

Well at least you gave me a huge amount of hope that the backgrounds can be further improved and a potential mod can happen in near future. Thank you!

[haaa]

Originally posted by KennyBones:

The backgrounds in FF7-9 are separated in layers, with alpha areas in them. So the backgrounds are rarely just one image, they're several.

Layers should not be upscaled seperatly, doing so will introduce obvious seams between them at the edges. Upscaling them as a whole then seperating them to layers negates that.

Originally posted by KennyBones:

Looks good though! Is it a waifu filter on there?

Yup, RPG model with some sharpening in photoshop. I wanted to add some more touches, but I decided to keep it as close as possible to the original.

[haaa]

Originally posted by aquaflute:

Someone pleeeeeeaaaaaase!!! I want those images in my game!!!!!

Well at least you game me a huge amount of hope that the backgrounds can be further improved and a potential mod can happen in near future. Thank you!

You are most welcome my friend.

[KennyBones]

Alright, as long as you know what you're doing! So, you managed to extract the assets from the game? But you can't as of now import them back in?

[haaa]

Originally posted by KennyBones:

Alright, as long as you know what you're doing! So, you managed to extract the assets from the game? But you can't as of now import them back in?

Nope, these are from the ps1, the steam version has a bad filter - bilinear? - that makes upscaling it properly not possible, at least not without lossy descaling that will make things worse.

And I'm not a modder, if I was there will be no point of this thread now will there? There are some ready unity extractors and packer tools that did not work for me, and from what I understand unityraw - the game's packing format - is niether compressed nor encrypted, so hopfully it is not very hard to mod the game.

This is just from a 30 min of playing around with the game files, there are many methods that I haven't tried yet, and I don't know if I will have the time.

[HideoKoncima]

Just wonder how these backgrounds looks @ 1920x1080.

[Gilbertify]

Cool. Wonder when someone's gonna mod these in. Hurry up boys.

[C4RNIVOR3]

While I appreciate the effort you went through with these, the biggest issue with them is that rather than just sharpening the image, you also gave the backgrounds a painted look and it kind of throws off the original tone of the backgrounds and makes them more cartoony. In another game these would be really nice, but I don't think it would fit with this game too well. If someone manages to mod them into the game, more power to them though, I'm sure some people will enjoy it.

I can't manage a single post today without spotting a typo after posting lol.