taken from this thread:
http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6401
What if you made a "mod" of a nes game with high res graphics, high quality sound/music but what you're actually doing is playing the game on an emulator under the scenes? I guess it would require complete deassembly of the game eh? Just a dream then.
Bisqwit wrote:
Theoretically doable, just requires a lot of effort and no fear of being disdained as "no life".
The emulator portion could be done entirely with RAM watches combined with timing information; a separate program would reconstruct the entire performance from that information.
FODA wrote:
What about if all the program did was read the tiles output from the emulator and reconstruct it on a higher resolution image, placing each substitute higher res tile on the equivalent position (it can even be on a separate window)? Is that doable? It would require these things:
- a program that can read the tiles being output by the emulator to the emulator video out
- the program must understand the uniqueness of each tile, so as to use a corresponding tile from a high res library
- the program must output the tiles on a high res screen, on the corresponding position as shown in the emulator output video.
- make the high res graphics for all tiles in the game
What can be done with this:
1 - high res graphics (or pre-rendered 3d graphics) for any nes game
2 - animated tiles where it used to be static (water surface, for example)
3 - new materials? metal and glass that's actually shiny, tiles that are partly transparent, etc.
4 - especial effects created whenever a particular tile appears or disappears. example when score appears on the screen in super mario bros 3 "100" or "200" can be substituted for something bigger and flashier and animated. This one may be hard or impossible to implement by only reading the tile output data, but can be tested.
I'm thinking super mario bros 3 here, but maybe it can be tested on something simpler like Mario Bros.
It's a lot of work but I'm up to doing all the graphics. Now if anyone is interested in doing the programming or pointing anything I didn't notice that would make it more difficult or impracticable, you're welcome.
edit: Just found this:
http://savygamer.blogspot.com/2008/04/sonic-2-hd-fan-remake-on-way.html
The result I want is similar to it, but higher res
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I just thought, can it be done with LUA scripting? Can the script create a new window and draw it on there? I'm not sure people grasp the possibilities here, give artists a tool and you unleash a snowball of nice stuff. Imagine a tool that gives artists the freedom to remake ANY nes game with high res graphics...
