Post subject: Generic NES graphics remaking tool
nesrocks
He/Him
Player (246)
Joined: 5/1/2004
Posts: 4096
Location: Rio, Brazil
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 _________________ 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...
Post subject: Re: Generic NES graphics remaking tool
nesrocks
He/Him
Player (246)
Joined: 5/1/2004
Posts: 4096
Location: Rio, Brazil
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.
Alternatively to that, the program could intercept the instruction of the NES reading the sprite in the rom database and instruct it to read it from the highres image instead (that looks exactly like the rom's sprite table, only in high res), and output on an alternate high res display outside of the NES.
Post subject: Re: Generic NES graphics remaking tool
Banned User
Joined: 8/2/2008
Posts: 420
Location: italy
FODA wrote:
http://savygamer.blogspot.com/2008/04/sonic-2-hd-fan-remake-on-way.html
Oh man, that page is so full of errors, about the team, the engine, everything. You should check the actual project forum here instead.
Gone.
nesrocks
He/Him
Player (246)
Joined: 5/1/2004
Posts: 4096
Location: Rio, Brazil
So... Someone did it for the sega master system: http://hisms.orgfree.com/ I'd still love to have it on NES. Apparently what he does is some sort of upscale to the way the emulator handles the graphics table by 4x, and uses an alternative, 4x bigger graphics table instead.
nesrocks
He/Him
Player (246)
Joined: 5/1/2004
Posts: 4096
Location: Rio, Brazil
Titan91
He/Him
Joined: 8/9/2015
Posts: 22
I have thought about this, like hi-res texture packs but with sprites. This is close, but not quite what you're looking for. It gives a good example of what such a feature could look like! http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/kopf/pixelart/index.html
Joined: 6/7/2009
Posts: 9
Titan91 wrote:
I have thought about this, like hi-res texture packs but with sprites. This is close, but not quite what you're looking for. It gives a good example of what such a feature could look like! http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/kopf/pixelart/index.html
neat. thanks for that link. Some of those vector magic up-scales are hilariously bad. (in the supplementary materials comparisons.)
Titan91
He/Him
Joined: 8/9/2015
Posts: 22
Yeah Vector Magic is pretty crappy for anything beyond a basketball team logo.
nesrocks
He/Him
Player (246)
Joined: 5/1/2004
Posts: 4096
Location: Rio, Brazil
Although upsampling algorithms are an interesting topic, much needs to be done in the field of image recognition for the interpretation to avoid basic mistakes. And even so, it would still be a machine's interpretation of a piece of art. I don't think it's impossible, but machines are far from reaching results on par with the work of an artist. I've done some testings and HDNes is still too troublesome to use. You need to do extensive sprite digging to get anything done, not to mention that generating the new spritesheet is a pain.