Difficult games and impossible to make texture packs

[mvp899]

Upscayl Gives worse results than 3xHDCube. You only need to set it up once then save the config as a .chn file in the ChaiNNer main folder and then it's plug and play.

I never found this 3xHDCube to download

 

[ps2_love]

Upscayl Da peores resultados que 3xHDCube. Solo necesita configurarlo una vez, luego guardar la configuración como un archivo .chn en la carpeta principal de ChaiNNer y luego estará listo para usar.

could you scale this image with HDCube to 2048x2048 I want to check something.

 

[SomberShroud]

I never found this 3xHDCube to download

https://github.com/Venomalia/HDcube/tree/main/v3

could you scale this image with HDCube to 2048x2048 I want to check something.
View attachment 412462

4xHDCube doesn't allow for custom resolutions (it's stuck at 4x) though there is an addon called UHDCube which is meant to be applied after 4xHDCube applies another 4x to it, making it a 16x Upscale.
See the God Hand HD Texture pack by Santins for examples of that.
also small correction its not 3xHDCube its 4xHDCube3 and 4xHDCube4, my bad.

 

[Marcelus]

https://github.com/Venomalia/HDcube/tree/main/v3

View attachment 412466
4xHDCube doesn't allow for custom resolutions (it's stuck at 4x) though there is an addon called UHDCube which is meant to be applied after 4xHDCube applies another 4x to it, making it a 16x Upscale.
See the God Hand HD Texture pack by Santins for examples of that.

In cupscale is possible set resolution after upscale. I set 50% = 2x higher res for 4x models and quality is much better than 4x. Shapes are not distorted how with 4x and seamless textures fit together much better. Very nice result especially for fonts and sprites. Of course textures are not super sharp but result is much closer with original textures and font have nice shapes.

Post automatically merged: Jan 11, 2024

no idea what i am doing wrong the texture looks good but inside the game it is invisible if anyone can show me how to set it up to work on pcsx2 i am new to this
View attachment 412406

View attachment 412407

Many textures works good without transparency. My method.
1. Upscale
2. Open in Gimp problematic texture
3. Clone this texture 10x
4. Merge all layers together. Save

Second method
1. Upscale
2. Open texture in gimp
3. Turn off transparency or set flat image
4. Turn on transparency
5. Set layer opacity 50% and save.

This is good for full textures not for sprites because you must cut sprites from layer.

 

[Playmulation]

Baldur´s Gate Dark Alliance 2 this game takes infinite dumps you just started the game you already have more than 100,000 dumps hahaha that's crazy​

 

[FOhtieN]

Siren 1-2
Shadow Hearts
Wild Arms 4
most 2D sprite based games

What's the issue with Wild Arms 4 if you don't mind me asking?
IIRC you made a texture pack for WA5 and from the little experience I have with dumping, usually titles that are related (sequels, games made from the same developer at around the same time etc) either have similar issues or are similarly easy to make hd packs for. Like most gust games on ps2 have the exact same issues with texture dumping for example etc.
Is Wild Arms 4 a special case like Shadow Hearts is?

 

[pepodmc]

Bloody Roar 3:

Its one of those games with duplicated textures in menus, stages, characters,etc.

Im making a retexture of the game, but for the pack to be functional, i had to:

-- Force the game to start arcade mode always with the same characters and stages (you can rotate the enemies and stages returning to the title screen and then going back to the main menu again)

-- If you complete arcade mode, or start a game mode and want to go to another (from arcade to practice for example) you will have to restart the game or use a savestate to go to the main menu screen.

--Disable autosave, so the game never autosave after you play any game mode. You are only able to save game options and done.


Here its a wip of the texture pack:

https://gbatemp.net/threads/bloody-roar-3-texture-pack-last-wip-videos.646898/

 

[Plaidray]

https://github.com/Venomalia/HDcube/tree/main/v3

View attachment 412466
4xHDCube doesn't allow for custom resolutions (it's stuck at 4x) though there is an addon called UHDCube which is meant to be applied after 4xHDCube applies another 4x to it, making it a 16x Upscale.
See the God Hand HD Texture pack by Santins for examples of that.
also small correction its not 3xHDCube its 4xHDCube3 and 4xHDCube4, my bad.

Where did you get the HD Cube 4 Model I cant find it in Model Data base?

 

[SadOrigami]

Where did you get the HD Cube 4 Model I cant find it in Model Data base?

It's a paid model on a ko-fi page. It was made for GameCube and Wii textures, the cartoony ones above everything else, but it starts having problems with the more realistic textures.

 

[FOhtieN]

What's the issue with Wild Arms 4 if you don't mind me asking?
IIRC you made a texture pack for WA5 and from the little experience I have with dumping, usually titles that are related (sequels, games made from the same developer at around the same time etc) either have similar issues or are similarly easy to make hd packs for. Like most gust games on ps2 have the exact same issues with texture dumping for example etc.
Is Wild Arms 4 a special case like Shadow Hearts is?

So for anyone else wondering about Wild Arms 4, since I never got an answer, I tried to dump the game myself to see what's the issue with it.
Seems like the game dumps tons of trash and duplicate textures. The font and UI dumps are also bugged and can't be upscaled due to trash dumps.
Character models, monster models, weapon models and backgrounds though are fine and I managed to upscale and replace the textures for those things in the prologue just to test if it works.

So a partial texture pack for this game is possible. it would just be annoying due to how long it would take to filter through all the trash textures. Game dumped 11.279 textures in the prologue alone, only 441 of those were actually usable textures.

 

[Panda_Venom]

So for anyone else wondering about Wild Arms 4, since I never got an answer, I tried to dump the game myself to see what's the issue with it.
Seems like the game dumps tons of trash and duplicate textures. The font and UI dumps are also bugged and can't be upscaled due to trash dumps.
Character models, monster models, weapon models and backgrounds though are fine and I managed to upscale and replace the textures for those things in the prologue just to test if it works.

So a partial texture pack for this game is possible. it would just be annoying due to how long it would take to filter through all the trash textures. Game dumped 11.279 textures in the prologue alone, only 441 of those were actually usable textures.

This is why it's not working. Wild Arms 5 almost killed my HDD, I had to delete 100000 trash dumps after every 10-15 min.

 

[SomberShroud]

This is why it's not working. Wild Arms 5 almost killed my HDD, I had to delete 100000 trash dumps after every 10-15 min.

you don't need to leave texture dumping on guys, hotkey Texture dumping and toggle it everytime you enter a new area/find a character. save state before you think a cutscene will play and check dump every few hours and delete junk files using my method

Once you've dumped the game, open the dumps folder and delete any bad dumps that might've appeared, usually there is a pattern to bad dumps like one image appears repeatedly but has the same suffix "-00006800". You can type in the search bar ~*6800.png and it will highlight every image with that suffix and you can check if they're similarly bad dumps and delete them (sometimes you'll need to go deeper than the last hyphen like ~*d90-00006800.png for a specific pattern of bad textures as good textures will be grouped in with the bad ones as well for the last hyphen).

every game is upscalable if you're patient enough.

 

[SadOrigami]

every game is upscalable if you're patient enough.

Unfortunaly that's not true. The other day I was gonna remaster Zone of the Enders, but every replacement texture was getting replaced by a new vanilla one with a different hash. After a talk with the devs of PCSX2 it was clear that the game cannot use HD textures. Why?

The game uses textures with unique resolutions, for example: 512x448. This means that after every texture is fixed to a normal resolution, 512x512, the generated unused space gets filled with random junk. This means that every time textures are shown (you enter and exit a menu or a level), every texture gets generated again with a different hash, ad infinitum. Theoretically you could partially fix this creating a patch that sets the textures region clamp to a fixed number, but since every game has textures with different resolutions it's not possible to fix all the textures. And this is not a problem of the emulator, it's a problem of how the game was made.

 

[kupo-on-gbatem]

Theoretically you could partially fix this creating a patch that sets the textures region clamp to a fixed number, but since every game has textures with different resolutions it's not possible to fix all the textures.

Why can't the emulator find and set the right region for each texture automatically? I just forgot about this option, but I think Duckstation works this way too (although Duckstation is not a good example for texture replacements, since it has many other issues which makes this feature unusable).

I also asked for an option for wildcard characters. It would fix like 95% of the broken textures in DQ8. However if at all they only would do this for the base hash, while DQ8 needs it for the CLUT hash. I wonder what it is like in other games? Which part of the hash is equal, the first or the second?

And this is not a problem of the emulator, it's a problem of how the game was made.

Yeah well, sorry to say, but this sounds like a stupid excuse. As I heard they once also kept saying that texture replacements in pcsx2 are not possible at all until Topaz showed the opposite. To me that sounds more like a lack of will to work on these issues. I also made another suggestion like creating an ini file, inspired by ppsspp. But they don't want this either. I wish they were a bit more constructive about finding solutions to workaround this issue. But to me it feels like that they give zero fucks about how good or bad this feature works, because they self don't use it anyway.

A good example what can be possible if a dev is passionate about game modding is Dolphin. Not just that texture replacements work much better there (they allow wildcard characters too), after dynamic input textures they now also work at custom materials and mesh replacements. It's really crazy what is possible if devs want it too.

 

[SadOrigami]

Why can't the emulator find and set the right region for each texture automatically? I just forgot about this option, but I think Duckstation works this way too (although Duckstation is not a good example for texture replacements, since it has many other issues which makes this feature unusable).

I also asked for an option for wildcard characters. It would fix like 95% of the broken textures in DQ8. However if at all they only would do this for the base hash, while DQ8 needs it for the CLUT hash. I wonder what it is like in other games? Which part of the hash is equal, the first or the second?



Yeah well, sorry to say, but this sounds like a stupid excuse. As I heard they once also kept saying that texture replacements in pcsx2 are not possible at all until Topaz showed the opposite. To me that sounds more like a lack of will to work on these issues. I also made another suggestion like creating an ini file, inspired by ppsspp. But they don't want this either. I wish they were a bit more constructive about finding solutions to workaround this issue. But to me it feels like that they give zero fucks about how good or bad this feature works, because they self don't use it anyway.

A good example what can be possible if a dev is passionate about game modding is Dolphin. Not just that texture replacements work much better there (they allow wildcard characters too), after dynamic input textures they now also work at custom materials and mesh replacements. It's really crazy what is possible if devs want it too.

Oh, I do believe the emulator can, it sure can. But I also believe that expecting the PCSX2 devs to have more will by now it's just living in wonderland, we already know them and what they want to focus on. Of course it's possible to fix these things from the emulator itself, but expecting that to happen it's not realistic at this point. So until new blood joins the devs team or they find a fix by mistake, it is what it is. Asking questions as to why something cannot be made in a certain way in this emulator is like asking questions to a wall with the phrase 'it works as intended' written on it. Of course the devs have no obligation of fixing these things since they are not related to accurately emulating the games, but I wish they could have a little more passion for restoring games. Anyways, as I said, not every game is upscalable (today), and that's the point of this thread, to find which games are those.

 

[SomberShroud]

Unfortunaly that's not true. The other day I was gonna remaster Zone of the Enders, but every replacement texture was getting replaced by a new vanilla one with a different hash. After a talk with the devs of PCSX2 it was clear that the game cannot use HD textures. Why?

The game uses textures with unique resolutions, for example: 512x448. This means that after every texture is fixed to a normal resolution, 512x512, the generated unused space gets filled with random junk. This means that every time textures are shown (you enter and exit a menu or a level), every texture gets generated again with a different hash, ad infinitum. Theoretically you could partially fix this creating a patch that sets the textures region clamp to a fixed number, but since every game has textures with different resolutions it's not possible to fix all the textures. And this is not a problem of the emulator, it's a problem of how the game was made.

well, I'm gonna go with the optimistic answer of counting those extremely rare games as an exception and say that my original post still stands.

 

[Marcelus]

Hi all,
please exist some solution how dump silent hill 2 textures? Dump works but 99% textures are full transparent.

 

[SadOrigami]

Hi all,
please exist some solution how dump silent hill 2 textures? Dump works but 99% textures are full transparent.

You mean 100% transparent or that the textures are like 50% transparent? Because all PCSX2 texture dumps have some transparency. If you get textures full of nothing that can be a problem with an update, the current version has introduced problems with hair transparency for me lol.

 

[Marcelus]

You mean 100% transparent or that the textures are like 50% transparent? Because all PCSX2 texture dumps have some transparency. If you get textures full of nothing that can be a problem with an update, the current version has introduced problems with hair transparency for me lol.

100% transparent. Nothing see on textures. I try 20 layers merge but only grain is visible. Pcsx2 is latest nightly. Maybe i will try some older builds.

(edit)

Under dx11 dump works in SH2

 

[Retrojunkies]

In cupscale is possible set resolution after upscale. I set 50% = 2x higher res for 4x models and quality is much better than 4x. Shapes are not distorted how with 4x and seamless textures fit together much better. Very nice result especially for fonts and sprites. Of course textures are not super sharp but result is much closer with original textures and font have nice shapes.

Post automatically merged: Jan 11, 2024

Many textures works good without transparency. My method.
1. Upscale
2. Open in Gimp problematic texture
3. Clone this texture 10x
4. Merge all layers together. Save

Second method
1. Upscale
2. Open texture in gimp
3. Turn off transparency or set flat image
4. Turn on transparency
5. Set layer opacity 50% and save.

This is good for full textures not for sprites because you must cut sprites from layer.

Or

Just edit transparency threshold to make the texture fully visible or you could just disable its alpha layer within the RGB layers.

I dont get, from what I basically seen just now having a quick look, why people are creating "HD" texture packs, but your simply re scalling the default base textures.

This isnt exactly what you'd call a HD re texture pack, having a program that simply applies a filter to smoothen off pixels when increasing its overall size, is still the same texture... just at dimension and smooth filters applied.

Its resolution scale too isnt exactly changed regardless if your file size may suggest differently.

Id have thought the purpose of one creating a HD texture pack would be to physically re create every single texture within the game.

If you have ever seen any of the N64 texture projects that shows the point of a HD texture pack with each texture being manually re created from scratch, not simply taking the games default base textures and multiplying its dimensions x times and applying an output filter.

Its pretty much like playing a game on a smaller/bigger screen, your not exactly seeing anything different.

Problems ps2 games have with transparency is different to other consoles inc pc, you dont need to do anything fancy or use any tools, if using GIMP you can simply alter it from I think its default is 0.5, or simply untick its alpha chanel layer.

You don't really need to edit it either if you are to simply rescale base textures as it seems folks are, simply toggle it off so you can see what you are doing (be it nothing much), then export it.

The emulator will still pick up its alpha profile layer unless you manually changed it, hiding its layer in GIMP isnt disabling it at all.