[PS2] Dark Cloud 2 HD (SCUS-97213)

[FloofFluff]

Notice (June 2, 2024)...
- Reuploaded textures as PNG instead of DDS for the highest quality.



Here's a (99.9%) complete texture pack for my favourite game of all time ╰(•̀ 3 •́)━☆ﾟ.*･｡ﾟ

Notes...
- Some of the UI is upscaled, but some looked bad no matter what. I left those pixel'y.
- 85% was done with Real-ESRGAN-x4plus, something that ended up being.. iffy.
- I went back and redid a lot of locations with UltraMix-Balanced, but not all.
- Those impossibly tiny and dark treasure chests are now white/yellow (ง˙▿˙)ง
- Font looks great except during story bits (which I don't think upscaling can fix.)

Recommended game settings (Right click game > Properties)...
- Graphics > Display > Crop: 1px 1px 1px 1px (Removes black line)

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Download textures (PNG): https://www.mediafire.com/file/s1mbhcm4q30ngz1/SCUS-97213.7z/file
Download cheats (PNACH): https://www.mediafire.com/file/yma5l8zmpolammi/SCUS-97213_1DF41F33.pnach/file

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60fps cheat (with issues)...
- Enemies recover from stun twice as quick.
- Projectiles move at double speed.
- A few Ridepod legs go too fast.
- Basically everything is a lot harder..
- Recommended to turn off for boss battles! (Requires reloading a save.)

Debug Menu cheat...
- Press R3 in different menus and areas of the game to bring up different menus.
- You can give yourself every item, change every stat, travel anywhere, etc.
- Disable, save and reload to turn off.
- To read everything about it: https://tcrf.net/Dark_Cloud_2/Debug_Menu

Other cheats...
- 100 Medals, 100k Gilda, Reveal Map, All Photo Ideas, HP and Defense, etc.

Models and programs used...
- Real-ESRGAN (x4plus, Universal-Fast-W2xEX), UltraMix-Balanced, UltraSharp, Real-SR
- Upscayl, waifu2x-extension-gui
- PCSX2 v1.7.5605

Other texture packs (◍ ´꒳` ◍)...
PS2: Ape Escape 2, Rayman 2, Sly Cooper*
GC: Rayman 3, Chamber of Secrets

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[SomberShroud]

Just a head's up, PNG is harder to run on older hardware than DDS which is why people use DDS for texture packs here.

 

[_Reticent_]

Just a head's up, PNG is harder to run on older hardware than DDS which is why people use DDS for texture packs here.

Does the same apply for if you're using an external hard drive rather than an SSD?

 

[SomberShroud]

Does the same apply for if you're using an external hard drive rather than an SSD?

yes, HDD is slower than SSD, however that may not be noticable since most texture packs are less than 16 GB, you can load the textures to RAM instead of the CPU most of the time. That difference only matters if you don't use the CPU or RAM optimizations in the texture replacement options.

 

[RobyNoob]

Thank you for the great work!
I started upscaling the textures of this game too long ago, but there were too many "infinitely repeated" textures (like the object ones and some UI things) and I abandoned it.

 

[FloofFluff]

Thank you for the great work!
I started upscaling the textures of this game too long ago, but there were too many "infinitely repeated" textures (like the object ones and some UI things) and I abandoned it.

It was fun! But yeah, it was also definitely a bit of a pain. Thousands of bad textures were being dumped every minute! I think it was only when there was fire/water nearby, and both those are everywhere in the game.. I ended up using a combination of AutoHotkey and Everything to quickly delete all the junk every time I dumped textures in a new area ╮(︶▽︶)╭

 

[Plaidray]

This looks incredible thanks for this