baeuchlein on 12/2/2023 at 18:43
Basso the Boxman, as Soul Tear wrote in the first post, he publishes the (HD) missions when he wishes to play one of these and has his "HD Mod" for that FM done. Or rather, he publishes the HD Mod files as an archive. I don't think he plans to publish complete mission archives with HD textures.
Unpacking these "Mod archives" into a FM directory of a FM that has already been prepared (unpacked) for playing with one of the modern FM loaders (FMSel, AngelLoader, NewDarkLoader) gives you the new HD textures for the old mission. You can also unpack the mission onto your hard disk, unpack the HD Mod for it over the unpacked FM, and re-pack (re-zip) the modded FM (preferrably with a changed name, like "Kings Story HD.zip"), and then place that archive in the same folder where you usually place new downloaded FMs. The FM loader of your choice should notice that mission next time you start the loader, and the new version should appear in the FMs list.
If someone really, really, REALLY wants to use ancient DarkLoader (which I don't recommend any more), then he/she can only use the second way (unpacking FM and Mod, and re-packing) to play it in HD, otherwise the DarkLoader user will create a potentially nasty mess in his Thief 2 installation that will affect not only the "HD modded" mission, but other missions as well. Consider yourself warned...
Now, about the "King's Story HD Mod". I have re-played a part of the first mission in HD now, and loaded savegames for the second mission in order to run around and look at the HD modding results. It's like with "Seven Sisters": The new textures look better (sharper) now, but in a few places, the look is not perfect. For example, on the outer walls of the castle in the courtyard, there are some neighbouring textures that do not completely fit each other. You have to be very nitpicky to get annoyed by that, though. The cases where textures look "too clean" are far less frequent in "King's Story HD" when compared to "Seven Sisters HD", most likely because a lot of the action takes place in the castle, which is a rather clean and well-tended place, unlike the ancient caverns and ruins that the last mission of the "Seven Sisters" campaign provides. Thus, while long (and possibly manual) processing of the low-density textures in order to get HD ones might yield better results, it would also mean more labour, but in the case of "King's Story HD", I definitely think that the current results are good enough to leave it at that.
There is one thing about the "King's Story HD Mod" that should be improved, though. The current Mod archive contains two files that have cyrillic letters/characters in their filenames, and this can lead to problems. These files appear to be temporary copies of textures, and should be removed from the archive.
The files are Fam\Animals\RedGob - kopia.DDS and Obj\Txt16\InnerDH - kopia.DDS, if I transliterated that correctly from cyrillic to western characters. I do not think that these two files are actually used in the game, but depending on which operating system, OS language, and FM loader the player uses, these two files may remain somewhere (e.g., somewhere in FMs\.fmsel.cache inside the Thief 2 directory/folder hierarchy) on the player's hard disk even after de-installing the FM, and at least the files do occupy space for no reason. Or maybe one of the FM loaders "trips" over these files, and something bad happens. Removing them from the mod archive and re-publishing that would be a good idea, I think.
Basso The Boxman on 13/2/2023 at 22:47
Quote Posted by Soul Tear
Basso The Boxman, don't worry, these mods don't interfere with my main projects. I expect to release the 3-mission pack (KoI Reloaded Part 1) in this year. :cool:
Fantastic news! Can’t wait!!!
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Soul Tear on 14/2/2023 at 14:01
baeuchlein, you are absolutely right as always. I forgot to delete copies.
Unfortunately, in King's Story some textures do not match, because Zontik did not attach much importance to this, and upscaling increased the effect of the original mismatch.
baeuchlein on 14/2/2023 at 16:47
As I said, the thing with the textures not being perfect is no big deal. Correcting such minor problems with a lot of manual work may be possible, but even I would think twice (at least) before doing so. Or maybe not doing so.:cheeky:
baeuchlein on 15/3/2023 at 01:41
I played through the HD modded version of "The Black Frog" now. Just like the other modded missions/campaigns, this one is not perfect, but not bad either. A few places once again look a bit too crisp and clean, while others look quite washed out (="non-HD") in comparison. Anyone deeply offended by this will have to either improve the graphics by him-/herself, or maybe play the campaign blindfolded.:ebil:
A few filenames with cyrillic characters managed to slip through once again, and can be found in Fam\BasementX\[Originals]\, Fam\city1\, and Fam\rugsbf\[Originals]\. I did play without these files on my hard disk and noticed no irritating looks anywhere. So, anyone having any problem with these files may erase them without fear of any catastrophic event.
The only thing that did not look right was a certain kind of wardrobe. The first one can already be seen in the starting room of the first mission. The upgraded look/model has the wardrobe's doors standing slightly open, and some weird white thing can be seen inside. I removed the file Obj\Armiore.bin to get rid of that weird look. Note the wrong spelling; a file with the correct spelling present in the original game defines another piece of furniture; the wrong spelling is actually the right one for the weird wardrobe I'm talking about.
The resulting wardrobe is the non-HD one from the original game. No problems were observed while playing with that "downgraded" wardrobe.
Those were all the nits I could pick with this HD mod. The mod's outcome still satisfied me, but of course, everyone's mileage may vary.
All right, next one please!:cheeky: Let's shamelessly put one of my favourites in here: What about "Godbreaker" this time?
Soul Tear on 15/3/2023 at 15:05
AI works well with good, legible textures, and can't do anything with bad, low quality ones. He also strongly dislikes any grunge.
Are there a lot of custom textures in Godbreaker?
Now I finished T2X, it remains to be checked.
Kubrick on 15/3/2023 at 18:44
Hey Soul Tear, what AI sofware did you use?
baeuchlein on 16/3/2023 at 05:55
Quote Posted by Soul Tear
AI works well with good, legible textures, and can't do anything with bad, low quality ones. He also strongly dislikes any grunge.
Are there a lot of custom textures in Godbreaker?
Apparently. The
fam directory/folder is 300 MBytes in size, the
Obj folder has 160 MBytes inside. A quick look into the folders showed some typical city architecture (wooden planks and other wooden surfaces, stone facades, colored church windows etc.) which doesn't look too bad, just a bit low-res. I didn't see much of the swamp/nature environments of the second mission, though. Maybe missions 1 and 4 will profit much more from "AI enhancement" than the second one.
By the way, which T2X version did you use? There's the original one, the "Necro T2X", and Gecko's/bentraxx' HD Mod version of that campaign. The difference is in the textures used.
Soul Tear on 16/3/2023 at 14:47
Quote Posted by Kubrick
Hey Soul Tear, what AI sofware did you use?
AI Image Upscaler
