[Phredreeke]

I won't be making new skyboxes for this. I won't be using HRP skyboxes either.

Certain tiles already use bits from the HRP, those tiles are listed in the readme file

[darkprince227]

OK fair enough.

Is this going to remain separate from the Upscale pack or is their a plan to merge them since they've already done stuff for the addons? I've tried it and it looks great, but the some of the models seem a bit uh.... swirly

[Phredreeke]

Models?

[darkprince227]

Phredreeke, on 02 August 2021 - 02:33 AM, said:

Models?

Sprites/characters, I meant. The ones in ERP look much sharper and refined, if that makes sense

[Phredreeke]

The Life's a Beach sprites will have further improvements over the ones in the upscale pack. I can't say whether they'll be as good as the regular sprites in the ERP (there are a few I still intend to revisit there too though)

As for plans for the future of the upscale pack see the post on last page

[Avenger]

Phredreeke, on 31 July 2021 - 10:09 AM, said:

What you linked to is the latest version. The ERP pretty much continues it (but for technical reasons the first release was limited to the base game, the next release will add support for Life's a Beach)

Whether I do another version of the standalone upscale pack depends on whether or not BuildGDX adds support for indexed hightiles. If it does I'll just add the necessary defs to the ERP. If it doesn't then I will probably do another release (a lot of sprites from the upscale pack received further updates in the ERP) - it would still be limited to mainly sprites with some signs and switches

Okay, but is the upscale pack finished in it's current state?

[Phredreeke]

No, and neither is the ERP. The ERP just happens to be more complete (but only in regard to the base game, not vaca, nw or wt)

[Phredreeke]

Decided to do some upscales for Duke it out in DC
https://imgsli.com/NjYxODE
https://imgsli.com/NjYyNDA
https://imgsli.com/NjYyODY

I'd much rather be looking at Mrs. Kilstrom...

[Lunick]

The nose and lips are interesting.....

[Phredreeke]

I posted an article detailing what's to come for the ERP

https://www.moddb.co...ce-pack-roadmap

[darkprince227]

You guys still going to post on here or is everything going to move to moddb?

[Phredreeke]

I'll post here when there's a new update, however I'm currently focusing on Blood.

Don't expect another ERP release until next year. Here's a screen I posted a while back on Discord though

[darkprince227]

Looks sweet, I can really see the difference

[Phredreeke]

TIL there's a bootleg Duke ERP

[NightFright]

"I made this." ™

[Phredreeke]

A pair of screens I did last night and tonight

[MrFlibble]

I sincerely hope that this will come across as constructive criticism.

I played a bit of ERP, and also a bit of HRP recently. I've never been a fan of HRP, or rather of the idea of such drastic change/improvement to the original art, but it (HRP) works really well with Polymer lighting and stuff.

Many textures in ERP on the other hand, look rather lacklustre to me in-game, and I have trouble convincing myself that these are an improvement over low-res originals.

At the same time, many HRP textures are actually fairly faithful to the original source material, and they look much better (IMO) even as these quick palettised mock-up 2x downscaled versions compared to their ERP counterparts (taken from the ERP first release at ModDB):



On a side note, of the above, tile0237 looks particularly bad in-game, especially since it mangles the horizontal pattern at the bottom into a snake-like wavy thing.

Since ERP already makes use of some HRP assets where ESRGAN clearly fell short of expectations, perhaps you should expand this to as many good HRP textures that you can use?

It is my understanding that AI upscales had been originally thought to provide better accuracy and faithfulness to the source low-res textures. However, so far I'm being convinced of the opposite, namely that the work of human artist is truer to the original art even when the result is not a 1:1 match of all details in the source image.

[Phredreeke]

Funny enough, the background textures in the ERP experienced a similar problem to the HRP only compressed into a much shorter timescale, as my methods changed as I was working on it.

With the latest Blood Upscale Pack, I utilised many textures from Necrobitz Blood XHD pack. I may attempt using a similar method here to merge HRP tile and upscale.

[Phredreeke]

Alright, I processed a number of HRP tiles in a similar way to the XHD tiles for the Blood upscale pack and here's the results (first pic is ERP, second is my HRP-upscale hybrid, third is the original tile)

Spoiler

The bottom indentations look a bit strange. I would probably copy parts of the middle indentations to the left and right ones if I were to use this.

The HRP-hybrid is softer, but then again the original upscale was quite a bit oversharpened

Now we're seeing improvements. The bolts here are definitively better than what was in the ERP

This is similar to the second texture in that the ERP is quite oversharpened. Maybe I'll dither it a bit though

While the vents don't quite align with the original texture, I do think this is an improvement over the ERP texture

As with the second texture is bolts look better here (even if they're slightly misaligned relative to the original texture) unsure about the wooden back texture

I like the added definition on the holes here

This is definitively an improvement

[Phredreeke]

Here's another example of a HRP-upscale hybrid tile. The bolts had to be repositioned to match the original tile but the added definition is worth it IMO

https://imgsli.com/ODExNjE

[MrFlibble]

Yes, that's definitely the way to go. Great job!

[Dzierzan]

Those hybrids really look good. I never liked HRP, but if some of these assets were really faithful enough to the source material, then using them for ERP is not a bad idea.

[Phredreeke]

As for tile 0157, the HRP mixing method didn't work, I ended up falling back on a different model (in this case, XBRDD interpolated with Fatality3, something I had previously used for the lock panels among other tiles) and copying the top and bottom from that to the existing upscale

I did use one part from the HRP-hybrid, can you tell what it is?

Attached thumbnail(s)

• 

[Phredreeke]

I've avoided CON mods so far, but this is one thing that struck my mind.

I'd like to make it so that Duke it out in DC and Life's a Beach skips the episode select. It's minor but a QoL change and Raze already does it out of the box.

Is there anyone here who would be opposed to such a change?

[MrFlibble]

Phredreeke, on 11 November 2021 - 04:33 AM, said:

As for tile 0157, the HRP mixing method didn't work, I ended up falling back on a different model (in this case, XBRDD interpolated with Fatality3, something I had previously used for the lock panels among other tiles) and copying the top and bottom from that to the existing upscale

It's a pity that the HRP hybrid method did not work in this case, because this particular texture looks very poor with AI upscales only, as many small details get completely mangled into something incoherent.

The HRP version does an excellent job in treating all the small parts, but repositions and in some cases reshapes everything so that the end result deviates from the original image quite a bit.

Phredreeke, on 11 November 2021 - 04:33 AM, said:

I did use one part from the HRP-hybrid, can you tell what it is?

The round thing on the left?

[Phredreeke]

Correct! I may try using different models for this texture, possibly PP25+Nickelback+redithering.

The HRP merge, in addition to not lining up also had the green slime(?) spots disappear in the result

BTW, please see if there any other textures you think needs redoing. I've already redone some (outside of the HRP hybrids)

[Aleks]

Phredreeke, on 09 November 2021 - 12:56 PM, said:

Alright, I processed a number of HRP tiles in a similar way to the XHD tiles for the Blood upscale pack and here's the results (first pic is ERP, second is my HRP-upscale hybrid, third is the original tile)

Spoiler

The bottom indentations look a bit strange. I would probably copy parts of the middle indentations to the left and right ones if I were to use this.

The HRP-hybrid is softer, but then again the original upscale was quite a bit oversharpened

Now we're seeing improvements. The bolts here are definitively better than what was in the ERP

This is similar to the second texture in that the ERP is quite oversharpened. Maybe I'll dither it a bit though

While the vents don't quite align with the original texture, I do think this is an improvement over the ERP texture

As with the second texture is bolts look better here (even if they're slightly misaligned relative to the original texture) unsure about the wooden back texture

I like the added definition on the holes here

This is definitively an improvement

One thing that struck me from this and also from your later approach to Nuke symbol door is the surface finish doesn't look too well with just the ERP on surfaces that are supposed to resemble metal. On the other hand, the "brushed" surface look better here in the Atomic wooden texture than in the HRP/ERP mix thing. Looking back at some of the things you've uploaded (I haven't played Duke with your mod, so can't tell how it works in game), it seems the surface finish is one thing that really triggers the uncanny valley for a lot of these (besides some details being twisted around the edges etc.), so that's probably one more thing to consider.

Also not sure about the purple lava here, in this case I'd personally prefer the ERP version, but then it's hard to tell because I'm really not sure what it should resemble in real life

[Phredreeke]

I did a new upscale of 157, and merged with the old one



Slide-over comparison https://imgsli.com/ODE0NDQ

[Phredreeke]

Did some further tweaking. This time I merged in the old texture with the pp25-nickelback upscale before redithering. This lets some of the detail in the old upscale through, without it being too obnoxious https://imgsli.com/ODE1MDc

I'm inclined to consider this particular texture finished now.

[Phredreeke]

Quick edit merging existing upscale with one of the XXX pack

Spoiler