[Mark]

Phredreeke: I saw it was easy to change the folder name in your batch file. I noticed it works only for .png files right now but I assume I can change that in the batch file too.

Would it be possible to expand on this idea so that it works with the existing texture name and format? My projects usually have a combo of texture formats and non-sequential names.

[Phredreeke]

Here's an attempt to fix the door (through selective scripting) in the screenshot posted last night

While this one looks better, others end up looking far worse...

Attached thumbnail(s)

• 

[Tea Monster]

About the HRP: All though there are a relatively small number of updated 3D models, most of the wall textures have been completed to a high level of quality. Something to bear in mind. Possibly separate the wall textures to a separate pack?

[Mark]

The rock and ground textures are very well done also.

[Phredreeke]

Well, the existing HRP isn't going away.

What textures get used in ERP* is up to NightFright, at least until we form some kinda working group for the project.


* I'd propose changing Enhanced Resolution Pack to Enhanced Resource Pack to better reflect the scope of the pack. After all the upscaled assets are only part of it.

[NightFright]

I think the best process would be to publish all potential contents for the new pack (whatever its name will be in the end) here first for general review, and only if there are no major objections from anybody I would add them to a repo (that doesn't exist yet). Basically it's just about sprites and textures since Voxel Pack and SC-55 Music Pack would be included without any changes.

To which degree would the 2x sprites from Alien Armageddon be directly usable elsewhere?

PS: And yeah, the old HRP would ofc not disappear, maybe with a label like "Legacy Edition" or something.

[Phredreeke]

NightFright, on 28 September 2020 - 02:14 AM, said:

To which degree would the 2x sprites from Alien Armageddon be directly usable elsewhere?

I've already sent you the latest upscales, which goes beyond what is included there.

[Phredreeke]

While I've been working on the environment textures, I've compiled some side-by-side pics of edited upscales from my upscale pack, to see which would be acceptable for the tentatively called ERP and which are going too far.

Spoiler

Ammo pickups have text Missiles resp. Rockets added to them.

Labels for switches remade (using Megaton font)


Remade faces for multiple girls

The Exotica poster was edited to match the above dancer. The other two posters had eyes and mouths added to their faces.

This had the porn mag from the separate tile edited in.

Here I opted to use a recolored tile from Shadow Warrior. The most telltale sign being the noise bars in the middle.

Liztroop edited to have larger eyes like the DN64 counterpart.

I used the separate pigcop sprite to improve definition of the pig in the tank. Cianez redid the LARD text of the tank.

[NightFright]

I would say everything is OK except for the ammo labels. For my taste these have been changed too much. As for the stripper babe, my impression was that she is supposed to smile and show her teeth since the mouth part has white instead of red pixels.

With the rest I could live.

[Phredreeke]

Yeah. The stripper babe, the liztroop and the Missiles box were the ones I was thinking of.

(not shown here but I've also been working on adding fullbright eyes to the liztroop)

[Reaper_Man]

Out of curiosity, are these upscales using waifu2x, or using the Nvidia / Topaz AI that the Doom neural upscale project used? I recall a comment from I think the Alien Armageddon thread where waifu2x was mentioned.

[Phredreeke]

Neither, they use ESRGAN, mostly using the Manga109 model interpolated with either PSNR or DeviantPixel HD.

[Rellik]

Re: Ammo crates

Yeah, the font choice is bad and the words "Missiles" and "Rockets" is a little too on the nose.

Here's my take on the RPG ammo crate, I used a stencil font to give it a military look, and I called it TBG-7V MK2 (based on a real type of RPG ammo)

[Hendricks266]

Phredreeke, on 29 September 2020 - 03:04 AM, said:

Spoiler

Ammo pickups have text Missiles resp. Rockets added to them.

I like Rellik's text.

Phredreeke, on 29 September 2020 - 03:04 AM, said:

Spoiler

Labels for switches remade (using Megaton font)

The font is a good match, but the text might need some kind of detail texture applied.

Phredreeke, on 29 September 2020 - 03:04 AM, said:

Spoiler

Here I opted to use a recolored tile from Shadow Warrior. The most telltale sign being the noise bars in the middle.

The Duke tile replacement shouldn't have the noise line.

Phredreeke, on 29 September 2020 - 03:04 AM, said:

Spoiler

Liztroop edited to have larger eyes like the DN64 counterpart.

This should be its own mod or option.

Phredreeke, on 29 September 2020 - 03:04 AM, said:

Spoiler

I used the separate pigcop sprite to improve definition of the pig in the tank. Cianez redid the LARD text of the tank.

Looks good, except the text which doesn't match the original sprite and also looks pasted on.

[Phredreeke]

Hendricks: thank you, this is the exact feedback I wanted

Rellik: thanks for contributing

[Phredreeke]

I did an edit to remove the noise bars

[Phredreeke]

I've uploaded a set of upscaled world textures, which I've attempted to improve compatibility with palette swaps

This does not include the tiles originating from my upscale pack (as seen in my recent post). It's also of dubious use to anyone without a build with indexed hightiles (although I suppose the HRP's tint defs could substitute for some cases) There's also no edits to any individual tiles, meaning some looks kinda... meh.


Can we have a newer build of EDuke32 with indexed hightiles? The most recent one I have is from May.

I took a screenshot at the start of Lunar Reactor to compare with the previous one

Attached thumbnail(s)

• 

[MrFlibble]

Just popping in to point out there's a nice ESRGAN model called Lollypop that produces some at least theoretically interesting results with textures.

I ran a few Duke3D textures through it (actually I mixed in a little bit of another model by the same author, Rebout Blend; alpha = 0.1), scaled down to 2x ("Bicubic better" method in mtPaint) and palettised using mtPaint's Dithered (effect) method (zoomed up 2x with nearest neighbour for better readibility):


No idea how these would look in-game though. Also I haven't tested them for proper tiling.

[Phredreeke]

I had a discussion with Nightfright and while I initially favoured 2x scale he preferred 4x.

Lollypop is indeed a nice model and those are good results. The main reason for using Manga109/DeviantPixel HD is I already had all the tiles tiled and upscaled using it.

this is your upscale of tile 157 with the red palswap.


Had the same issue with my upscale, as can be seen in the screens I posted. What I did to resolve it was to make a copy using a palette excluding certain rows of the duke palette (those that cause those bright streaks), then I used a script that compared the palswaps of those two versions with a third (upscaled from a pal02 swapped tile) and created a mask based on which version is closest.

[MrFlibble]

I'm unable to download your upscales via the link you posted earlier as Malwarebytes totally blocks the site.

Lollypop is neat because it seems to correctly deal away with dithering most of the time, instead of trying to expand those pixels into patterns that are not supposed to be there.

Here are 4x originals for some of the above, also palettised with mtPaint dithering:

[Phredreeke]

Is mtpaint able to batch process?

Also, here's an alternate download link https://files.fm/f/95csuhcz

[Jimmy]

Just my two cents on 2x vs 4x. Any erroneous behaviour by the AI is doubled when you go for 4x. It's more obvious that they are done using an AI. Does 4x really make any difference in comparison to 2x? The HRP used 4x because new details were literally being drawn in. Upscaling, much like the original art, can only imply new details. I'd also like to point out that all voxels are basically done at "1x", so they still fit nicely against 2x scales, with 4x scales I feel it might create a noticeable chasm in the amount of pixels.

I'd also recommend using Image Analzyer to convert the images back into palette. I haven't used mtpaint myself, but I've seriously never found another program that even comes close to Image Analyzer, even ones that cost hundreds of dollars. It appears most programs just grab the closest color it finds first, whether than the best color match it can find which Image Analyzer does.

[Phredreeke]

I don't feel that 4x scale really adds much over 2x.

That said, most of the models for ESRGAN are hardcoded for 4x scale so the 2x upscales are downscaled in postprocessing anyhow.

Edit: Here's a tile from the 4x pack I uploaded, next to a 2x scale tile for comparison

[Hendricks266]

If 4x means 2x upscaling a tile twice, that's bad. It should be one 4x step, or settle with 2x.

On the other hand, if the model outputs 4x then use that, unless the extra steps at the end depend on downsampling.

[Jimmy]

To my eyes the 4x has a smudgy look, while the 2x has more of a pixel art look, though now that you mention it some of the downsampling is more obvious but not necessarily bad.

[NightFright]

I would like to see some ingame comparison screenshots of scenes with 2x and 4x resolution. If the changes are not noticable at first glance, I guess it's not worth going for 4x after all.

This upscaling process does not seem to bring forth more details like neural upscaling, so my assumption would be that higher resolution would not automatically mean better image quality. A certain blurriness cannot be denied in general.

[Phredreeke]

https://imgsli.com/MjQzODA
https://imgsli.com/MjQzODE
https://imgsli.com/MjQzODI

Edit: Lollypop has some weird side effects (scaled 2x afterwards for clarity)

[MrFlibble]

Phredreeke, on 04 October 2020 - 01:01 PM, said:

Edit: Lollypop has some weird side effects (scaled 2x afterwards for clarity)

Honestly I think dev portraits should not be upscaled. Hunt down the original pics, or use any other pics of them if you need, or don't touch the low res stuff at all.

Anyways, I interpolated Lollypop with Rebout Blend at 0.5 which seems to produce clean results that seem rather accurate to the low-res originals.

Spoiler

ERMAHGERD

BERKS

Phredreeke, on 04 October 2020 - 09:20 AM, said:

Is mtpaint able to batch process?

Not that I know of. But the Dithered effect is rather similar (albeit, I believe, better) to a method used by GIMP.

Jimmy, on 04 October 2020 - 10:51 AM, said:

I'd also recommend using Image Analzyer to convert the images back into palette. I haven't used mtpaint myself, but I've seriously never found another program that even comes close to Image Analyzer, even ones that cost hundreds of dollars. It appears most programs just grab the closest color it finds first, whether than the best color match it can find which Image Analyzer does.

I got Image Analyzer a while ago when you mentioned it in a similar context. It is indeed very good at finding colour matches when palettising (certainly better than other tools that I tried), except I have found no way to use dithering with a specified palette.

[Mark]

The higher res developer head pics are posted in these forums somewhere. IIRC the heads needed to be added to the original backround which could be rescaled now. I made one just to start the ball rolling for anyone else to continue with. If you can't find the thread with the pics I'll search for them on my backup drives. I know I saved them somewhere in case I decided to remake all of them.

edit: I started searching here and found a post of mine from Jan 2018 that also mentioned someone found the highres heads and that I remade 1 tile. So concentrate your searching before that date.

[Jimmy]

LollypopWhatever Mr Flibble is doing looks awful.