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This is for reals. A remastered version of Grim Fandango is something I've wanted to see for years and years, and finally Residual has caught up. Today is the first time anyone has successfully put high-res textures into Grim Fandango, to my knowledge. All previous attempts haven't worked due to the way the game's engine mapped textures. It was only after discussing it with the developers that we finally hit on a hack for Residual that might make it work... So I popped it in, compiled the code -- and, lo! It worked!

I then made some high-res versions of the textures, staying as close to the original ones as possible and took some screengrabs.

The best thing would be to up the polygon count on the models, but there's no way to do that until someone writes an app to convert the .3do files to .obj (and back again) -- and then there could still be unforeseen problems.

Still exciting though! :tup:

NewManny.jpg

Edited by ThunderPeel2001

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It's in the game. I can tell from the pixels. I'm an expert.

edit: Oh man, that would've been way funnier had I actually pressed post those many hours ago. ;(

edit edit: Why am I not invited to this uprezzing party?

edit edit edit: Can you send me a .3do file?

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Polygon count seems to me of lesser importance. That might easily take away the charm and design of the models, whereas the textures are just sharper and 'more true' to vision of the game.

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Nicely shitplugged, Peels! I didn't know you were doing this thing. What is Residual? Are you working at LucasArts black ops?

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Thanks, everyone :tup:

I have some reservations about what's actually possible with increasing the texture resolution. For most characters you never see them close enough for it to make a difference, and the clothing is so stylized that it's hard to see where extra detail could be added, but I'm sure there's some potential.

edit edit edit: Can you send me a .3do file?

If you want to get involved in the ongoing attempts at making GF beautiful(er), there's a thread I started on Residual's forums:

http://residual.scummvm.org/viewtopic.php?t=100

I put some 3do files from Grim here for you:

http://www.thunderpeel2001.com/grim/

I don't know what they are exactly, as I can't open them. Please feel free to hack around :) (Unfortunately they're binary .3do files, so old Jedi Knight tools that converted to more common formats don't work, as that game used text .3do files.)

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Polygon count seems to me of lesser importance. That might easily take away the charm and design of the models, whereas the textures are just sharper and 'more true' to vision of the game.

I don't know, taking a look at the original concepts of Manny, there is a lot of personality there too. Might be really cool if that is properly translated into the game.

If you want to get involved in the ongoing attempts at making GF beautiful(er), there's a thread I started on Residual's forums:

http://residual.scummvm.org/viewtopic.php?t=100

I put some 3do files from Grim here for you:

http://www.thunderpeel2001.com/grim/

I don't know what they are exactly, as I can't open them. Please feel free to hack around :) (Unfortunately they're binary .3do files, so old Jedi Knight tools that converted to more common formats don't work, as that game used text .3do files.)

Sweet! Thanks a bundle. Just saying in advance that I wouldn't know how to program a converter, but I can totally do higher res textures and remodeling.

Edited by PiratePooAndHisBattleship

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Ooh, guys, I dunno if this is a good idea... I kindof like it all pure and as it was supposed to be and stuff... :hmph:

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I can't tell if you're serious or not. ;(

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I think it would be nice if certain things about the skeletons were smoothed out in terms of polygons. Telling which way to do this would be more difficult, even with concept art on hand.

From looking at the concept art, I am sure making Manny have a pill shaped head would not be correct, but I think the polygon point at the top of his head should be more flat while the left and right sides would come up more to an edge (but still a smoothed edge).

Disclaimer (certainly for people who thought I was making a Duckman fan game and may see this post five years from now and thinking I'm redoing GF models): This is all speculation and work I have no plan on doing.

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Ooh, guys, I dunno if this is a good idea... I kindof like it all pure and as it was supposed to be and stuff... :hmph:

Oh no! If you've just posted this earlier I wouldn't have deleted all the older versions of the game in existence. Now we'll never get it back! Ugh!

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Part of the charm of the original GF is that it uses the limits of the engine to its advantage and admirably for all characters except maybe Glottis. Also, I dunno how easy adding deformable meshes would be to the game, considering none were. If you push the fidelity of the textures past a certain point, the meshes will start to look super weird as they are, even if you fix them up to increase the polygon count.

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Part of the charm of the original GF is that it uses the limits of the engine to its advantage and admirably for all characters except maybe Glottis. Also, I dunno how easy adding deformable meshes would be to the game, considering none were. If you push the fidelity of the textures past a certain point, the meshes will start to look super weird as they are, even if you fix them up to increase the polygon count.

There's no charm from it using a badly utilized engine, at least not for me. But mainly, why on earth are you wasting time and energy worrying something... that hasn't even been made yet?

Just seems like a lot of negative energy over something that may never actually materialize.

In the meantime, imagine Grim Fandango exactly how you want it. That's how the version you're going to play is going to look.

Edited by ThunderPeel2001

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Way to crap on my childhood memories ThunderPeel2001! Seriously though, looks nice! I'm unable feel nostalgic about early 3D graphics the way I do about 2D ones. You have my permission to go ahead.

I started playing with Inkscape again out of boredom after a long period of not playing with it. I have no idea where this is going, though. Most likely to my pile of unfinished and abandoned things.

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Wait, what? There is no negative energy anywhere, especially not in the thing you quoted there. I am not really worried—just playing devil's advocate—and halfheartedly at that. I was wondering if it would be possible to have deformable meshes as opposed to what GF does which is weirdly clipped, static geometric solids. Glottis and other organic characters would benefit from looking a little more fleshy.

I know EMI's GRIME had deformable meshes. I wonder if it is crazy talk to patch one with the other.

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Wait, what? There is no negative energy anywhere, especially not in the thing you quoted there. I am not really worried—just playing devil's advocate—and halfheartedly at that. I was wondering if it would be possible to have deformable meshes as opposed to what GF does which is weirdly clipped, static geometric solids. Glottis and other organic characters would benefit from looking a little more fleshy.

I know EMI's GRIME had deformable meshes. I wonder if it is crazy talk to patch one with the other.

Oh. Your post sounded like a continuation of the previous one about it being "all pure and stuff". Happy to play devil's advocate with anyone about this (unless it's a debate about "should you, shouldn't you").

We're just taking it one step at a time at the moment, seeing what works and what doesn't. The first thing I noticed when suddenly being given more space to add detail: The textures don't really lend themselves to it. They're very stylized and cartoony, which is great, but it means that there's no need to make them look "realistic" or anything.

That said, I started looking at the close-ups of Manny's chest (when he opens his inventory), and got an idea of what "hi-res" might look like in the world of Grim Fandango. It has a very hand-drawn kind of feel, actually.

Consider the following original artwork:

suit2.jpg

suit.jpg

With that in mind I tried an experiment today to see how it look, this time using 512x512 textures:

MannyNewSuit.jpg

(Manny's eyes and teeth are still not quite right, and his tie isn't quite working, but this is just an experiment to see how it looks. Also it's been limited to a texture palette of 256 colours, so the gradients aren't as smooth as they should be.)

As for adding extra polygons, I do think it might be possible, if we're careful. My personal peeves are the hands. They could look lovely, but instead they used Xs for fingers.

Edited by ThunderPeel2001

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I've resisted spamming you all with the episodes of Behind The Bytes as we've been releasing them, but here's the finale, where we, er... go off our rockers a little. Basically, we break every rule of the series. This is less of a talking head mockumentary, and more of an absurd thriller - all about Nintendo's shady doings.

Have a look.

klQjWXynmYU

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Loving the typical internet comments. It's never "Hey look, someone is putting in time and effort on a beloved game", but "looks like it sucks, I will instantly judge this."

Nevsky: You should pimp them more! I loved the first one, but then it left my mind until now, so now I'm gonna watch all of them.

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Yikes! I was hoping to keep this on the downlow until we had a clear understanding of what was possible and how much work needed to be done, but it's getting more attention than I planned. I appear on this week's Mixnmojo podcast to explain a little more about what's going, too. (They'd already mentioned it on the previous week's cast, so the cat was already out of the bag.) Looks like I need to pick up the pace before interest in the project wanes!

They totally boinked the image they chose to illustrate it with, though. Even I can barely see the difference.

Loving the typical internet comments. It's never "Hey look, someone is putting in time and effort on a beloved game", but "looks like it sucks, I will instantly judge this."

Haha, yes. I will immediately cease all work on the project due to the fact that some people don't like it.

Edited by ThunderPeel2001

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Neat. I'm going to try to see if there's a way I can use that somewhere in the business software I work on :)

It feels a bit hacky/ad-hoc to me though. Have you ever thought about making it more generic? Maybe a bit more like a jquery plugin?

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It feels a bit hacky/ad-hoc to me though. Have you ever thought about making it more generic? Maybe a bit more like a jquery plugin?
It is totally hacky and ad-hoc. But it doesn't need to be a jquery plugin. I don't know if it would be a worthwhile waste of my time, frankly.

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Yikes! I was hoping to keep this on the downlow until we had a clear understanding of what was possible and how much work needed to be done, but it's getting more attention than I planned. I appear on this week's Mixnmojo podcast to explain a little more about what's going, too. (They'd already mentioned it on the previous week's cast, so the cat was already out of the bag.) Looks like I need to pick up the pace before interest in the project wanes!

Mixnmojo has a podcast? Who does it? What do they talk about (given that the current state of adventure gaming is probably a limited topic)? Is it good?

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