Originally posted by maxrebo2:

A font mod for V and VI that adds a better looking font would be greatly appreciated.

This was something I was thinking of changing myself. As soon as we get the modding tool I'm going to look into it... Unless someone changes it quicker.

I'm definitely interested in working on this. I'm personally more invested in the saturation shift the gradiant change makes, but as long as the additions aren't too "fan-art" in their look, then I'd at least like to get into the colors and gradients.

I've never had a problem with the new art but I have no interest in trying to force this game to look like it did on the SNES. I do however think that a little work needs to be done to fix what's already there.

The only issue with splitting the load is consistency. It's hard to get a handful of people to make consistent decisions across all the various assets.

As soon as we have the assets at our disposal, well be able to see how long this might actually take.

Originally posted by Krisan Thyme:

Originally posted by Dangus ))<>(( Taargus:

I'm glad you're in to it. I'm a little bummed to the general consensus on Kotaku and PCgamer in the comments sections of the articles... People are missing the point I guess. Oh well. I'm glad some folks understand why this is cool.

I'm also surprised that the rest of what's been done here over the past year was kind of glossed over entirely, or that the same fix was applied to FFV as well. But all and all I'm happy, to tell you the truth. We actually gained a decent influx of members since the headlines hit! :FFXIIIvanille:

I didn't do anything myself, but I'm glad I pestered everyone to make it happen. The more people here now that this is out, the more cool things we can do.

Originally posted by Draken/Eitan:

I just read a article on Kotaku about this modding. Its getting me a bit excited - I havent bought this release of th game yet since it looks so bd but already its starting to improve.

Basicaly - Thanks!

I'm glad you're in to it. I'm a little bummed to the general consensus on Kotaku and PCgamer in the comments sections of the articles... People are missing the point I guess. Oh well. I'm glad some folks understand why this is cool.

Originally posted by Piotyr:

Would it be possible to add a new filter? In the blog post "Doing an HD Remake the Right Way: FFVI Edition" he applies a nice XBR filter over the game to great effect. Is there any way to do such for the real game?

Now that the game isn't applying any filters at all. I'd suggest going back and maybe adding your own with SweetFX?

Otherwise you'll have to talk to the modder. But you might be able to add cool filters like CRT scanlines, etc. now that are not poorly effected by the original Bilinear filter if you have the patch applied, they might look nice.

Originally posted by Krisan Thyme:

Originally posted by Dangus ))<>(( Taargus:

Number 3 there is exactly the issue i think an enthusiastic modder is going to run into when they try to start changing things. If the old sprites don't fit into the new sprite sheets via 2x 3x or 4x, then they aren't going to look right... or move right. I'd start with the world tiles though... seems a good first step.

The thing is, with V at least, we can already start changing it... I think someone already successfuly changed Bartz to the old sprite weeks ago. But V has 1861 assets... that's gonna take a LONG time to fix.

Personally, I actually think the new sprites are fine... they aren't award winning by any stretch, but they aren't THAT bad. My personal hang up was always with their mind boggling decision to obscure everything under that filter. This should have always been an option, not a mandated prescription. But whatever, it's been fixed for now.... well at least until SE updates the game again (if they do).

I agree, the newer sprites are.. passable, I suppose. They're not really good per'se, but they could be worse. My issue was always the filter as well, so now that we've removed that I'm pretty satisfied honestly.

That said, I'd love to see some artists take a crack at drawing new sprites for both of these games, particularly if they do it in the same style as the PSP FF ports. (Which in my humble opinion, were truly beautiful games aesthetically.)

Yeah I played FFIV on DS, not knowing it had a PSP version (although I don't own a PSP so I wouldn't have ever played it anyway) but when when I saw the sprite work they did, I was floored. I think the smart thing to do is look at what can be used from the PSP port of IV, and apply it to V and VI where it works, and then fill in the gaps as best as possible. However, looking at the enemy sprites and the backgrounds... it seems like some of that stuff was probably already used officially? I'm not sure. The other option is of course to try to force the old sprites in there... but that seems like it won't work without some other liberties being taken...

Honestly, now that the filter is gone, I'm satisfied. I think the menu COULD change, but if it doesn't, oh well. VI seems a lot better than V in that regard, so I think V is the real candidate for a menu mod.

Originally posted by lars.doucet:

Originally posted by Dangus ))<>(( Taargus:

One of the issues with both games is that they handle text scaling dependent to the resolution you set the game to run at. So if you use, say, Windowed Bordless Gaming, to force the game to run in fullscreen from it's native, windowed resolution, you end up with a full screen, properly rendered game, but text displaying at the size of the internal resolution (tiny).

I think a proper fix would be to look in to fixing the resolution that the game uses when you selet fullscreen mode. Forcing it to run at a certain size in windowed mode is currently fixable with the hex mod.

Hmm... well, there's a few things I can think of, each with different pros/cons:

1) Your solution (keep the internal resolution for game, somehow keep high res for text/menu on top)

2) Replace fonts with pixel fonts that look alright at smaller scale

3) Original sprite mod
This one will be a bit tricky -- it depends on the new sprite sheets being a size that the originals can cleanly scale up to (2x, 3x, 4x) without too much dead space around the edges. Also, an original sprite mod will almost certainly suffer from subpixel movement -- ie, if you upscale original Terra with Nearest Neighbor by 3x, the game will still move her around 1 pixel at a time when it should visually be doing 3 pixels at a time.

Challenges to be sure, but this is very promising!

Number 3 there is exactly the issue i think an enthusiastic modder is going to run into when they try to start changing things. If the old sprites don't fit into the new sprite sheets via 2x 3x or 4x, then they aren't going to look right... or move right. I'd start with the world tiles though... seems a good first step.

The thing is, with V at least, we can already start changing it... I think someone already successfuly changed Bartz to the old sprite weeks ago. But V has 1861 assets... that's gonna take a LONG time to fix.

Personally, I actually think the new sprites are fine... they aren't award winning by any stretch, but they aren't THAT bad. My personal hang up was always with their mind boggling decision to obscure everything under that filter. This should have always been an option, not a mandated prescription. But whatever, it's been fixed for now.... well at least until SE updates the game again (if they do).

Originally posted by JayD:

Originally posted by Davoodinator:

this one has the potential to unseat the SNES (finally) as the definitive platform. i think the modding will be easier with this one once you guys do all the heavy lifting <3

That depends on if we can get the original SNES sprites modded in there because these mobile port sprites look awful IMO.

That'll be A LOT of work. Less for 6, more for 5... but still, even if you change them all, they don't scale the same way. Some trickery is going to have to happen to have a 1:1 version of these two games in line with their originals. Lars.doucet explains it perfectly above me... the new sprites are larger, and the older sprites aren't going to easily scale into the new ones because they need to be the same size for everything to look right in the game. I'm not necessarily speaking from experience here though, I haven't had the opportunity to change anything yet... but you can easily try it yourself with V and dat-png converter.

My hunch is that the first and easiest thing to get modded in both versions will be the background tiles. They probably scale well, and aren't effected by user movement input.

Personally, I'm not interested in the old sprites all that much (I never played these games as a child, and while I don't find the new sprites all that great, I don't think they're all that bad either).

Originally posted by lars.doucet:

@jshackles: Those are indeed 1:1 square pixels! How'd you get that?

Even if it can only be run "properly" in windowed mode, once you have a proper output I imagine there's other utility programs that it can be run through that could perhaps give you a fullscreen output with whatever upscaling formula you like, right?

One of the issues with both games is that they handle text scaling dependent to the resolution you set the game to run at. So if you use, say, Windowed Bordless Gaming, to force the game to run in fullscreen from it's native, windowed resolution, you end up with a full screen, properly rendered game, but text displaying at the size of the internal resolution (tiny).

I think a proper fix would be to look in to fixing the resolution that the game uses when you selet fullscreen mode. Forcing it to run at a certain size in windowed mode is currently fixable with the hex mod.

Originally posted by jshackles:

So apparently the game renders internally at 480x320.

http://i.imgur.com/rshQhta.png

And here is the same shot run at 4x with a nearest neighbor interpolation:

http://i.imgur.com/UGA2xGH.png

Which to my eyes look like squared pixels. Hopefully you wizards can do something with this info.

There's a mod in the guides section that details how to force the game to a certain resolution, but I think it's only for windowed mode. Maybe that's the answer? I hadn't looked at it myself.