[CADANAMAN]

Hello everyone.

I'm running a kind of large scale project for Sonic Adventure 2 (Battle) that replaces most or all of the game's textures with better-looking, high-resolution textures. Not necessarily something different, but something that looks nice and fresh that will keep players interested and maybe attract new players. I thought this would be a good idea and decided to post about it on the Chao Island forums, and people there thought it was a good idea as well.

So I'm here to spread the word to those who wouldn't mind helping out a bit, I'm hoping to reach quite a number of people to work on making textures look better. The number of texture files in the game is quite large, so it would definitely speed up the process.

I can't say much about a reward, except the satisfaction of making the game looking better.

Take a look at this guy's tutorial, and see if you're interested. Let me know what you think.
http://chao.hippotan...hp?f=33&t=42265

[W.A.C.]

Oh wow, I made an account there long ago and totally forgot about the forum despite the fact I initially discovered the site in 2002. lol

Last visit was: Fri May 29, 2009 11:13 am

Anyways, a higher resolution version of Sonic Adventure 2: Battle would be pretty cool. Is it also possible to change more than textures? Like some of the polygons? Because if it wasn't too difficult to change both, that could really open up possibilities on what could be accomplished with visual enhancements.

[Covarr]

Do you have any work done already? The idea is nice, but it'll be tough to recruit people if you haven't done anything yourself to get them started.

[Aerosol]

I'm down as soon as I have a desk. Shouldn't be too long now.

[MainMemory]

W.A.C., on 13 March 2014 - 03:46 PM, said:

Is it also possible to change more than textures? Like some of the polygons?

No.

[Black Squirrel]

Draw distance. That should be the number one priority, because Sonic and co run into the screen.

Sega didn't quite grasp this with their own ports - they felt it would be better to go for 16:9 widescreen so you can see more... in the wrong direction. And it'll be even more jarring with higher resolution textures.

(p.s. on its own there are limits to how good higher resolution textures will look - the big step up comes when you start introducing better lighting and bump mapping)

[Strife]

Sounds pretty cool! I wish you luck with it :D

I'd love to see some updated models in the game, but I remember asking MainMemory about it a few months ago and he said that editing models is not currently possible. Kindof a bummer, but, oh well.

I wonder if it's entirely possible to change the lighting system as well, since it might help make the textures pop out better in some of the more universally dim stages. (And there are actually some differences in lighting between the Dreamcast and PC versions, so this sort of editing could help revert some of those changes).

[Dark Sonic]

Maybe you could use some of Generations's textures for the city and the arc levels?

Also I'd love to see the Modern models put in this game. Shame it's not possible yet.

[Sodaholic]

Unless you have a large and dedicated team, there's no point in trying. It's a shit load of work, and even if it were finished, people may not like the results. As others have pointed out, lighting plays a huge role. Just take a look at hi res projects for other old games. They often make the game look worse, since the poor lighting and low poly geometry is only more noticeable in contrast to the new textures.

[CADANAMAN]

That's pretty much the point of this thread, I'm just seeing how many people would see this as a good idea. There is indeed a fuckton of textures in it, and wouldn't do good with the current draw distance and lighting.

If I feel that a lot of people are down to try this out, then I might give this thing a go. Maybe I'm not the best person to lead this kind of thing, I mean I don't have the best machine to run SA2 at advanced settings. For example, people have Nvidia plugins for ambient occlusion, which by itself makes the game look so much better. I'm gonna have to take a while to think about this.

It's also true that people may not like it, which I guess is another reason it would be best that a lot of people help out. That way we can get more opinions on things. I dunno, I think this has a lot of potential but also has lots of room for failure, and for the amount of time this takes, would be a huge letdown.

[winterhell]

1)How many people do you have on the team that are doing at least 1 texture per week?

2)How many textures has the team completed so far?

3)Are you going to do textures yourself or are you just a "team leader"?

These questions would determine if the project has any chance of seeing the daylight.
About No.2. Having no proof of concept work done, screenshot or anything to show for, you cant expect people to hop your wagon. Post a mockup screenshot at least.
You know, had this be an "I'm making an HD remake of a game but I cant show even a single screenshot" topic, it'd be long locked and trashed.
As for No.3 if the actual leader is not doing any textures, its GameOver Day One.
Those are few things that you need to look out for.

I apologize for sounding rude. I really wish to see the project come to life.

[Aerosol]

I just think it'd be fun to make up new textures. Whether it gets finished or not is another thing entirely, but if everyone's having fun I don't think it matters.

[CADANAMAN]

Exactly, something new at all would at least be something exciting.

And the thing is, I'm still getting people on board this whole thing, and I've just been going through a lot of the textures and blowing them up to a large size and sharpening them a bit, just to see what that would even look like. I've completely covered Pumpkin Hill already, but I can say that simply enhancing the current textures is definitely not going to be enough. Perhaps something entirely new will be more noticeable.

You see, there's still so much thought left to go through in this process, that's why I'm currently undecided as to whether or not I'm going through with this. It's going to be a lot of effort regardless, we do know that. What we don't know is how it will turn out. So it's pretty risky.

I'll do some before > after images later, since I just decided to post this right after I woke up in the middle of the night. ;-;

[JaxTH]

So basically...You have nothing to show and you yourself aren't even sure if you want to do this or not.

[Aerosol]

Fuck it, there's no point trying to convince Retro to just have fun with something for once.

Cadaman, don't stay so fixated on the end goal. Planning is good, but there comes a point where you plan so much you don't get anything done. Fixating on the end goal like that is going to pressure you to plan it all out, which isn't going to work, and you're going to psyche yourself out in the end.

Pick small things you can. How about dumping all the textures yourself? That's easy. Then you can organize them by stage, that's easy too. Or how about just picking a couple of textures that just piss you off with how ugly they are?

Whatever it is, just DO it. Stop thinking so much.

This post has been edited by Aerosol: 14 March 2014 - 07:02 AM