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NiroZ
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icon Re: Ask questions about DROD RPG (0)  
Bit blurry
07-28-2008 at 11:39 AM
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Jatopian
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Oh, so it's not just me. I have to agree a bit with the previous two posters... :(

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07-28-2008 at 12:04 PM
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Jutt
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I agree with the blur, but it was to be expected, as it is one of the recurring artifacts you get when upsampling graphics.
It is especially noticable though, because the grass and lamp graphics are new or have not been resized and thus appear much sharper.

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07-28-2008 at 12:29 PM
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I know nobady has stated otherwise, but DROD (or ToTS) is not about graphics. If the graphics can be made better without a huge time/money investment that's great, but otherwise it's fine as it is. In either way I'm eager for the finished product.
07-28-2008 at 12:34 PM
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Moo
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eytanz wrote:
Moo wrote:
My question, from seeing that screenshot.. Are those from-DROD graphics final? :unsure

Yes. Is there any problem you can see with them?

Well I was meaning final as in no plans to change them.. Not final as in they are how they will be when its released..

Anyway.. The grass and the GUI gfx look good.. The lamps do look a bit odd... But the walls, floor tiles, etc look like they've been resized from smaller DROD graphics, and are now blurry..
Kind of like when you use an LCD monitor on the wrong resolution..

Edit: looks like several people had the same answer while I was coming up with mine..

[Last edited by Moo at 07-28-2008 02:40 PM : heh]
07-28-2008 at 02:39 PM
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Moo wrote:
eytanz wrote:
Moo wrote:
My question, from seeing that screenshot.. Are those from-DROD graphics final? :unsure

Yes. Is there any problem you can see with them?

Well I was meaning final as in no plans to change them.. Not final as in they are how they will be when its released..

Anyway.. The grass and the GUI gfx look good.. The lamps do look a bit odd... But the walls, floor tiles, etc look like they've been resized from smaller DROD graphics, and are now blurry..
Kind of like when you use an LCD monitor on the wrong resolution..

Edit: looks like several people had the same answer while I was coming up with mine..

I made some "clearer" floor tiles, sharpened them better. I submitted them to mrimer, but he must decide.

As for the walls, it's certainly harder to sharpen them.

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07-28-2008 at 02:42 PM
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Moo
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Jutt wrote:
I agree with the blur, but it was to be expected, as it is one of the recurring artifacts you get when upsampling graphics.

If they are double the size of the originals, they could be resized by doubling each pixel.. It'd look pixellated and old-skool, but IMHO thats better than looking out of focus.. :look
07-28-2008 at 02:46 PM
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Moo wrote:
If they are double the size of the originals, they could be resized by doubling each pixel.. It'd look pixellated and old-skool, but IMHO thats better than looking out of focus.. :look
I 100% agree. It worked in Cave story (the game ran in 640x480, but had 320x240 graphics), and it will work here, IMHO. Or, at least make it an option - unpolished incosistent graphics are distracting.

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07-28-2008 at 02:51 PM
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Um, uh, where are the screenshots?
07-28-2008 at 03:38 PM
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mrimer
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Yeah, I agree. Over all the DROD releases, the aspect I've been most dissatisfied with are the graphics, and like I said above, this one is no exception. It's not a strong dissatisfaction, however -- just a niggling one in the back of my mind and I haven't noticed it causing me grief during actual play.

I'll share some history about this: I've tried various filters to make the larger graphics look right (also taking into account vittro's generous effort recently, as he mentioned), but I'm not seeing any improvement when I look at a room using these graphics. I originally tried a straight 2x2 resizing of the sprites, and to me they didn't look at all better than the way the graphics look now. In fact, I'd say they looked pretty bad. The blurry ones would have to be completely redrawn by hand to look flawlessly consistent, and that would take an artist hundreds of hours, I'm pretty sure, because there are over 3000 tiles in the game across all the room styles.

I've tried to recruit/hire several people to do this all throughout the two-year development cycle, but unfortunately none of them panned out. I could continue to try to find someone to do this properly, but realize it would delay release that much further. (However, if someone reading this actually wants to manually redraw some or all of the 22x22 TCB tiles at 44x44, I'll hear any offers. I'm not taking requests just to algorithmically resize the tiles at this point.)

So, there are no plans to change the graphics at this point, but I don't have a problem with anyone releasing a mod file exported from the game that contains an alternate graphics set (if fans prefer the Cave Story look of blocky pixels, say). However, if consistency is the issue, please realize these tiles would still be inconsistent with the sharply-defined sprites and background textures, and having tried it, I'd say it would be taking a step down from the current graphics when you look at it all together.

Besides this aspect of the game, I'm very happy with how most everything else turned out, and the remainder I'd say I'm pleased with.

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[Last edited by mrimer at 07-28-2008 04:15 PM]
07-28-2008 at 03:58 PM
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eytanz
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mrimer wrote:
I don't have a problem with anyone releasing a mod file exported from the game that contains an alternate graphics set (if fans prefer the Cave Story look of blocky pixels, say). However, realize these tiles would still be inconsistent with the sharply-defined graphics.

Mike - asking on behalf of the hold admins here, but also for the benefit of everyone else - could you clarify what you are giving permission for people to do here? Am I correct in understanding this to mean that people are free to use modified DROD:RPG graphics to create custom styles, and that this permission does not extend automatically to using custom graphics in DROD:RPG holds?


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07-28-2008 at 04:13 PM
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vittro
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What's wrong with this? (quick edit)





You can change between :

22*22 (TCB)
33*33
44*44 (RPG)


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[Last edited by vittro at 07-28-2008 04:23 PM]
07-28-2008 at 04:21 PM
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mrimer
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eytanz wrote:
mrimer wrote:
I don't have a problem with anyone releasing a mod file exported from the game that contains an alternate graphics set (if fans prefer the Cave Story look of blocky pixels, say). However, realize these tiles would still be inconsistent with the sharply-defined graphics.

Mike - asking on behalf of the hold admins here, but also for the benefit of everyone else - could you clarify what you are giving permission for people to do here? Am I correct in understanding this to mean that people are free to use modified DROD:RPG graphics to create custom styles, and that this permission does not extend automatically to using custom graphics in DROD:RPG holds?
Yes, of course. What I mean explicitly is this:

If someone wants to work with me/Caravel on a different version of the game tiles, they will need to form an agreement with Caravel, as usual, which would allow them to make resized versions of the 22x22 TCB graphics, and they would transfer ownership of their redone tiles to Caravel. Upon approval, Caravel would make this altered tileset mod file available for use in-game. This does not entitle anyone to post modified Caravel tiles or use them in their holds without permission, as has been conventionally done.

In short, I'm providing a suggestion for how Caravel can work with some people in the community to provide something that some of the fans want. I'm not releasing license or rights to the game graphics in any way.

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07-28-2008 at 04:25 PM
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File: DRODx2.png (2.4 MB)
Downloaded 105 times.
License: Public Domain
icon Re: Ask questions about DROD RPG (0)  
Well, going by the old wisdom "if you have AviSynth everything looks like a 1-frame video" I've thrown the following script at a screenshot I took from the JtRH for TCB:

function nnediresize2x(clip c, bool pY, bool pU, bool pV)
{
	v = c.nnedi(dh=true,field=0,Y=pY,U=pU,V=pV).turnleft()
	v = v.nnedi(dh=true,field=0,Y=pY,U=pU,V=pV).turnright()
	return v
}

source=ImageReader("drod.png",end=0).ConvertToYV12()

a=source.nnediresize2x(true,true,true)
a=a.nnediresize2x(true,true,true)
a=a.LimitedSharpenFaster()
a=a.BilinearResize(source.width*2,source.height*2)

b=source.BilinearResize(a.width,a.height)

a=a.Subtitle("a")
b=b.Subtitle("b")

Interleave(a,b)

ConvertToRGB32()


In short, that loads the image, resizes it to be four times as big in every direction by using Tritical's NNEDI plugin (which is a deinterlacer, but since it's job is to make lines up between existing ones it's also very good at doubling an image's height), sharpening the result with trusty old LimitedSharpenFaster then halving the result in both directions to get the wanted size doubling. It then interleaves both the resulting image and a simple bilinear resized version so you get a two-frame video so you can simply compare both versions...

I'm afraid the PNG got a bit big (2 and a half megabytes), but I didn't want to hamper quality by saving it as a JPG...

Any opinions?

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[Last edited by Briareos at 07-28-2008 04:57 PM]
07-28-2008 at 04:55 PM
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mrimer
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Briareos wrote:
Any opinions?
Thanks for trying this. I took out portions of your image for floor, walls and doors, and compared them side-by-side against the tiles for DROD RPG, and I see no perceivable difference. They look identical to me at close eyeball range, except that I think the floor texture I have looks a tiny bit sharper.

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[Last edited by mrimer at 07-28-2008 05:21 PM]
07-28-2008 at 05:21 PM
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mrimer wrote:
Briareos wrote:
Any opinions?
Thanks for trying this. I took out portions of your image for floor, walls and doors, and compared them side-by-side against the tiles for DROD RPG, and I see no perceivable difference. They look identical to me at close eyeball range, except that I think the floor texture I have looks a tiny bit sharper.
Well, I guess it was worth a try - though I have to say that the overwhelming amount of darkness and gloom in the screenshot you posted didn't make it a good basis for tile quality comparisons... :?

But, of course, no resize algorithm short of a paid or volunteer artist is able to add detail that wasn't there in the first place...

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[Last edited by Briareos at 07-28-2008 05:28 PM]
07-28-2008 at 05:27 PM
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What about my idea? I don't think it's hard to accomplish but mrimer must tell us if the rendering is flexible enough to change the size at runtime

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07-28-2008 at 08:23 PM
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vittro wrote:
What about my idea? I don't think it's hard to accomplish but mrimer must tell us if the rendering is flexible enough to change the size at runtime
It seems unlikely.
Because of the way that DROD is written (it uses bitmaps) any sort of size change will dramatically slow down the whole program, not to mention look terrible.

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07-28-2008 at 09:15 PM
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Could we get a projected release date range? Like when do you think it will probably be released?

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[Last edited by Snacko at 07-28-2008 10:01 PM]
07-28-2008 at 10:01 PM
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Snacko wrote:
Could we get a projected release date range? Like when do you think it will probably be released?

What part of "we're not going to say when the release date is" is unclear?

(my guess is the "not", since people persist in asking)



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07-28-2008 at 10:07 PM
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That's why I said "projected".

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07-28-2008 at 10:12 PM
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Maybe if you told us what still had to be done so we could come up with our own wild theories... :P

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07-28-2008 at 10:16 PM
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icon Re: Ask questions about DROD RPG (+1)  
Back on the graphics issue; I've attached samples of two upscaling tests I did.

For these sample graphics I used two upsamling programs I wrote myself sometime ago, and both try to maintain sharpness as much as possible. The upscaled image produced by the second program has a bit more contrast and may itroduce interesting detail in texture areas, but tends to have a bit more unwanted artifacts than the image from the first program.

Neither of these methods are magic formulas to create good upsampled graphics, so success is not guarantueed in all cases.
Also, I don't think you're going to get anything better than what's been shown in this topic without hiring an artist.

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07-28-2008 at 10:45 PM
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Jutt wrote:
Back on the graphics issue; I've attached samples of two upscaling tests I did.

For these sample graphics I used two upsamling programs I wrote myself sometime ago, and both try to maintain sharpness as much as possible. The upscaled image produced by the second program has a bit more contrast and may itroduce interesting detail in texture areas, but tends to have a bit more unwanted artifacts than the image from the first program.

Neither of these methods are magic formulas to create good upsampled graphics, so success is not guarantueed in all cases.
Also, I don't think you're going to get anything better than what's been shown in this topic without hiring an artist.

Even if they are sharpen, it's still a punch in the eyes.

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07-28-2008 at 11:11 PM
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Jutt wrote:
Back on the graphics issue; I've attached samples of two upscaling tests I did.

For these sample graphics I used two upsamling programs I wrote myself sometime ago, and both try to maintain sharpness as much as possible. The upscaled image produced by the second program has a bit more contrast and may itroduce interesting detail in texture areas, but tends to have a bit more unwanted artifacts than the image from the first program.

Neither of these methods are magic formulas to create good upsampled graphics, so success is not guarantueed in all cases.
Also, I don't think you're going to get anything better than what's been shown in this topic without hiring an artist.
The second shot is incredibly bad, but the first shot makes all the graphics consistent with each other, and improves the look of Tendry, but is otherwise exactly the same.
07-29-2008 at 01:21 AM
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Maybe adding a film grain effect (i.e. a bit of full-resolution noise) on top of the playfield would help?

If it works for Mass Effect, why not for DROD RPG? ;)

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07-29-2008 at 02:00 AM
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My preference would be that all graphics of the same type should have the same sharpness.

In the original screenshot, the grass is too sharp against the floor tiles, and the lights are too sharp against Tendry.

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07-29-2008 at 02:28 AM
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Thanks everyone for your suggestions and ideas. At present, it looks like my situation is a cross between "too many cooks" and "you can please some of the people some of the time, but...". I really don't know what more I can do here to make everyone happy, but I'll think about it and try out some of the things suggested here. :)

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[Last edited by mrimer at 07-29-2008 04:22 AM]
07-29-2008 at 04:08 AM
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I suggest you use 2x scaled pixelated graphics and allow the appliance of some video filters. You know, those filters NES emulators have? At least graphics will be consistent and there will be options to people that don't like one or another filter. I believe that this is the best workaround (other than complete redraw) - 1st screenshot in Jutt's post looks fairly good.

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07-29-2008 at 02:06 PM
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Not on the topic of graphics (whew! relief!), but I just clicked the bar, and so I have to ask:

Is the Goblin King a monster you can fight in the RPG? Are there several Goblin Kings?

BbJ

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