Shenmue Re-texturing in HD

[nagates]

Ok, I have a question/thought, and some of you are probably going to ave your head and tell me I'm stupid. But it seems like the community has made a lot of progress towards ripping models, extracting textures, and I saw even once a custom Sonic & Mario texture. Which leads me to my next question, games like Mario 64 people have re textured and done some really nice/crazy stuff with ([youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QUnokNHTrI[/youtube]). My question is could something similar be done with Shenmue, is it possible to update the textures in Shenmue to be of higher quality and or replace some models altogether? (i'm guess no on the later because no one has a way to export to that custom format??)


So maybe I will take an semi-educated guess and attempt answer my own question as to why this can't or hasn't been attempted. Someone tell me I'm right or wrong?

1. without access to the game source, the game's resolution is still only at 240x320 (maybe 640x480p with vga?), so any new textures wouldn't be an improvement? emulators such as nulldc only upscale?

2. I'm guessing higher polygon count models are possible, but require time, effort, and good method for exporting into the Shenmue custom format and again textures would still probably suck.


Just a crazy thought, would like to hear some thoughts, comments and discussion. (constructive please)

[wude]

it can be done with the shentrad tools

[nagates]

it can be done with the shentrad tools

At a higher resolution?

[wude]

yes, because you're modifying the game textures, not the ones stored in virtual memory like when using texmod

[lDarkWarriorl]

If someone made a high res rip of Shenmue, it would still be a low res game in your dreamcast.

And Shenmue as it already is in an emulator is higher res than in the dreamcast anyway. So no fan work needed.

[nagates]

If someone made a high res rip of Shenmue, it would still be a low res game in your Dreamcast.

And Shenmue as it already is in an emulator is higher res than in the Dreamcast anyway. So no fan work needed.

Sorry, not sure I completely understand what your telling me here. But isn't Nulldc just up-converting? Even if its running the game at 1080p, and the game engine somehow respects that, wouldn't it still just be loading 240p textures, and up-converting those. I would not be looking to mod my game, burn it to the disc and expect to play with better textures, I'm just more curious from a Nulldc perspective running on PC, instead of waiting for an HD re-release, I was just more curious if this could work?


When I say HD or better textures, I mean more realistic, higher resolution, etc. Again, sort of how people apply realistic textures to Mario 64, or Minecraft (granted the latter is more open to that.)

I wish was a graphic artist guru, because this is something that would intrigue me.

[lDarkWarriorl]

If someone made a high res rip of Shenmue, it would still be a low res game in your Dreamcast.

And Shenmue as it already is in an emulator is higher res than in the Dreamcast anyway. So no fan work needed.

Sorry, not sure I completely understand what your telling me here. But isn't Nulldc just up-converting? Even if its running the game at 1080p, and the game engine somehow respects that, wouldn't it still just be loading 240p textures, and up-converting those. I would not be looking to mod my game, burn it to the disc and expect to play with better textures, I'm just more curious from a Nulldc perspective running on PC, instead of waiting for an HD re-release, I was just more curious if this could work?


When I say HD or better textures, I mean more realistic, higher resolution, etc. Again, sort of how people apply realistic textures to Mario 64, or Minecraft (granted the latter is more open to that.)

I wish was a graphic artist guru, because this is something that would intrigue me.

Dreamcast games are nativly higher resolutions than what the dreamcast can output. So emulation would allow you to take advantage of the games original decompressed picture quality.

[nagates]

If someone made a high res rip of Shenmue, it would still be a low res game in your Dreamcast.

And Shenmue as it already is in an emulator is higher res than in the Dreamcast anyway. So no fan work needed.

Sorry, not sure I completely understand what your telling me here. But isn't Nulldc just up-converting? Even if its running the game at 1080p, and the game engine somehow respects that, wouldn't it still just be loading 240p textures, and up-converting those. I would not be looking to mod my game, burn it to the disc and expect to play with better textures, I'm just more curious from a Nulldc perspective running on PC, instead of waiting for an HD re-release, I was just more curious if this could work?


When I say HD or better textures, I mean more realistic, higher resolution, etc. Again, sort of how people apply realistic textures to Mario 64, or Minecraft (granted the latter is more open to that.)

I wish was a graphic artist guru, because this is something that would intrigue me.

Dreamcast games are natively higher resolutions than what the Dreamcast can output. So emulation would allow you to take advantage of the games original decompressed picture quality.

I guess I didn't think Shenmue running on emulation looked at all that better (but was just up-scaled), I guess I will need to do some side by side comparison, to see it for myself.

Still, it would be cool to do photo realistic mod for Shenmue.

[south carmain]

If someone made a high res rip of Shenmue, it would still be a low res game in your dreamcast.

And Shenmue as it already is in an emulator is higher res than in the dreamcast anyway. So no fan work needed.

actually the emulator outputting at 1080p doesn't change the texture sizes themselves so replacing the textures with high res ones would make the game look better than it currently is since everything would be more detailed.

though it would be a huge amount of work, shenmue 2 has 14k different texture files

[Radar]

Maybe, maybe...
but:
- I don't think there's really will be big difference at real Dreamcast (probably only on extremly close-up scenes)
- Texture file size will be increased, so after all you also need to fit it on CD-R somehow, if you gonna play on real hardware of course
- also there is chance of glitches, bugs, lags etc. who knows..
- yep, there's reaaaly alot of work.
Anyway, i just tested on Shenmue 2 Ryo model( NullDC, 1600x900)
I replaced this to this(I got it from Shenmue passport) and the result is below, don't forget to zoom:

First:

Second:


First:

Second:

[south carmain]

you won't see much differences with something so small, try replacing the ground texture with something high res to see real results.

as for running it on the DC if the DC can process high res textures then you would need to run the game through a modded DC that could run games from an SD card as each disc would become 5gb+

[Anthony817]

as for running it on the DC if the DC can process high res textures then you would need to run the game through a modded DC that could run games from an SD card as each disc would become 5gb+

http://dknute.livejournal.com/

You want to wait for that thing, not the older less reliable serial port sd card readers. Also no need to modify the Dreamcast, they all plug right in. Even the optical drive emulator is just a replacement for the GDRom drive.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40bCn2z7t5o[/youtube]

[south carmain]

looks awesome, any idea on the release date?

[Anthony817]

Not sure on that but from what I know its still in prototype phase atm. I think Stone Age Gamer said they will help support them and sell/manufacture them or something. I know they have the Everdrives for various systems and this would really be awesome to own.

It will effectively turn the DC into something more akin to a modded OG Xbox. If we get SWAT to modify his Dreamshell front end we can really get the ball rolling. Imagine a 128gb SDHC card. It has 100% compatibility with all games too since its emulating the GDRom drive. Transfer speeds will be so fast. Games will load much faster too. I imagine Solder of Fortune loading like the wind.

From what I have read we can guesstimate a price of somewhere in the area of $75-130, give or take. Just a guesstimation, no official word yet.

[nagates]

[quote="Radar"] Maybe, maybe...
but:
- I don't think there's really will be big difference at real Dreamcast (probably only on extremly close-up scenes)
- Texture file size will be increased, so after all you also need to fit it on CD-R somehow, if you gonna play on real hardware of course
- also there is chance of glitches, bugs, lags etc. who knows..
- yep, there's reaaaly alot of work.
Anyway, i just tested on Shenmue 2 Ryo model( NullDC, 1600x900)
I replaced this to this(I got it from Shenmue passport) and the result is below, don't forget to zoom:



Oh, I love it! It would be cool if you could replace the floor textures!