With the help of AI, it is now possible to breathe new life into many good missions.
Here I will post zips of AI upscaled textures for different fms.
The list and order of missions is determined by my desire to play them as a priority, although I am ready to learn about your preferences.
The Seven Sisters HD Mod: DOWNLOAD
Screenshots 2160p
Thread
King's Story HD Mod Here
The Black Frog Here
Most of the textures have become really better, in some cases the changes are not much replaced or look worse than the original due to low-quality sources.
An example of a great result:
Installation:
Unzip to the folder with the installed mission or create a copy of the fm and put it there in order to be able to install the mod with AngelLoader.
Who will be next?
King's Story.
Last edited by Soul Tear; 2nd Mar 2023 at 17:07. Reason: Version update
Nice one, some of those screenshot are seriously impressive, guess I need to play Seven Sisters again.
I bug tested King's Story some months ago and found a number of the Easter Eggs no longer work with ND, so when reworking the mission you may wish to fix these along with other issues. I'll send you a PM of what I reported over at Shadowbox.
These mods will not change mission files. Here only textures and models.
Maybe Zontik will someday find time to fix it, after all, he recently released a revised version of Mirror.
I'd suggest getting author's permission before re-releasing any levels that have been modified in any way from their original form (I realize with Seven Sisters this isn't possible).
Strictly spoken (or written), Soul Tear hasn't re-released the levels/missions. The package above only contains the textures. When he re-released the reworked versions of Christine's old missions a while ago, he did get permission, AFAIK.
Exactly. My English is not very good, but doesn't this line get the point across?
Here I will post zips of AI upscaled textures for different fms.
Thanks Soul Tear. What does AI Upscaling texture involve? Is it something like stable diffusion, or is it specifically designed to make images sharper etc. I'd love to see upscaled stone signs (idk what they are called, those white bricks that display text when frobbing but don't go fullscreen).
takeiteasy, above is an example, I don't know how to describe it scientifically
A few more examples from King's Story and others:
Nice work.
Hmm, problem is that the AI is removing all the grain and blemishes that the pixelation adds, so the end result looks far too clean. Don't think AI is coming for all our jobs just yet....
If, however, a "second pass" would be done, re-adding some amount of less-pixelated and better recognizeable uncleanliness, then the result could get a better resolution than the original textures, and look more natural at the same time. Whether that can be done with today's software, I cannot say.
I am playing the first mission of the campaign right now, and the only thing that really doesn't fit are some textures to the left of torches in the towers of the police station. There is a very sharp contrast that is exactly along a vertical line. However, I did not verify whether that can be seen with the original textures as well.
Another good thing is that while the new textures do look sharper and most likely have greater resolution than the original ones, my poor graphics card as well as an integrated processor graphics in another machine can handle the textures well. Almost no stutter.
Not bad for an AI, although not perfect. Provides an interesting new look.
I agree with a few of the last comments. Although this is very nice work, Soul Tear, after firing up Seven Sisters and playing for a few minutes, my impression is it's almost too crisp. It feels washed cleaned of all imperfections, sanitized even. If there was a way to keep the irregularities and retain some of the natural grainy look, while increasing the resolution, I'd be more inclined to use it.
There almost certainly is one way to improve the look: Someone could load the high-res textures and place something looking like dirt onto them, then save the result. However, that manual labour would take a long time. I think what we have now is somewhere between a fast, automated way to make low-resolution textures high-res, and a slow, time-consuming way of handmade perfection. Most likely, some trade-off was necessary to get it done in time.
You talk like you're not sure you want to make a purchase. I made this mod for myself and am ready to share with everyone. No further improvements are out of the question, after all I have my projects.Originally Posted by klatremus
These mods will give players the opportunity to gain new experience in good missions. Play the old experience if you like it.
Last edited by Soul Tear; 1st Feb 2023 at 08:59.
Yes, it works, I've done it a couple of times. The opacity of the original up to 20-30% gives detail, but I'm not sure that such work makes sense when it comes to hundreds of textures. Making mods for other mods is a bad venture.
But the idea is good. Anyone who is interested can do it, the base is prepared.
What tool or process are you using to do this? I'm also wondering how effective it would be to run the stock textures through the process to get a alternate version of the HD mod for the vanilla game.
Brethren, do you mean something different from these?
Thief Gold ESRGAN Texture Pack
Thief 2 ESRGAN Texture Pack
Those textures largely have the same issues as the textures Soul Tear's posted here. They're more detailed and clear, but they sometimes look too clean, to a point where they feel like a different style. It's almost a kind of painterly style.
King's Story HD: DOWNLOAD
Screenshots 2160p
Thread
Next Black Frog
This looks INCREDIBLE Soul Tear!! Are any of your amazing missions gonna be released soon??
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Basso The Boxman, don't worry, these mods don't interfere with my main projects. I expect to release the 3-mission pack (KoI Reloaded Part 1) in this year.
Basso the Boxman, as Soul Tear wrote in the first post, he publishes the (HD) missions when he wishes to play one of these and has his "HD Mod" for that FM done. Or rather, he publishes the HD Mod files as an archive. I don't think he plans to publish complete mission archives with HD textures.
Unpacking these "Mod archives" into a FM directory of a FM that has already been prepared (unpacked) for playing with one of the modern FM loaders (FMSel, AngelLoader, NewDarkLoader) gives you the new HD textures for the old mission. You can also unpack the mission onto your hard disk, unpack the HD Mod for it over the unpacked FM, and re-pack (re-zip) the modded FM (preferrably with a changed name, like "Kings Story HD.zip"), and then place that archive in the same folder where you usually place new downloaded FMs. The FM loader of your choice should notice that mission next time you start the loader, and the new version should appear in the FMs list.
If someone really, really, REALLY wants to use ancient DarkLoader (which I don't recommend any more), then he/she can only use the second way (unpacking FM and Mod, and re-packing) to play it in HD, otherwise the DarkLoader user will create a potentially nasty mess in his Thief 2 installation that will affect not only the "HD modded" mission, but other missions as well. Consider yourself warned...
Now, about the "King's Story HD Mod". I have re-played a part of the first mission in HD now, and loaded savegames for the second mission in order to run around and look at the HD modding results. It's like with "Seven Sisters": The new textures look better (sharper) now, but in a few places, the look is not perfect. For example, on the outer walls of the castle in the courtyard, there are some neighbouring textures that do not completely fit each other. You have to be very nitpicky to get annoyed by that, though. The cases where textures look "too clean" are far less frequent in "King's Story HD" when compared to "Seven Sisters HD", most likely because a lot of the action takes place in the castle, which is a rather clean and well-tended place, unlike the ancient caverns and ruins that the last mission of the "Seven Sisters" campaign provides. Thus, while long (and possibly manual) processing of the low-density textures in order to get HD ones might yield better results, it would also mean more labour, but in the case of "King's Story HD", I definitely think that the current results are good enough to leave it at that.
There is one thing about the "King's Story HD Mod" that should be improved, though. The current Mod archive contains two files that have cyrillic letters/characters in their filenames, and this can lead to problems. These files appear to be temporary copies of textures, and should be removed from the archive.
The files are Fam\Animals\RedGob - kopia.DDS and Obj\Txt16\InnerDH - kopia.DDS, if I transliterated that correctly from cyrillic to western characters. I do not think that these two files are actually used in the game, but depending on which operating system, OS language, and FM loader the player uses, these two files may remain somewhere (e.g., somewhere in FMs\.fmsel.cache inside the Thief 2 directory/folder hierarchy) on the player's hard disk even after de-installing the FM, and at least the files do occupy space for no reason. Or maybe one of the FM loaders "trips" over these files, and something bad happens. Removing them from the mod archive and re-publishing that would be a good idea, I think.
Last edited by baeuchlein; 12th Feb 2023 at 13:53.
Fantastic news! Can’t wait!!!Basso The Boxman, don't worry, these mods don't interfere with my main projects. I expect to release the 3-mission pack (KoI Reloaded Part 1) in this year.
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baeuchlein, you are absolutely right as always. I forgot to delete copies.
Unfortunately, in King's Story some textures do not match, because Zontik did not attach much importance to this, and upscaling increased the effect of the original mismatch.
As I said, the thing with the textures not being perfect is no big deal. Correcting such minor problems with a lot of manual work may be possible, but even I would think twice (at least) before doing so. Or maybe not doing so.
The Black Frog HD: DOWNLOAD
Screenshots 2160p
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