[FF8PC-Steam] Project AngelWing v3.0 - Field Upscale

[FatedCourage]

Project AngelWing v3.0
Field Upscale (Steam Only)

Project AngelWing is a field upscale that uses Waifu2x and now Gigapixel with my own specific settings. It's not perfect and not everything is going to look mind blowing... But I feel it is an improvement compared to what you get out of the box. And I'm sure any errors or whatnot can be improved over time. And, of course, Esthar still isn't great. ...I don't like Esthar. But hey! Enjoy!

Update #1

Not going to lie... This took longer than it should have. But as of 11/27/18 I've updated Project AngelWing to v2.0 with Project Eden's edges. And I've tried to fix any real errors that came with it. Well...outside of some residue that I can't completely get rid of. As of now, only three areas still use v1.0 alpha channel/edges. Along with that, I've also done my best to add all the languages available on Steam with this update. (Japanese might get added in the future.)

I can't guarantee there won't be a few errors or missing hashes in the other languages. If you happen to find any, please let me know in case I might be able to fix it.

Update #2

It's been almost a year since the last update... Better late than never. I've finally added Gigapixel fields for people to try out. Currently in the "testing" phase. Some lighting issues and fields will need to be fixed or improved upon. The "final" version will also have smoother edges, I hope. Time will tell. Japanese is also incomplete because I can't run that version to get the hashcodes. And I also have to thank Mcindus for helping me out with the current problem fields.

Downloads:

v3.0 English: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PUoPU_qh5Ou0bMgNgSkTEe0aeMTpHF1m/view?usp=sharing
v3.0 French: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JUUdhC1KKBhBu5R4bMvVMmMATNfeWXWM/view?usp=sharing
v3.0 Italian: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1M-5UMerxgibxUsORRVfYKZQhzPHr2HzP/view?usp=sharing
v3.0 German: https://drive.google.com/file/d/18IS2uikboVjJucRMrh8yQWJjstEGrgX5/view?usp=sharing
v3.0 Spanish: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kZXtvGOdbHLugaDOUm2NEkA6SVo68uC0/view?usp=sharing
v3.0 Japanese: https://drive.google.com/file/d/16rB9wcgXH19pxp-7FhfmyrT98aHhPtl5/view?usp=sharing

Directions:

1.   Download Tonberry v1.61 or later https://www.ff7catalog.com/threads/10888/
2.   Extract Tonberry and put all of it's components into your game's directory.
3.   Extract the file provided here.
4.   Drag the texture folder provided into your game's directory.
5.   Everything else (hashmap folder/collisions/hash2map) should be placed inside the Tonberry folder that resides in your game's directory.

If the game happens to crash after installing this mod, then I recommend lowering your texture cache in the preference document that resides in the Tonberry folder. Or you can find and download the 4GB patch and use it on your game's executable. This will allow the game to use more memory than it normally would.

Examples:

Original/New (Waifu2x and GeDoSaTo)

Gigapixel w/Reshade

Optional: Mcindus was kind enough to completely rework the game's directory sign and I gotta say that I quite like it. And he did it for all languages! But in case you don't want to use it, I've left the original upscales in the textures folder. Just find "bg_hall7" and delete the folder. Then remove the "a" from the alternate one below it and you'll be good to go.

Video Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3WrE8Yj7r0E8DE8ZdITLmb2erpLs4jWZ

Special Thanks:

Omzy (Always)
Mcindus
Fraggoso
And everyone who has shown support in this.

 

[Nedus]

I made some screens, first with project eden and then with angelwing. Some areas really look better now (sharpened, "less pixelated").

The only "downside" i've noticed is here:

The light sources look...well,no longer light sources, compared to project eden

(Don't mind the pixelation here. Apparently that's because i have the italian versione of the game and it has something to do with hashcodes. Not that i mind tho).

Exept for that, this looks awesome (to be clear: so far i've done very few screeshots-comparison, only inside Balamb's Garden).
Thank you for your work on this FatedCourage

 

[makipl]

That's really good one!

 

[Mcindus]

Can we get some Eden/AngelWing comparisons?

 

[Nedus]

Some comparison. Eden first.
I'm not a "graphics maniac", so Eden is good enough alredy. But AngelWing DOES improve some areas imo.
They look less blurry. Maybe not the graphical improvement of the century, but it does a fine job in making FF8 look even better.

Spoiler

 

[FatedCourage]

I made some screens, first with project eden and then with angelwing. Some areas really look better now (sharpened, "less pixelated").

The only "downside" i've noticed is here:

The light sources look...well,no longer light sources, compared to project eden

(Don't mind the pixelation here. Apparently that's because i have the italian versione of the game and it has something to do with hashcodes. Not that i mind tho).

Exept for that, this looks awesome (to be clear: so far i've done very few screeshots-comparison, only inside Balamb's Garden).
Thank you for your work on this FatedCourage

I'll look into why the lighting doesn't seem to work properly. It might only be limited to a few areas since the lighting does work in a majority of areas. Even areas in your comparison pictures for Eden/AngelWing. And yeah, AngelWing isn't an extremely vast improvement. Just a sharper image. And less glitches.

You're welcome.

That's really good one!

Haha. I'm glad.

Edit: Good news. I fixed the lighting for those areas. At least, they now work for me. I'll upload a separate patch soon for it.

Edit 2: Actually... On second thought, they appear to have been working correctly before, too. Does anyone else have lighting issues?

 

[Mirrorman95]

Real nice job here. I've been looking forward to these waifu2x backgrounds for a while now. Was maximum noise reduction used?

 

[Covarr]

This is one of the best looking upscales I've seen. I really appreciate that you've gone for a more natural look than some.

 

[FatedCourage]

Real nice job here. I've been looking forward to these waifu2x backgrounds for a while now. Was maximum noise reduction used?

Thank you. First pass was with no noise reduction. I only used the maximum on the second pass. Luckily, very little detail was lost from what I could tell.

This is one of the best looking upscales I've seen. I really appreciate that you've gone for a more natural look than some.

Thanks. Glad you think so. That was my goal from the start. If I would've went with UpRGB rather than UpPhoto, then I would've gotten what I like to call the "noodle effect". And on landscapes it's...horrible. Plus RGB mode somehow wipes away more detail when combined with noise reduction.

 

[Faendra]

Waouh, a better quality than eden and without loss of detail :O (Well for me). Actually it's more detailed and the pictures aren't distorted like some "upscale" we can see on others games. Really great job !

 

[Fendera]

wow thank you! looks great. I really like the sharpness

 

[FatedCourage]

Waouh, a better quality than eden and without loss of detail :O (Well for me). Actually it's more detailed and the pictures aren't distorted like some "upscale" we can see on others games. Really great job ! 

Thank you. Glad you think so! I made it a priority to make sure the backgrounds kept as much detail as possible with my settings.

wow thank you! looks great. I really like the sharpness

You're welcome. If there is one thing I'll commend waifu2x for is how sharp the images remain when upscaling. (Granted you don't go overboard with filtering.)

 

[LeonhartGR]

Nice FC! Well done mate.

 

[Recc42]

Thanks for the great work , i've been downloading a few mods for my FFVIII replay and you seem to have participated in a lot of them, thanks for the effort . I wanted to ask if its was possible that you or someone else create a torrent, since my internet is not fast enough or  stable enough to download a 1.3gb file The battlefield pack which was only 400mb~ took a while to download after many connection errors, any help would be appreciated .

 

[olearyf2525]

If we already have Project Eden installed will angelwing overwrite everything? Or should I look into deleting all the project eden stuff? Looks great, been waiting awhile for this. Thank you for all your hard work FatedCourage.

 

[FatedCourage]

Thanks for the great work , i've been downloading a few mods for my FFVIII replay and you seem to have participated in a lot of them, thanks for the effort . I wanted to ask if its was possible that you or someone else create a torrent, since my internet is not fast enough or  stable enough to download a 1.3gb file The battlefield pack which was only 400mb~ took a while to download after many connection errors, any help would be appreciated .

Haha. Yeah... I kinda have my hand in a lot of things on here. And you're welcome. As for a torrent... I've never actually done any of that before. But I should probably look into it and learn. Especially for people with not so great internet. (My internet is questionable at times, too. ) Because what's the point of going through all this work if not everyone can use it. So... I'll see what I can do.

If we already have Project Eden installed will angelwing overwrite everything? Or should I look into deleting all the project eden stuff? Looks great, been waiting awhile for this. Thank you for all your hard work FatedCourage.

You are correct. If you already have Eden, then AngelWing will overwrite it. I did tweak the hashmaps, though. So those matter as well. You're welcome. And thank you. I appreciate it.

I also need to go through the hashmaps and disable codes that cause glitches that can't be fixed and add more missing ones. So that'll be the next update.

 

[Recc42]

Thanks for taking interest in my request! i actually, after a few more attempts managed to download it using jdownloader, the issue was that with my crappy connection sometimes just dying out of nowhere, google drive wouldn't keep the progress of the download but jdownloader would.

The mod is great! the game looks great thanks to all the enhancements i've applied with all the mods and i'm ready for a replay of one of my favorite game of all time, thanks a lot for the effort you put into modding the game, this game means a lot to me and with these graphics refresh it feels new and shiny

 

[FatedCourage]

Nice FC! Well done mate.

Missed your post, but wanted to say thanks.

Thanks for taking interest in my request! i actually, after a few more attempts managed to download it using jdownloader, the issue was that with my crappy connection sometimes just dying out of nowhere, google drive wouldn't keep the progress of the download but jdownloader would.

The mod is great! the game looks great thanks to all the enhancements i've applied with all the mods and i'm ready for a replay of one of my favorite game of all time, thanks a lot for the effort you put into modding the game, this game means a lot to me and with these graphics refresh it feels new and shiny

No problem. I'll try and set one up once I know how. It'll be a good alternative for people. I'm glad you got it all sorted out, though. You're welcome. I'm sure all of us here who worked on these mods appreciate it. Enjoy the game!

 

[kaspar01]

Let's say I want to improve/customize a background..(bgsecr2 in particular)

Could anyone explain me how the bg is composed from an HD version of the image?
I see the png in this mod folder are splitted in many stripes/fragment but I can't get what's the logic behind it to try make my own HD BG

 

[FatedCourage]

Let's say I want to improve/customize a background..(bgsecr2 in particular)

Could anyone explain me how the bg is composed from an HD version of the image?
I see the png in this mod folder are splitted in many stripes/fragment but I can't get what's the logic behind it to try make my own HD BG

Apologies for not responding sooner. Been away on a road trip.

You need PuPu and the proper files to get the fields/backgrounds. I just combine the layers that seams match (you do this for every file), upscale those images (or however you plan to do it), use upscaled alpha channels of the same files (before you combined them) to cut out the excess and run it back through PuPu (import). I suck at explaining things. But I hope this is what you wanted to know.