[PSX/PC] General editor - Hades Workshop (0.50b)

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I did colored it on purpose. Here is exact layer i used https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/110558786/Report/Square28.7z

The rendering is scaled depending on the resolution:
what i am saying is, game has different approaches for different layers. Or at least it looks like it. "Tickets" tent and most of the textures looks like scaled with "point" method. They show hard edges and no artifacts. While some layers, like this green one seem to be processed differently. You can see it is "blended" into the background. These half-transparent green edges is not my doing nor it is related to DXT because it is not present in decompressed HW's output as I've shown on 2nd image.

So my theory is, these black dots are slipping in because of that "other processing" game does for this layer.
 
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Here is what i mean:

I create all layers like so - hard edges, no antialiasing:
ubVUs9V.png


Some layers look in game just like that even after adjusting to my resolution.

Some layers, on the other hand, start to look like this all on their own:
NM9t4Cb.png


Now I have not checked all the layers out there, but incidentally layers that look like so also have a black dot issue.

Also as I described before, issues appear even on exporting and re-importing the same thing without modifications (grid issue being one of that)
There probably is a weird behavior in-engine, or even a bug, but original textures don't make it apparent because their tile paddings are precisely a copy of the tile's edge-pixel. (Or it could be Silicon's workaround for Unity's crappy tiling)

It is up to you of course what to do about that, but I think it is easier to create textures in a compatible way instead of figuring out what engine does there.
 
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Hi Meru, are you creating all layers from scratch?
The engine is really nitpicking on the Layers. Slight variations done to the background layers opposed to all other layers can yield very bad results like gray/black seams and/or the dot's you're mentioning.
 
A reason why those filtering does happen is probably that a few parts of the backgrounds are in fact 3D objects and the games filtering (bilinear or trilinear) does affect these objects.
 
A reason why those filtering does happen is probably that a few parts of the backgrounds are in fact 3D objects and the games filtering (bilinear or trilinear) does affect these objects.
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Nope, FFIX doesn't use any kind of 3D realtime models. Some 2D alpha effects like smoke is used but they not part of the static backgrounds and thus can't be filtered.
 
Nope, FFIX doesn't use any kind of 3D realtime models. Some 2D alpha effects like smoke is used but they not part of the static backgrounds and thus can't be filtered.
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There are some realtime models, but that's not what I meant. When I'm correct the problem does only occur on the layers, which can hide an object/character. I remember, that someone wanted to make a similar engine as FF7 by using Blender and encountered a problem with these layers, because he couldn't easily copy the way as Square did it for the game. So he placed the layers in the 'room' similar as an object. And that is what I assume the port team did with the BG's of FF9. That would explain why the texture filter is working on these layers.
 
Hi Meru, are you creating all layers from scratch?
The engine is really nitpicking on the Layers. Slight variations done to the background layers opposed to all other layers can yield very bad results like gray/black seams and/or the dot's you're mentioning.
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Not sure what do you mean by "from scratch". You mean layer edges? Sometimes yes, sometimes no, but this doesn't matter. BTW the problem can be seen on some of your older screenshots of synthesist too.
Edit: of course for the final product all the layers must be redone. Leaving them as is and simply swapping backgrounds just makes things different kind of ugly from what it used to be with default backgrounds.

The dots are there because this is how HW creates textures. The problem is that these dots are outside of the range that must be shown on screen. I think that instead of trying to fix the engine, it is better mimic the way Silicon created textures. I dunno what the engine does there, nor I want to know, but these dots (and probably grid as well) look like a product of averaging with nearest pixels, like bilinear or better resampling or fxaa-style antialiasing (unlikely in this case since I think it works in screen-space only). When it happens that the nearest pixel is a black dot - sometimes we can see it on screen, when it happens to be imperfectly mirrored edge pixel - we see grid. The grid is very hard to spot if you deal with 64x64 tiles but quite easy with default ones.
 
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Not sure what do you mean by "from scratch". You mean layer edges? Sometimes yes, sometimes no, but this doesn't matter. BTW the problem can be seen on some of your older screenshots of synthesist too.
Edit: of course for the final product all the layers must be redone. Leaving them as is and simply swapping backgrounds just makes things different kind of ugly from what it used to be with default backgrounds.

The dots are there because this is how HW creates textures. The problem is that these dots are outside of the range that must be shown on screen. I think that instead of trying to fix the engine, it is better mimic the way Silicon created textures. I dunno what the engine does there, nor I want to know, but these dots (and probably grid as well) look like a product of averaging with nearest pixels, like bilinear or better resampling or fxaa-style antialiasing (unlikely in this case since I think it works in screen-space only). When it happens that the nearest pixel is a black dot - sometimes we can see it on screen, when it happens to be imperfectly mirrored edge pixel - we see grid. The grid is very hard to spot if you deal with 64x64 tiles but quite easy with default ones.
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I just wanted to know if you're doing the layer edges by hand instead of using a template (either PSX or Steam).
And yes, I also have these dots. It doesn't distracted me too much but they're there. :/
 
Fraggoso
Heh, I was too focused on the problem we were discussing ^^
The templates you are talking about I am using of course, but only for now. They will have to be redone by hand at some point. Maybe with vector masks (https://i.imgur.com/zeeepfQ.png) maybe something else, not sure yet.
 
Fraggoso
Heh, I was too focused on the problem we were discussing ^^
The templates you are talking about I am using of course, but only for now. They will have to be redone by hand at some point. Maybe with vector masks (https://i.imgur.com/zeeepfQ.png) maybe something else, not sure yet.
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I found it easier editing them via a new alphamask and just adding or deleting. That way you can instantly see if there're some problems.
But yes, they CAN look nice and it's a shame that Silicon Studio did that weird upres of the images as the seams aren't 1:1 anymore like they used to be on PSX. Now they look a little bit Frankenstein. >.<
 
Speaking of layers, I am curious about different thing. For each of the moving objects in PSX version, HW creates only a single layer. This includes everything: doors, flags, water, clocks... how they were animated then? PSX engine was distorting and moving the layers in various ways? But for example that fan from a picture I posted above (that is on the disabled layers). You can not create all these layers by moving or distorting the fan on PSX layer.

Edit: in addition to that. It is known that all the moving objects and most of the scenes even were originally created in 3D by various artists. So instead of distorting a layer they should have made a few "shots", the same way we see in PC version? So does the HW output for PSX really complete?
 
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Speaking of layers, I am curious about different thing. For each of the moving objects in PSX version, HW creates only a single layer. This includes everything: doors, flags, water, clocks... how they were animated then? PSX engine was distorting and moving the layers in various ways? But for example that fan from a picture I posted above (that is on the disabled layers). You can not create all these layers by moving or distorting the fan on PSX layer.

Edit: in addition to that. It is known that all the moving objects and most of the scenes even were originally created in 3D by various artists. So instead of distorting a layer they should have made a few "shots", the same way we see in PC version? So does the HW output for PSX really complete?
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I don't understand what you mean exactly. ^^;
 
I mean that in PC version animation is done by swapping layers at a right time. But in PSX, textures contain only a single layer, so there is nothing to swap. There are 2 possible outcomes. Whatever PSX engine generates extra frames on-the-fly based on that single layer, or HW's texture output is not complete.
 
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I mean that in PC version animation is done by swapping layers at a right time. But in PSX, textures contain only a single layer, so there is nothing to swap. There are 2 possible outcomes. Whatever PSX engine generates extra frames on-the-fly based on that single layer, or HW's texture output is not complete.
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Are you sure?
If I use HW to rip the psx tiles they're animated and are only tiles, so I suppose those are layers themself. But of course, I'm no technican. :/
 
Are you sure?
If I use HW to rip the psx tiles they're animated and are only tiles, so I suppose those are layers themself. But of course, I'm no technican. :/
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I see. Now that you say it. It turns out to get a complete output I must check all the checkboxes 1st for that particular animation. Never bothered with that >__<
 
I see. Now that you say it. It turns out to get a complete output I must check all the checkboxes 1st for that particular animation. Never bothered with that >__<
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Yes you have to check the tiles or else you'll not get all the layers but only the base backgrounds +, if there're moving tiles, only the first aniamtion cycle.
 
I can confirm that hw now operates with win 10. :)
I'll update tomorrow after I spend some more time testing it but for now I could load, convert and import as well as do the macro for the highres backgrounds.

Thanks!
 
Okay everything seems to work.
I also tested the multi name fields and they also work and after deleting 10 as well as 11.tiff the behaviour of the field and seams are normal again.

As I also tested to Waifu the title I get this result: http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/200783

Aren't the titles half alpha instead of full or opaque? I don't know why I have those blacks in it. ;P
Still the background for the names benefits from a better gradient.
 
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Updated to v0.36b to fix that crash at the beginning. That surely was the dumbest error I ever made in a release...

I also tested other algorithms to convert the background into the atlas, but without better result, so I kept the last one. I won't go back to it for now ; next time I'll tackle the problem by the "remove the tiling concept" approach.
 
BTW I still have a crash issue with PSX
Open FFIX PSX -> Environment -> fields -> open synthesyst's "Manage" dialog and close it, switch to weapon shop (or possibly any field) then back to synthesyst -> crash.
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These exact steps crash it 100% of times.
 
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