[REL] sl1982's Field Enhancement

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well dont go too crazy its only a small release. but make sure you write in the config file your modpath without the mods/ in front
for example if you using the avalance patch it would be
mod_path = Avalanche

NOT

mod_path = mods/avalanche

also make sure there is no # sign in front of the command
if it looks like this
# mod_path = Avalanche
then its not gonna work. that should get you working. unless its a technical issue.

also be sure to place the folder tree inside mods/(modpath)/field/
not just in the modpath itself
 
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First of all, congratulations.

Then a simple question for yarLson: are you working on the field enhancement together with Team Avalanche or independently?

I am asking because the latter choice would seem counterproductive to the goal (considering also the time needed for increasing the background resolution). I am sure working together would not only speed up the process but raise the quality bar of the production itself.
 
Neither this project or yarLson's are a part of Team Avalanche. They do not meet the quality standards required (I should know, i came up with them). These projects are just a resize with some filters applied.

As for the reason we did not join forces? We disagree on the best method of redoing the backgrounds. But we are working on different parts of the game. I started at the beginning, he at the end. So at least people will not have to wait until one of us finishes all the scenes.
 
I have to add in my 2 cents here which I mentioned before.  I know no bugger is gonna listen and that people have made up their minds, but imho png is just too big.  I have done some tests and in all honesty I cannot tell the difference between setting 10 jpeg (even setting 9 isnt bad, and would make around 1MB a map) in adobe and PNG aside from the fact a 400% background comes out at 4-6X the size on disk.

Is the very small quality loss really worth having 8GB of space for this entire mod?  I have to say I don't think so.  A mod of all backgrounds which stands at around 1.5-2GB with very little loss is preferable to PNG in this case.

Just putting that out there, for all you people who are doing these projects :)
 
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That would be all fine and dandy if aali's driver used something other then PNG. But it doesnt, so we dont use anything else.
 
Im not going to bother him with it. This is functional and in my opinion he has more important things to work on other then something that will reduce the size of the images.
 
besides if he ever adds jpeg support to his driver, a total conversion of the finished product would be pretty easy compared to the work of getting it all finished up.
 
sl and dl I'd like to get your opinions on this image

http://www.mediafire.com/i/?9d2so2m850hacvc

you see I wanted to take your guys input into account while upholding to my own standards. I simply could not condone the discolored strings that the resize and sharpen seemed to produce (even though they are so tiny I am sure the majority of players wouldn't even notice) but I started to see the loss of detail in my blur method after doing about half the northern cave and decided, like you said sl, that it wasn't really worth it after all so I did some more experimenting. Honestly I don't know how I didn't think of this sooner but I think I have come up with some solid settings here. If you like them sl then perhaps we could combine projects after all.

So here is what I have done to this image. Basically the settings in Perfect Resize are just as you said you were using. The same texture control we agreed on and the unsharp mask with the same settings you told me you had used on that materia cave picture. There is no grain added however. Now instead of applying a blur to remove the small strings of discoloration, I used a remove noise filter with these settings

strength 2
preserve detail 100%
reduce color noise 25%
sharpen detail 50%

this actually seemed to remove all strings of discoloration, much more effectively than my previous blur technique without any loss of detail. However I did notice that the because of this filter the color is left just a bit duller than the original image so as one last final touch I went to Image>Adjustments>Vibrance and put vibrance to +10 and saturation to +5. This seemed to bring the color range back to the original level but without any of the tiny discolored "strings". In the end I really like the results and I hope you like them as well.
 
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I for one, prefer having the highest quality.
Sure it's big, but so are modern video games.

Here is a solution that I have tested: http://www.freemancontingent.ie/archives/623

It took your 'md1stin' from 9.16mb to 7.86mb using the brute method, with no quality loss.
To do a batch you just have to select multiple files.

I recommend you use it on the Team Avalanche stuff too. :)
 
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I for one, prefer having the highest quality.
Sure it's big, but so are modern video games.
Click to expand...
They are not 8GB (not to to mention the cache that will be needed) for a few hundred 2D backgrounds.  The difference in quality is so small it is not worth the extra 6 GB.  I know aali would have to implement jpeg support but hopefully at the end it is possible to batch them all. 

It is like saying you want the highest quality so you will use lagarith codec instead of H264. I think 8GB is crazy for this project but hey ho, that's just me, and hopefully as I say the project can be batched at the end.
 
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I am not arguing the fact that the smaller filesize of these images would be nicer for downloading. They are not good enough in my opinion to warrant lossless PNG. The TA remake on the other hand is a diff story. As for being batchable i doubt it. Given something would need to be figured out for the missing alpha channel of JPG. My honest opinion on the matter? JPG is not worth it due to the amount of work it would take, not due to 'highest quality' or anything like that.
 
Well FFXI, FFXIII, and FFXIV are all over 8GB, to give you some obvious examples, as well as almost all of my PS3 games that I run from HDD.

You are right about the cache though :P That would really bump up the size.
Then again maybe cache isn't really needed for the field scenes, and aali could disable it for those?

Also like sl said, wouldn't the lack of transparency make jpegs pretty limited?

I don't think comparing it to lossless videos is really fair, since I imagine the file sizes would be even bigger, and for such brief sequences in the game.
But the field scenes are the primary visual in the game, totally worth it. :D
 
The cache system should not really pose a problem. Who doesnt have a hard drive larger then 25 gigs these days? Plus the cached files are a lot smaller then the PNG's anyways.
 
True, but I would still want it disabled, just to avoid any compression artifacts being added to your beautiful scenes :P

Did you try the pngcrush I showed? It really lowers the size by an impressive % I think.
 
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