[HD Texture Project] Xenoblade Chronicles (v5.0U - May 17, 2014)

**frozenwings** · (This post was last modified: 05-03-2014, 04:05 AM by frozenwings.)

Ah, nope. I've only had one crash while actually playing the game (since returning and updating to dolphin 4.0, my old 3.5 build crashed all the time back in the day). All of my crashes occur on starting emulation (BSOD, may be texture related) or exiting emulation (Dolphin.exe crash, maybe OpenGL / Driver related). The 337.50 drivers have been beautiful for actual gameplay.

Whatever the issues were, I haven't had a blue screen yet (crossing my fingers) and dolphin isn't crashing (happened about 95% of the time when I clicked exit / hit escape) in the v4.0-1516x64 version with the 337.50 drivers playing with D3D.

**Bighead** · 05-03-2014, 04:10 AM **#1,092**

Maybe nvidia improved on whatever the issue was in the latest beta drivers, but still haven't quite figured it out yet. I dunno, I don't know how much they care about emulation projects. I know the PCSX2 devs were upset with nvidia because they straight up told them in kinder words than this, but basically "we don't care about emulators". The drivers were, and probably still are, causing an issue with the screen randomly switching resolution but only for a brief second. Refraction eventually created a workaround for it, but stated it wasn't a fix. You can kind of see it here at 1:51 in my SSX video, this game is very prone to it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLJWbCkkL2kFFXy5h9Ykt7Qcv8BnS6LPH_&feature=player_detailpage&v=U864-MN7U38#t=109

**frozenwings** · 05-03-2014, 04:28 AM **#1,093**

Oh, that sucks. I haven't used PCSX2 in a bit, probably close to a year now when I did a playthrough of Rogue Galaxy. It worked awesome back then.

Also, I've been trying to clean up the corners on the green bars you did (although I think all of them suffer from it, green is the most commonly seen bar) and I can't get them right. The rounded corner rectangle tool in PS is awesome for this, but I'm not proficient with the gradients , or really PS in general. I can make the shapes with cleaner corners, but can't get the fill to look right. I tried shopping your interior in and it just looks bad around the end since it doesn't blend.

So, pretty much, I can tell you what's wrong with yours but I can't make a better one :p LOL

**Bighead** · (This post was last modified: 05-03-2014, 04:32 AM by Bighead.)

I'm not sure how photoshop works, but to patch stuff up like that I grab the darkest color in the area using the color picker, use a very fuzzy brush, and lightly air brush it. A larger brush size is better so it spreads out more evenly.

**frozenwings** · 05-03-2014, 04:34 AM **#1,095**

Yeah, I'm going to keep experimenting for a bit. The problem I'm running into is that I have a shade of green with the pencil tool for example, I click in one spot and it's the right shade of green, then I click in the square next to it and its way darker. And it isn't an opacity issue (I'm using the info bar to track opacity).

**Bighead** · 05-03-2014, 04:38 AM **#1,096**

(05-03-2014, 04:34 AM)frozenwings Wrote: Yeah, I'm going to keep experimenting for a bit. The problem I'm running into is that I have a shade of green with the pencil tool for example, I click in one spot and it's the right shade of green, then I click in the square next to it and its way darker. And it isn't an opacity issue (I'm using the info bar to track opacity).

If you can't get the color correct then send it to me with the corners you want and I'll fix it up.

**StripTheSoul** · 05-03-2014, 04:45 AM **#1,097**

Yay, with Tino's latest build, costum texture loading has gotten its speed back and I can actually use your whole pack without any performance issues (only the DDS version).
I don't know if this is in any way interesting for you, but I'll just copy it over:

Quote:Latest version:
faa1824 : now that hires textures work, optimize the code to avoid performance problems. All the speed lost caused by the process of searching for custom textures is back again.
implemented mipmap loading from dds files. I strongly recommend that all texture mods pack their textures with internal mipmaps in dds files for maximum performance.

**Bighead** · (This post was last modified: 05-03-2014, 04:50 AM by Bighead.)

(05-03-2014, 04:45 AM)StripTheSoul Wrote: Yay, with Tino's latest build, costum texture loading has gotten its speed back and I can actually use your whole pack without any performance issues (only the DDS version).
I don't know if this is in any way interesting for you, but I'll just copy it over:

Out of curiosity, do pretty much all the DDS files load for you? I forgot to mention this before but DDS only accepts dimensions of x4, so when I converted them all with Aorta, it rescaled them automatically (which is why some of them look worse than they should). Also thanks for the heads up.

Edit: And I didn't want to do another pack using DDS files, hopefully I won't have to because the compression makes them look bad in comparison to PNG, and they end up being much larger decompressed. It was also pointed out that Dolphin may lose compatibility with them somewhere in the future, which is another reason why I didn't want to do another DDS pack.

**StripTheSoul** · 05-03-2014, 05:09 AM **#1,099**

(05-03-2014, 04:48 AM)Bighead Wrote:
(05-03-2014, 04:45 AM)StripTheSoul Wrote: Yay, with Tino's latest build, costum texture loading has gotten its speed back and I can actually use your whole pack without any performance issues (only the DDS version).
I don't know if this is in any way interesting for you, but I'll just copy it over:

Out of curiosity, do pretty much all the DDS files load for you? I forgot to mention this before but DDS only accepts dimensions of x4, so when I converted them all with Aorta, it rescaled them automatically (which is why some of them look worse than they should). Also thanks for the heads up.

Edit: And I didn't want to do another pack using DDS files, hopefully I won't have to because the compression makes them look bad in comparison to PNG, and they end up being much larger decompressed. It was also pointed out that Dolphin may lose compatibility with them somewhere in the future, which is another reason why I didn't want to do another DDS pack.

Well, that's a pity, but I understand all this is a lot of work.
It's like with many things when it comes to Dolphin: There are a lot of users who cannot afford better hardware and are very happy when there's something that works for them, even if it's not the best quality possible. The PNG files are so heavy on my hardware that when fast-traveling to Colony 6, I get 6 FPS and when fast-travelling to Colony 9 Dolphin even freezes on the loading screen. So, obviously, I just cannot use them. (though I don't know if PNG file loading is still going to get the same treatment that DDS files got yesterday, and maybe it's going to get a similar speedup, who knows.)

Hm, it's hard for me to say because I don't know all costum files, but I do think that pretty much all DDS files are loading, yes. The only exceptions I've found immediately are those transitional ground textures, that mini-map frame and the menu buttons that pop up from below the screen (ingame). The grass is different (and the ground itself also, I think), the water, obviously, the cliffs, ... and all kinds of HUD stuff. Oh, and thank god - the faces! ^^

**frozenwings** · (This post was last modified: 05-03-2014, 05:26 AM by frozenwings.)

Okay, I put up a comparison of our two bars. This is the best I can get with the gradiant, but the edges (of the corners) are obviously better.

Spoiler: (Show Spoiler)