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

[Bighead]

LOL, proceeding then. It's impossible to capture every detail of her staff because of the limitation of pixels in these icons but I think I nailed it for the size.

Also you discover yet another scary scenario. In that case, you'll be at the 2nd prison island still finding new IDs in Colony 9... 60k textures later, hey I'm about 50% done guys, NG+ and JP voices here I come! I was just warping around Agniratha yesterday, and the menu palette became untextured a few times. So even warping around in the same area can sometimes change them as well. What was odd about it though, about 20 seconds later they were textured. So it only loaded that set for less than half a minute.

[frozenwings]

The staff looks perfect so far, I agree. You nailed it.

Yeah, I don't think each area resets after each story event. I found around 6 or 7 new submenu sets in Colony 9. Went to tephra and can't get any new ones no matter where I quick travel to and from, in zone and out. I think there's maybe a "pool" of quick travel sets in general for each area. So quick traveling around in an area can bring them up. I might have missed the colony 9 ones before. It's hard to keep track of where I've been.

Maybe a new set unlocks for a new area you unlock. Who knows. It's impossible to know for sure what the hell this thing is doing when it comes to IDing these textures. And yeah, I got a little lazy toward the end of my games, I was also disheartened because I wasn't sure if anyone was ever going to retexture some of the icons or even appreciate the amount of dumping I was doing. Now, I have a better grasp of when the game resets IDs, and I'm determined to get everything I can this time. All things consider, with the amount of sub-menu IDs I'm dumping, I think I did a pretty good job with the main menu palette considering what I know now and what I knew then. I rarely see a new set pop up. I have 23 new menu palette sets since I started retextering, compared to 199 achievement bubbles (totally new sub menu dumping icon) IDs. All together (including the files you gave me at the start of my new dumping run + my new textures, I have 231 of the info bar for the menu palette. Assuming there are an equal amount of main menu textures and sub menu textures, I'm catching up here. But I won't know for sure until I get to the end of the game how closely related they actually are.

[Bighead]

Trust me on one thing, I as well as many others appreciate it far more than you can imagine. To me it's just as if not more important than actually making any new textures. What good are they if they aren't put to use half the time. Like Echoes made all those fancy menu borders, without dumping efforts nobody would ever see them so I bet that makes him happy as well. Plus, I actually went out of my way to find IDs starting with Bionis Leg because thats when I really started to get into this, and you probably found 10x as many as me at the point you're at now.

Edit: Also, I have to thank you because when this is all over with and I can actually sit down and enjoy a playthrough of this game without worry, I'll be remembering all the efforts by you and everyone when I glare at all the pretty textures before me.

[Echoes]

Don't new textures also get generated when switching the party order (and then leaving and returning an area)? I haven't been dumping in forever, so I may be wrong. But I'm pretty sure I'm right. If so, then this is a huge pain, with all of the possible party orders as well.

Also, looking good Bighead! Are those hand drawn? like, without using a mouse? Because if you are using a mouse, you must be some sort of sorcerer. I could never make make anything as complicated as that and have it look anywhere near as good. LOL

Edit: Yeah, the insane work you're putting into this is very appreciated! Maybe one day we'll be able to replay this game without a single duplicate showing up. What a day that will be.

Also, I was thinking that when "X" comes out, and provided there's a way to do it, we may be able to get away with taking its terrain textures and change their saturation to match Xenoblade. Maybe.

[frozenwings]

Oh, don't worry. I know people DO appreciate it, just that I wasn't sure how many people were going to even bother downloading my pack (a lot of thread to go through, easy to get lost in the clutter) and going through it to add to 4.1. I guess rather than say people wouldn't appreciate it, I should have said I wasn't sure if people were interested or even dedicated enough to find my back. It has around 500 total downloads (each part), but I'm not sure how good that measures up. I doubt most people even ever knew it existed.

Poweredbykimchi never added my files to his pack, so I didn't know if he didn't like some of my retextures, or if he just never got time or didn't think there was enough interest to bother. I'm not saying he didn't appreciate my efforts, in fact I was talking to him a lot for a while and he seemed very appreciative. And he helped get started and even retextured a few things himself for me. All around, I feel a lot better working on this with other people, even if I do feel like I'm being a pain sometimes :p.

[narcku]

(04-28-2014, 05:25 AM)Bighead Wrote: Trust me on one thing, I as well as many others appreciate it far more than you can imagine. To me it's just as if not more important than actually making any new textures. What good are they if they aren't put to use half the time.

Seconded. FYI, I'm really glad that both you and Bighead came to help this project.
I thought the HD texture project had ended for good before you guys started posting here.
You guys actually went out of your way to do all these dumping, batching, and organizing the files for others.
I can say not many people are both willing and able to do all that.
So of course, I appreciate it. So much that I'm eagerly waiting for release

[Bighead]

(04-28-2014, 05:39 AM)Echoes Wrote: Also, looking good Bighead! Are those hand drawn? like, without using a mouse? Because if you are using a mouse, you must be some sort of sorcerer. I could never make make anything as complicated as that and have it look anywhere near as good. LOL

I wish they were hand drawn, I can actually draw with those LOL. I'm not the next Da'Vinci but with my hands I can look at one image and pretty much duplicate it to at least 85-95% accuracy without tracing. But I guess I'm not bad with a mouse either which how I'm doing these. This is the style I was going to go with before I chose a more "cartoony" look. The realism just wasn't doing it for me and took too much effort, but in this pic I actually had the blade done. No filters yet this was just air brushing. It actually looked much better before I destroyed it.
http://i.imgur.com/8cqnERm.png

[Echoes]

I see. Ditto on that, I've been drawing stuff since I was a kid, so if I put effort and time, I'm sure I could do something as simple as an icon. Maybe I should practice more with the mouse, see if I can do something decent over time. LOL

[frozenwings]

(04-28-2014, 05:39 AM)Echoes Wrote: Don't new textures also get generated when switching the party order (and then leaving and returning an area)? I haven't been dumping in forever, so I may be wrong. But I'm pretty sure I'm right. If so, then this is a huge pain, with all of the possible party orders as well.

Also, looking good Bighead! Are those hand drawn? like, without using a mouse? Because if you are using a mouse, you must be some sort of sorcerer. I could never make make anything as complicated as that and have it look anywhere near as good. LOL

Yes, going back and forth between areas does reset IDs. In fact it's my first tier of ID set pools.

(04-28-2014, 02:57 AM)frozenwings Wrote: I. "Naturally" walking into a new Area, or "naturally" walking back into a previous area from a new area

As far party order, I've never noticed it effect IDs. And I've spend a few hundred hours dumping the game at least, I've spent close to 60 or 70 just this week alone since I'm on a sort of mini-vacation (I'm "allowed" shorter hours for the next couple of weeks) and have tons of spare time. Usually I play as Dunban or Melia, and switching them out for different characters and changing the party order doesn't suddenly change the amount of new IDs I'm seeing. For example, when I get to a new zone I use my gem crafting trick (a certain order of crafting, reloading the main menu palette) to force tons of new IDs to load. I won't get into the details, but usually I get 5-10 new sets of IDs every time. Saving/reloading the game with different party members, or even going back and forth between zones with different party members doesn't yield any new results after the initial dump.

I think at first party order maybe have appeared to effect IDs just because of how many IDs there are in general that if you load into a new places and zone back and forth you're guaranteed to get a few sets regardless of anything else. But I'm 95% sure that party order has no effect on ID generation. But, next game I'll play as a different character (maybe Reyn) and see if that loads tons of new IDs. In theory, if party order effects IDs, I should be getting a 10,000-15,000 new IDs on my next playthrough before even hitting Eryth Sea. :p

And to the rest of you guys, I wasn't fishing for gratitude at all (although it's nice to hear/see it :p). I know you guys obviously appreciate it, and other people do too. I wish I wouldn't have worded it like that. I guess I just don't like wasting my time; honestly I was doing it mostly for myself because I like HD textures. When no one was retexturing anything though, yeah, got lame. I attempted my best (quest menu icons, coin icons, skill tree bars, etc.) but there is no way I could do complicated textures. It's a lot more fun now that there are a ton of people involved again.

Edit: And I think all of you guys are wizards, lol. I wish I could make cool monado textures, or UI elements. Or icons. Everything looks fantastic.

Sorry for grammar, typos. Typing from my phone is a pain.

[narcku]

Lol if you are a vector graphic expert, you only need a mouse .
Now that I think about it, people who are good at vector drawing will probably help a lot on these UIs.
They don't necessarily have to use a true vector format, but their techniques would be a benefit.
But from what I can see, these people are normally not interested in modding
...I'm getting off topic here, I will shut up now.

Edit:

(04-28-2014, 06:02 AM)frozenwings Wrote: And to the rest of you guys, I wasn't fishing for gratitude at all (although it's nice to hear/see it :p). I know you guys obviously appreciate it, and other people do too. I wish I wouldn't have worded it like that. I guess I just don't like wasting my time; honestly I was doing it mostly for myself because I like HD textures. When no one was retexturing anything though, yeah, got lame. I attempted my best (quest menu icons, coin icons, skill tree bars, etc.) but there is no way I could do complicated textures. It's a lot more fun now that there are a ton of people involved again.

Nahh.. just think of it this way. You're like the Batman of this thread. You did a lot of good stuffs for others and they don't even realize it.
And trust me, I feel the same way. I'm no graphic expert either so I was in pretty much the same situation as you.
I love HD textures, but there's only so much I can do. Seeing many people started working on this again gave me hope