Metroid Prime Trilogy - HD Interface Textures (V 1.6 | December 05, 2020)

[Terg500]

(05-20-2020, 08:02 AM)Bighead Wrote: I'll check out MP3 eventually, if it's the same situation there it shouldn't be too hard to extend this method to that game too.

I quickly checked out Prime 3 and it seems it uses the same exact letter layout as Prime 2 for the smaller font size.

[Malkierian]

(05-20-2020, 08:02 AM)Bighead Wrote: I'll check out MP3 eventually, if it's the same situation there it shouldn't be too hard to extend this method to that game too. This was just something I whipped up quickly when I seen Malkierian point out the issue awhile back. At the moment it's hardcoded for MP2 fonts, it checks the first 12 pixels along the top row of each dump to find a match. So while it's unlikely there would be false positives if other textures are thrown into the mix when sorting the fonts, it's also not impossible.

I actually never extracted that version of the tool XD That will be happening pretty soon, though, as MP1's text is done (just have to do some common text files). Thankfully, though, it looks like MP3 is only half as bad as MP2. at least in text texture count, doesn't seem to use transparent text, like MP1 did, and like Terg said, it seems to be the same layouts sometimes, so it should be a pretty easy adaptation.

[Terg500]

(05-20-2020, 01:39 AM)Bighead Wrote: I actually somewhat created a solution for Metroid Prime 2 fonts but never released it publicly (yet). It was supposed to be in the next version of my tool, but I haven't been working on it lately. In short, you only need to recreate each variation of the four main font textures once, and the script will duplicate each color based on the dumps you provide.

Okay, I have tested your script and everything was finished in 2 minutes, here's the result:



My only gripe with the conversion of the textures is that it doesn't keep the transparency of each pixel making the converted textures look kinda ugly. I will see if doubling the resolution of the textures will help to lessen the effect.



EDIT: Doubling the resolution indeed lessens the effect, but going 8 times the original size of the textures causes small artifacts to appear ingame

[Bighead]

Thanks for trying it out, that's definitely an oversight. It's been awhile since I've worked on this and haven't given it much testing. Right now it completely inherits the transparency value of the dump and disregards any transparency in the source.

I whipped up a quick fix, this assumes that your most opaque pixels in the source have an alpha value of 255 (FF), and only outer anti-aliasing pixels have transparency. It calculates the transparency difference needed for the pixel by subtracting 255 from the overall alpha from the dump, and then subtracting the current pixel value from the difference. This gives basically the same result except it preserves the transparency difference between pixels.
https://www.mediafire.com/file/yjb7qloztzcz77g/Custom_Texture_Tool_PS_v47.0.b2.7z/file

Using anything less than 255 for the "inner" pixels and you may get some odd results. I could make it so it detects "the most opaque pixel" beforehand, but that would add unnecessary time to each generation and overall reduce the range of possible transparent pixels. Just simply reserve transparency for AA pixels in your source textures.

Also, for fonts that are barely visible, some AA pixels will be lost if their alpha value falls below zero in the calculation. I can't think of any way around that, but I'm assuming they are used for some kind of fade effect anyway. You may also notice some fonts are entirely invisible. This is normal for games developed by Nintendo, as they tend to use these "invisible" textures for some kind of effects. Unfortunately, these obviously can not have AA pixels. Some examples of "invisible" textures can be seen here:
https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-custom-texture-tool-ps-v46-2?pid=479243#pid479243

[Terg500]

(05-21-2020, 08:49 AM)Bighead Wrote: Thanks for trying it out

No thank you for making this tool, without it it would be impossible work. With your new patch my textures get converted 1:1 and look much cleaner ingame because of it. Simply amazing work. :-)

[Bighead]

Glad to see it's working. Next I'll see about extending the method to MP3 fonts since it seems the situation there is about the same. Since the fonts need to be hardcoded to some degree, I'll probably just replicate the MP2 operations.

[Terg500]

(05-21-2020, 09:41 AM)Bighead Wrote: Glad to see it's working. Next I'll see about extending the method to MP3 fonts since it seems the situation there is about the same. Since the fonts need to be hardcoded to some degree, I'll probably just replicate the MP2 operations.

Do you have any plans of extending this feature to the other sizes like 88x112, 104x128 etc. as well? While they are FAR more manageable than the 64x80 ones because they are used less often it would still be of help if we had something like it. You could add a new drop-down menu to select the required size and then everything else is based on that. Then again I have no idea how much work will be and I'm really happy to have the current tool to work with.

[Terg500]

Thanks to Bighead's script and the long weekend due to ascension day on Thursday I have now finished Metroid Prime 1 and 2 (after quickly going through both games again with cheats). There might be some textures I have missed but I haven't encounter any issues so far.



After a quick test it seems Prime 3 also uses most of the textures I made for Prime 2 so after I checked out Prime 3 I think I can release a new version with the texts included.

[e2zippo]

(05-23-2020, 10:21 AM)Terg500 Wrote: Thanks to Bighead's script and the long weekend due to ascension day on Thursday I have now finished Metroid Prime 1 and 2 (after quickly going through both games again with cheats). There might be some textures I have missed but I haven't encounter any issues so far.



After a quick test it seems Prime 3 also uses most of the textures I made for Prime 2 so after I checked out Prime 3 I think I can release a new version with the texts included.

Bigheads tool is amazing! That looks so good, thanks man!

[michaelpegaso]

GREAT NEWS