Hoo boy... here we go. It took a week longer than I anticipated, but I think it was worth the wait as I am pleased to present version 2.0 of my Sonic Adventure 2 Battle HD Project. And yes, no longer GUI+, but Project. The scope and size of this endeavor has gone from a modest 771 replaced textures weighing in at 354MB to... uh... 4672 replaced textures and 1.83GB. Yep, just a few order of magnitudes bigger. That said, I'll let the changelog speak for itself, plus some new screenshots, and the download link.
Changelog:
Version 2.0 (3/30/2019)
- 4672 textures redrawn and upscaled
- Major characters and vehicles upscaled and redrawn (Standard Costumes)
- inc: Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Shadow, Eggman, Rouge
Amy, Metal Sonic, Tikal, Chaos 0, Chao Walker
Dark Chao Walker, The Tornado, Egg Walker
Big the Cat, Maria, Rouge Story Kart, Omochao
- Chao World UI (Lobby, Gardens, Race, Karate, Kindergarten)
- Boss Titles redrawn
- Pickup Icons redrawn (rings, 1-ups, etc)
- Collectibles Icons upscaled (animals, chaos drives)
- Additional UI elements
- Most Animal textures upscaled and cleaned
- Chaos Drive textures upscaled and cleaned
- Enemy textures upscaled and redrawn
- Mech Bosses (Bigfoot, Hotshot, Flying Dog) upscaled and cleaned
- King Boom Boo textures upscaled
- Chaos Emerald textures upscaled
- Standard Kart Race karts upscaled and redrawn
- Character Menu Themes upscaled and cleaned
- Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Shadow, Eggman, Rouge, Amy
Omochao, Secretary, Maria
- Story Recap Backgrounds redrawn
- Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Shadow, Eggman, Rouge
- Most Stage and Environment textures upscaled, touched up, and redrawn
- Inc: All single player stages, all boss stages,
Downtown Race Battle Stage, Chao Lobby
Note: Many textures now sourced from the original Dreamcast release of SA2
and blended with the SA2 Battle textures because they do not
contain the compression artifacts of the Gamecube release.
Dreamcast textures ripped by Shadowth117.
Texture upscaling done with a combination of Waifu2x and ESRGAN
Screenshots:
Version 2.0 Resource Pack Download: Here
*Important Note: As of version 2.0, this texture pack is now a resource pack in compliance with Dolphin's new format. Simply drop the .zip file into "*\Dolphin Emulator\ResourcePacks". Load up Dolphin and go to "Tools - Resource Pack Manager". Finally, highlight "Sonic Adventure 2 Battle HD Project" in the list and click on "Install" When the title turns green, everything's set to go (make sure you have "load custom textures" checked in the graphics options).
So yeah, this is a huge release, and by far the largest texture pack I've put out here on the forums. Ha, I figured I would write up about everything a little more in-depth here, but honestly I've done so much that I could go on for a while. So instead, I'll just expand on the changelog a little bit. As stated, I have redone every major character's textures, including those characters exclusive to battle mode. This was done through a combination of ESRGAN upscaling, cleanup, and some original work. I created new eye textures for every character, which I think come through pretty well in the screenshots above. The vast majority of the new textures are stage and environment textures. As expected, most of these are almost exclusively the result of the ESRGAN upscaling, with a caveat. Wherever I could, I used the textures from the original Dreamcast release. In most cases, the textures are identical, except the dreamcast versions are free of compression artifacts introduced in the gamecube release. As I continued to dump textures from the game, I also found the gamecube release saved on memory by outright halving or quartering some of the larger textures. Thanks to the Dreamcast version textures, I was able to restore their original size and detail, and then upscale that. The last screenshot I included from Death Chamber is a good example of the result. That mural at the top of the frame was half the resolution of the original texture from SA2. Yeah, you know what, if anyone has questions about any part of the pack now, I'll be happy to answer them, or post screenshots of specific things.
Every single player stage from City Escape to Cannon's Core and the final battle has been redone, including all of the boss stages. With this release, I think I'm done for a bit with the pack as two weeks non-stop burned me out a bit. So, stuff not done:
- Probably some cutscene specific textures
- all of Chao World (minus the lobby)
- battle mode specific stages (minus Downtown Race)
- All the chaos
- Alternate Character costumes
- Alternate karts for the Kart Race minigame
- anything else I've missed at this point
Eventually I hope to finish those up... eventually. Now to update the topic post... Enjoy!
Changelog:
Version 2.0 (3/30/2019)
- 4672 textures redrawn and upscaled
- Major characters and vehicles upscaled and redrawn (Standard Costumes)
- inc: Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Shadow, Eggman, Rouge
Amy, Metal Sonic, Tikal, Chaos 0, Chao Walker
Dark Chao Walker, The Tornado, Egg Walker
Big the Cat, Maria, Rouge Story Kart, Omochao
- Chao World UI (Lobby, Gardens, Race, Karate, Kindergarten)
- Boss Titles redrawn
- Pickup Icons redrawn (rings, 1-ups, etc)
- Collectibles Icons upscaled (animals, chaos drives)
- Additional UI elements
- Most Animal textures upscaled and cleaned
- Chaos Drive textures upscaled and cleaned
- Enemy textures upscaled and redrawn
- Mech Bosses (Bigfoot, Hotshot, Flying Dog) upscaled and cleaned
- King Boom Boo textures upscaled
- Chaos Emerald textures upscaled
- Standard Kart Race karts upscaled and redrawn
- Character Menu Themes upscaled and cleaned
- Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Shadow, Eggman, Rouge, Amy
Omochao, Secretary, Maria
- Story Recap Backgrounds redrawn
- Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Shadow, Eggman, Rouge
- Most Stage and Environment textures upscaled, touched up, and redrawn
- Inc: All single player stages, all boss stages,
Downtown Race Battle Stage, Chao Lobby
Note: Many textures now sourced from the original Dreamcast release of SA2
and blended with the SA2 Battle textures because they do not
contain the compression artifacts of the Gamecube release.
Dreamcast textures ripped by Shadowth117.
Texture upscaling done with a combination of Waifu2x and ESRGAN
Screenshots:
Spoiler:
*Important Note: As of version 2.0, this texture pack is now a resource pack in compliance with Dolphin's new format. Simply drop the .zip file into "*\Dolphin Emulator\ResourcePacks". Load up Dolphin and go to "Tools - Resource Pack Manager". Finally, highlight "Sonic Adventure 2 Battle HD Project" in the list and click on "Install" When the title turns green, everything's set to go (make sure you have "load custom textures" checked in the graphics options).
So yeah, this is a huge release, and by far the largest texture pack I've put out here on the forums. Ha, I figured I would write up about everything a little more in-depth here, but honestly I've done so much that I could go on for a while. So instead, I'll just expand on the changelog a little bit. As stated, I have redone every major character's textures, including those characters exclusive to battle mode. This was done through a combination of ESRGAN upscaling, cleanup, and some original work. I created new eye textures for every character, which I think come through pretty well in the screenshots above. The vast majority of the new textures are stage and environment textures. As expected, most of these are almost exclusively the result of the ESRGAN upscaling, with a caveat. Wherever I could, I used the textures from the original Dreamcast release. In most cases, the textures are identical, except the dreamcast versions are free of compression artifacts introduced in the gamecube release. As I continued to dump textures from the game, I also found the gamecube release saved on memory by outright halving or quartering some of the larger textures. Thanks to the Dreamcast version textures, I was able to restore their original size and detail, and then upscale that. The last screenshot I included from Death Chamber is a good example of the result. That mural at the top of the frame was half the resolution of the original texture from SA2. Yeah, you know what, if anyone has questions about any part of the pack now, I'll be happy to answer them, or post screenshots of specific things.
Every single player stage from City Escape to Cannon's Core and the final battle has been redone, including all of the boss stages. With this release, I think I'm done for a bit with the pack as two weeks non-stop burned me out a bit. So, stuff not done:
- Probably some cutscene specific textures
- all of Chao World (minus the lobby)
- battle mode specific stages (minus Downtown Race)
- All the chaos
- Alternate Character costumes
- Alternate karts for the Kart Race minigame
- anything else I've missed at this point
Eventually I hope to finish those up... eventually. Now to update the topic post... Enjoy!