The Last Story HD GUI+ Texture Pack

[Matrix2525]

_____________________________________________________________________

Information

I recently found myself playing through The Last Story via Dolphin.  I hadn't touched it since the game released a few years ago, but on a whim I felt like experiencing the game again in HD.  Also on a whim, and inspired by some of the amazing texture packs that other forum members have been releasing, I thought I would try my hand at updating the game's GUI a bit.  While the game generally looks nice at 1080p, it uses some very low-res text for key parts of the interface which looks rather grainy.  That's where I started, and four hundred-sixty some odd textures later, I suddenly had a texture pack that makes a good portion of the game's interface and menus look a bit nicer.

I began this project just for myself, with no real plans for a public release, only updating the textures of major GUI elements or other textures I felt like experimenting with a bit.  While I enjoy occasionally working with textures for various games and dabble in other artistic pursuits, I am no graphic artist.  I have redrawn some texture elements by hand, but most of the textures contained in this pack are upscaled through the use of various tools and filters.  With all of that said, I think the textures I updated make a noticeable improvement to the game's visuals, enough that I thought they were worth sharing with the community.

This texture pack is provided "as is" with no plans to update it further, myself.  If any ambitious members of the community would like to continue this project, or incorporate elements of it into their own, that would be great.  I just ask that I be credited for any of my work used if that's the case.

_______________________________________________________________________

Screenshots

Spoiler: (Show Spoiler)

Before / After
   
   
   
   
   

_______________________________________________________________________

HD GUI+ Pack Downloads

Important: This texture pack requires a [color=#3399ff]Development Version[/color] of Dolphin to work correctly.  Please use revision 4.0-5243 or newer.
It is also strongly recommended you use the DDS version for the best performance.

[color=#9933ff]Version 1.0 (April 29 2015)[/color]
DDS Link: Download
PNG Link: Download

_______________________________________________________________________

Installation

1. Extract the archive to a convenient location
2. Copy the entire "SLSEXJ" folder into "Username\Documents\Dolphin Emulator\Load\Textures\"
    NOTE: SLSEXJ is the USA folder name.  If you are playing a different region version,
    change the folder name to "SLSPXJ" for Europe or "SLSJXJ" for Japan.
3. Enable custom textures in Dolphin
    Open Dolphin -> Graphics Settings -> Advanced Tab -> Check Load Custom Textures
4. Start the game and enjoy!
_______________________________________________________________________

[Intruso]

It looks great.

Maybe you should change the font you used in "Load - New game - Multiplayer" to the font of the rest of menus. That font is too modern, too "Times new Roman" compared with the original one.

[Garteal]

Moved to the HD Textures forum for you.

Nice to finally see a pack for this game. Hopefully this'll get others interested in retexturing the game.
I actually did a few retexturing for this game waay back (environments, etc for testing) but they're obviously not good enough or anything for release.
Other than the HUD, a lot of the clothing and faces etc can use some retexturing.

[HeyAlucard]

This looks awesome!

[Matrix2525]

@Garteal: Thanks for moving the thread. Like I mentioned in the opening thread, I ended up doing a lot of upscaling instead of redrawing from scratch. I'm pretty sure not all of it is up to release standards, either, especially compared to, say, the guys working on the Xenoblade pack. However, no one else has posted any retextures before this (aside from the 360 buttons), so I thought it might be a nice starting point. I also know I haven't covered every single GUI element because, after dumping the textures, there are literally tons of separate elements that make up each part of the interface and menus. So, I did what I could for the more noticeable elements. Most of the text files I just upscaled and sharpened, though I replaced some, like the lowest resolution text, which was used heavily in the options menu and inventory screens. I think I'm happiest with the various battle portraits for the main characters, though. It took some searching, but I found some really nice high resolution art from the art book and released media to use.

Aside from the GUI, I included some other random textures I played around with a little, like all the main character face textures, eyes, various signs from around the city. Upscaling them may not make a huge improvement, but they certainly don't hurt how anything looks, so I included them for anyone interested, hence the "plus" part of the pack. I tried to organize all the textures as best I could in sub folders so it's pretty easy to sort through as well. I'm not sure if I'll put out any major updates to what I posted due to time constraints, life, the usual, but who knows. If there are any glaring issues or omissions, I'm sure I can find some time to update them.

I actually looked into the character armors a bit, because the pixelated wraps, straps, etc bothered me, heh. Unfortunately, what I found makes it seem like doing a proper retexture for them is a pain, to put it lightly. Every time you change a color on an armor piece, dolphin dumps a new texture with a unique hash. If there were only three or four colors, it would almost be manageable. But, as anyone who's played the game knows, there are a "lot" of colors and combinations. It seems like retexturing all of the resulting texture files would be near impossible. But that was just what I could figure out. Maybe someone else might have better luck. Anyway, I've gotten to rambling for way too long, so I'll end things here.

[masterotaku]

Nice! I'll download it when I feel like resuming the game. It's big for a mostly HUD-only texture pack. I like that   .

[toto621]

Neat ! This game deserve a full HD texture pack for sure

[Matrix2525]

I'll let you in on a secret as to why the pack is so large for what it is.  The tutorial screens that pop up with occasional movies are made up of numerous, separate images.  As an example, on one tutorial screen you have the background and border, a texture for Zael in a pose, another texture for some background lines, and another texture for a flavor image like a sun, or a hint logo, and finally a separate mask texture for each of those foreground elements.  So, there's 75 different textures just for the tutorial screens.  Next, nearly all of the text in the game is dynamic, and uses one of the various sized text sheets in the game, which is great.  Except for the hints that drop down from the top of the screen.  Because the text is slanted, every hint in the game is its own texture file.  So, I did my best to find a font pretty close to the game's, and retyped 80 hints.  Thanks developers, haha...  Finally, many textures in the game have separate texture files for masks, transparencies, and shadows.  So it's not uncommon to have two or three edited textures for every single element you notice for the HUD or menus.  As an example, the character portraits you see on the left of the screen when you're in battle are made up of three separate texture files.  One file for all of the main portrait images.  A second file which is a transparency mask, so the portraits get more transparent the closer they get to the health bars and numbers, and a final texture for the shadow of each portrait.

So yeah, there are lots of little bits and pieces that all get used and re-used.  It was fun to see it all, but it's a little difficult finding a specific element now across the 1500 or so textures I dumped :p

[Topken]

Hopefully we can drum up more people to work on this.

To be honest I personally prefer this game over Xenoblade Chronicles. I just have more fun playing this then I do Xenoblade. But Xenoblade seems to get all the attention while this diamond in the rough gets little to no attention.

[drgn]

thanks; I have a problem. I try 5 different development versions, ısshurka and dolphin 4.0.2 but the texture pack not working and there is sound problem. The game perfectly dolphin 3.5 but texture pack dont working on dolphin 3.5