It's a shame this game hasn't seen much for custom textures, there is quite a bit of basic stuff that is perfect for a simple quality replacement, like text.
Preface:
I was just about to start this game when I noticed there was a texture pack for Playstation buttons. I have muscle memory for these, but Microsoft screwed me over by flipping A/B and X/Y around vs the SNES layout so I can't use either layout anymore (brain implodes deciding which place A is at for my thumb).
After actually looking at that playstation texture pack, I realized it is absolutely terrible in my opinion. Read as: Akward layout. If I'm trying to confirm/deny something like menu navigation, I'm going to press "O" as that position on gamepads is basically an unspoken rule for Japanese games (typically "X" and "O" get swapped in American releases). I'm not going to press □ to do that action. I'm not trying to hate on that playstation button pack, but it's just not what I want. That layout might actually offer more effective controls, but I just can't bring myself to use it.
So I'm gonna attempt to make a new one that suits my need, so all relative button locations will remain the same since I'll be changing the icon to respectively located Playstation buttons.
That said, I MIGHT feel like playing around with some of the other textures, mainly the INTERFACE. I really hate the quality of some text. See attachments for two examples.
Again, this is purely a "might do" only as I'm VERY lazy, despite my OCD habits. So in this train of thought I've already started making notes on some things, which I would like to share.
I think I figured out how the dye stuff works; again see atachments for example. I say "think" because I'm too lazy to test this
but it makes sense in my head.
The RGB+Black textures = different mask for the three dye slots possible per texture.
So with my example attachments, we see the base texture, and three separate palette masks. Each mask texture has a single color (R/G/B).
All three mask textures cover a region on the base texture.
No mask textures will overlap either of the other two mask textures.
The R/G/B of the masks = 3 custom dye colors.
Instead of a single mask file (3 custom colors), we get three separate texture with 3 custom colors each.
Total: 9 custom colors (same total dye options in-game). Coincidence?
Now if I understand how Dolphin dumps textures, this would mean the game creates new textures by mixing the base texture and masking textures together and the dye color with a simple additive overlay. Kind of like what happens when you make a new layer in Photoshop/GIMP and fill it with a single color and set that layer to "hue" or "color"; super basic image manipulation.
I find it highly unlikely that the developers would make a ton of variations of a texture covering every color combination!
Also, the game appears to have bump maps, although weak ones, which is still a plus in my book..
Thanks to how the game engine works (or limitation of dumping/injection-swapping textures), there are a ton of textures.
Each frame of an animation gets dumped separately, like the button press glow/pulse highlight. The Tutorial videos are a nightmare. Not only is each frame of the "movie" part of the tutorial dumped seperately but so are the pulsating highlights that tell you what to press during the tutorials. Did I mention that those pulse highlight frames are ALSO seperate from the movie portion?
Yep. 1 frame of movie + ~2-4 frames of button highlight animation, then 1 more movie frame and a few more frames of highlight animation, rinse, repeat.
At least I've seen a few textures that behave like sprite sheet animation (each frame in a grid layout inside a single texture file).
Perhaps this is one cause of bad performance (tons of textures for animations and real-time texture manipulation from dye variations)? I bet the game's performance in the past is why this game hasn't received much custom texture love (compared to Xenoblade).
So now you know why I made this post.
Now for questions.
First question:
I read a while back that the Texture Cache accuracy setting changes the texture's filename, so textures dumped would only work if others play the game with the same texture cache accuracy setting.
Is this still true?
Do we still need "MEDIUM" for our texture cache accuracy for everything to work properly (not "safe" and not the default of "fast")?
Second question:
Because I want to be lazy, does anyone know how custom textures apply to Last Story?
I mean, how do custom textures work if they are a different size than the original?
Let's say I have a 10x10 pixel texture, and we have a 5x5 region of pixels that will actually be applied to a model mesh. Said region starts 3 pixels from the top and left sides. If the texture was twice as large (20x20), would that 5x5 region still be 3 pixels from the top and left sides or would the region get scaled proportionally? I'm assuming proportional adjustment, but would like to be sure.
Third question:
Does anyone know the typeface(s) used for text stuffs? Similar ones? Again, being lazy.
Fourth question:
Is there a way to dump only the textures on the screen? With all the textures it's hard to tell if I''m missing a texture or if a texture is partially being reused (like Xenoblade bunker walls and some pipes using the same texture file, but the pipes being a small cross-section of the bunker walls@doorways
Fifth question: ????
Sixth Question: PROFIT!
Preface:
I was just about to start this game when I noticed there was a texture pack for Playstation buttons. I have muscle memory for these, but Microsoft screwed me over by flipping A/B and X/Y around vs the SNES layout so I can't use either layout anymore (brain implodes deciding which place A is at for my thumb).
After actually looking at that playstation texture pack, I realized it is absolutely terrible in my opinion. Read as: Akward layout. If I'm trying to confirm/deny something like menu navigation, I'm going to press "O" as that position on gamepads is basically an unspoken rule for Japanese games (typically "X" and "O" get swapped in American releases). I'm not going to press □ to do that action. I'm not trying to hate on that playstation button pack, but it's just not what I want. That layout might actually offer more effective controls, but I just can't bring myself to use it.
So I'm gonna attempt to make a new one that suits my need, so all relative button locations will remain the same since I'll be changing the icon to respectively located Playstation buttons.
That said, I MIGHT feel like playing around with some of the other textures, mainly the INTERFACE. I really hate the quality of some text. See attachments for two examples.
Again, this is purely a "might do" only as I'm VERY lazy, despite my OCD habits. So in this train of thought I've already started making notes on some things, which I would like to share.
I think I figured out how the dye stuff works; again see atachments for example. I say "think" because I'm too lazy to test this
but it makes sense in my head.The RGB+Black textures = different mask for the three dye slots possible per texture.
So with my example attachments, we see the base texture, and three separate palette masks. Each mask texture has a single color (R/G/B).
All three mask textures cover a region on the base texture.
No mask textures will overlap either of the other two mask textures.
The R/G/B of the masks = 3 custom dye colors.
Instead of a single mask file (3 custom colors), we get three separate texture with 3 custom colors each.
Total: 9 custom colors (same total dye options in-game). Coincidence?
Now if I understand how Dolphin dumps textures, this would mean the game creates new textures by mixing the base texture and masking textures together and the dye color with a simple additive overlay. Kind of like what happens when you make a new layer in Photoshop/GIMP and fill it with a single color and set that layer to "hue" or "color"; super basic image manipulation.
I find it highly unlikely that the developers would make a ton of variations of a texture covering every color combination!
Also, the game appears to have bump maps, although weak ones, which is still a plus in my book..
Thanks to how the game engine works (or limitation of dumping/injection-swapping textures), there are a ton of textures.
Each frame of an animation gets dumped separately, like the button press glow/pulse highlight. The Tutorial videos are a nightmare. Not only is each frame of the "movie" part of the tutorial dumped seperately but so are the pulsating highlights that tell you what to press during the tutorials. Did I mention that those pulse highlight frames are ALSO seperate from the movie portion?
Yep. 1 frame of movie + ~2-4 frames of button highlight animation, then 1 more movie frame and a few more frames of highlight animation, rinse, repeat.
At least I've seen a few textures that behave like sprite sheet animation (each frame in a grid layout inside a single texture file).
Perhaps this is one cause of bad performance (tons of textures for animations and real-time texture manipulation from dye variations)? I bet the game's performance in the past is why this game hasn't received much custom texture love (compared to Xenoblade).
So now you know why I made this post.
Now for questions.
First question:
I read a while back that the Texture Cache accuracy setting changes the texture's filename, so textures dumped would only work if others play the game with the same texture cache accuracy setting.
Is this still true?
Do we still need "MEDIUM" for our texture cache accuracy for everything to work properly (not "safe" and not the default of "fast")?
Second question:
Because I want to be lazy, does anyone know how custom textures apply to Last Story?
I mean, how do custom textures work if they are a different size than the original?
Let's say I have a 10x10 pixel texture, and we have a 5x5 region of pixels that will actually be applied to a model mesh. Said region starts 3 pixels from the top and left sides. If the texture was twice as large (20x20), would that 5x5 region still be 3 pixels from the top and left sides or would the region get scaled proportionally? I'm assuming proportional adjustment, but would like to be sure.
Third question:
Does anyone know the typeface(s) used for text stuffs? Similar ones? Again, being lazy.
Fourth question:
Is there a way to dump only the textures on the screen? With all the textures it's hard to tell if I''m missing a texture or if a texture is partially being reused (like Xenoblade bunker walls and some pipes using the same texture file, but the pipes being a small cross-section of the bunker walls@doorways
Fifth question: ????
Sixth Question: PROFIT!