Version 1.0 Roadmap

Note: 1.0 has released. Check it out.

Hello everyone, a quick update here outlining the roadmap for the upcoming version 1.0 release. I also have some exciting news.

FMVs

First off, as you might've read in the previous development update, I have been looking at upscaling FF7s FMVs as well. The first results were mixed. Not too bad, but nothing to write home about either. The test, as you could see, had a lot of noise in places.

I said I was going to let the FMVs rest for version 1.0, because I thought I wouldn't get them any better any time soon. However, I was able to reduce the noise and the results have been stunning. So I have decided to keep working on the FMVs, so that they can be played together with the rest of the mod starting with version 1.0.

Where possible these FMVs will also use the PSX audio, as it has a better audio quality than the PC version. Below you can see the opening FMV. This is one of the videos that doesn't have the PSX audio, as that doesn't have the music baked in. Other FMVs that are already done do have this audio, but they are a bit more spoilery, so I went for the opening instead.

Other stuff

Since I was going to do the FMVs for version 1.0, I checked if there were any other stuff that would be worth doing for Remako:

Minigames

The minigames involve a lot of flat-shaded 3D models but there are some textures and backgrounds that could be upscaled. Think the G-Bike minigame and the Fort Condor strategy game.

Menu Avatars

You see the menu avatars a lot and my tests showed the images upscaled very nicely. 

Magic

It should be possible to upscale the magic effects as well, at least partially. The magic effects use a lot of transparency, which AI Gigapixel isn't great at. We'll have to see how this pans out.

File Size Reduction

The beta release came in at a hefty 3.88 GB. While personally, I have fast unlimited internet I know that people with data caps or slow connections appreciate as small a download as possible.

I found a nice PNG compressor that didn't impact image quality. With it, I have been able to reduce images by 10-25%. While I don't know the final file size of the mod yet, I expect that there will be a reduction of at least 10% overall. This means that even with all the extra upscaled textures and backgrounds, I should be able to get version 1.0, excluding the FMVs, weighing in at around 3.88 GB as well.

Roadmap

So how far along is everything?

• Field Textures - 90%
• Battle Textures - 100%
• Char Textures - 100%
• Minigame Textures - 75%
• Menu Avatars - 100%
• Magic - 0%
• FMVs - 10%
• File Size Reduction - 10%
• World Textures - 50%
• In-Game Testing - 25%

This shouldn't take more than a few weeks, with next week involving zero work as I will be on holiday.

Side Project

While working on the FMV upscaling, I experimented with some live-action stuff too, to see what it could do there. The results were astounding, in part because I wasn't working with such low-res and compressed video as FF7.

It's for a TV show, so it can't be more than a proof of concept, as I suspect the company behind wouldn't want me uploading full episodes. Still I can't wait to share it with the world later this week.

Don't worry about it impacting work on Remako too much, as it's just a small one-and-done proof of concept that is nearly complete.