It only seems fair to give the game a bit of a face-lift to maybe help it stay relevent a little longer. I happen to be a recreational diver, myself, and I think the Endless Ocean games do a pretty good job of capturing the overall atmosphere and wonder of diving, even with the hardware and budget limitations. Scuba diving games are about as niche as they come, and I believe the developer, Arika, has probably made the most within the last two decades (starting with Everblue 1 and 2 on the PS2, and then Endless Ocean and EO: Blue World on the Wii). Spending time with the game again also reminded me of just how much fun it is. It's unfortunate that the other project didn't seem to pan out, but I've had some free time recently and figured I would try my hand at reworking some of the game's textures. I was recently reminded of this game when I another HD Texture Project for it from earlier in the year get bumped back to the top of the forums last month. Until then, enjoy the texture pack as it is now! Moving forward, if I release any future updates, I think I'll be focusing on character, marine life, and other diving gear textures next. I've learned a lot retexturing this game and I think I've managed to improve my artistic abilities at least a little. I have also redrawn and upscaled some other choice textures, including the Nineball Island table area, which serves as a hub menu for the player, and is seen up-close. At this point, the majority of the game's text and UI has been either redrawn or upscaled. Enjoy!Īfter a bit over half a year, I found some time to return Blue World, having fun playing the game, and adding several new textures. Also, the game uses a lot of decently large textures (especially compared to my recent Gamecube projects), so the texture pack is quite large, now, at a whopping 3.81 GB. I'm using my own save file and have not unlocked and seen everything, so there are various textures missing, including some random moon phases, certain unlockable diving gear, and currently the largest omission, all of the Cavern of the Gods environment textures. The texture pack now includes 'most' textures in the game. Overall, I'm pleased with the results, and this a good intermediary step before possibly doing some more retextures 'by hand' for wildlife, etc. The largest difference can be seen in the various wildlife textures, as some creatures have pretty low resolution source images. To be fair, many of the original textures in the game look pretty good, and therefore results vary greatly from textures looking just a little sharper, to other textures looking much better than the originals. This update is mostly an AI upscaling pass on most of the environment, wildlife, and character textures in the game, using a combination of Topaz Gigapixel, ESRGAN, and some personal touches. So, here we are, Endless Ocean Blue World HD Project v2.0, with almost three thousand reworked and upscaled textures. With my recent foray back into texture work, and starting a couple other projects, I knew I wanted to revisit this project as well, converting the pack into a resource pack for the most recent versions of Dolphin, as well as releasing a substantial update.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |