A.I. is revolutionizing the modder community

[Madmick]

Artificial intelligence is helping old video games look like new
Modders are taking advantage of AI tools to update old graphics

The recent AI boom has had all sorts of weird and wonderful side effects as amateur tinkerers find ways to repurpose research from universities and tech companies. But one of the more unexpected applications has been in the world of video game mods. Fans have discovered that machine learning is the perfect tool to improve the graphics of classic games.

The technique being used is known as “AI upscaling.” In essence, you feed an algorithm a low-resolution image, and, based on training data it’s seen, it spits out a version that looks the same but has more pixels in it. Upscaling, as a general technique, has been around for a long time, but the use of AI has drastically improved the speed and quality of results.

“It was like witchcraft,” says Daniel Trolie, a teacher and student from Norway who used AI to update the visuals of 2002 RPG classic The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. “[It] looked like I just downloaded a hi-res texture pack from [game developers] Bethesda themselves.”

Trolie is a moderator at the r/GameUpscale subreddit where, along with specialist forums and chat apps like Discord, fans share tips and tricks on how to best use these AI tools.

Browsing these forums, it’s apparent that the modding process is a lot like restoring old furniture or works of art. It’s a job for skilled craftspeople, requiring patience and knowledge. Not every game is a good fit for upscaling, and not every upscaling algorithm produces similar results. Modders have to pick the right tool for the job before putting in hundreds of hours of work to polish the final results. It’s a labor of love, not a quick fix.

Despite the work involved, it’s still much faster than previous methods. It means restoring the graphics can be done in a few weeks by a single dedicated modder, rather than a team that has to work for years. As a consequence, there’s been an explosion of new graphics for old games over the past six months or so.

The range of titles is impressive, including Doom, Half-Life 2, Metroid Prime 2, Final Fantasy VII, and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Even more recent fare like 2010’s Mass Effect 2 has got the AI-upscaling treatment. In each case, though, these are unsanctioned upgrades, meaning it takes a bit of extra know-how to install the new visuals.

Good time to be a PC gamer. There's a lot more discussion in the link including a lot of cool graphics. I liked this comment concerning the psychological regression effect when playing old games from one's youth. You forget how bad TVs were even as late as the 90's, and how that glossed over graphic imperfections of the time:

“With the pixel/low polygon graphics of yesteryear, the old TV monitors helped gloss over many imperfections,” he says. “Your mind finished the job and filled in the gaps [but] modern displays show these old games in their un-filtered roughness.”

One focus of the feature was hidfan's AI-upscaled DOOM graphics:
https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/99021-v-0-95-doom-neural-upscale-2x/

He tells The Verge that the updated Doom visuals he made took at least 200 hours of work to tweak the algorithm’s output and clean up final images by hand.

In Doom, as with many video games, the majority of the visuals are stored as texture packs. These are images of rocks, metal, grass, and so on that are pasted onto the game’s 3D maps like wallpaper onto the walls of a house. Just as with wallpaper, these textures have to tesselate perfectly, or players can spot where one image starts and another begins...

Doom NeuralUpscale 2x what is it ? :
Using AI NeuralNetworks (A lot of Nividia's texture tools : super resolution and a little bit of Topaz's AI gigaPixel), all textures and sprites have been upscaled 8x (with tons of AI artefacts), then downscaled to a final 2X to restore a pixel art look.
A lot of textures have been manually cleaned of AI artefacts and all transparency masks have to be manually enhanced (because AI don't know what to do with binary Black&White yet).

Involved in that project is a moderator of that forum whose Twitter is below. He has commentated on how good these AI tools are getting:

 

[jojoRed]

Its absolutely incredible with what the could do with games that are 2 decades old. I saw these a couple of months back for older games.

Here are FMVs of RE3 running at 4k, 60fps. Looks so damn gorgeous.



Backgrounds etc

 

[Sakurabaism]

God damn the FFVII looks amazing. I have been itching to play Chrono Cross for a while but while the game has gorgeous hand drawn background and beautiful soundtrack, the character sprites looks very outdated, would be amazing if someone modded the shit out of that game.

 

[Law Talkin’ Guy]

Those new textures for Doom (one of my absolute favourite games of all time) look fantastic!

@Zer @90 50

 

[The Diplomat]

Now, this is interesting.

I wonder if the algorithm would work on old video.

 

[90 50]

Those new textures for Doom (one of my absolute favourite games of all time) look fantastic!

@Zer @90 50

Hopefully this is why the Sigil release is taking so long? This was coming out and they are implementing it!!!

 

[Law Talkin’ Guy]

Hopefully this is why the Sigil release is taking so long? This was coming out and they are implementing it!!!

No, the Sigil delays are due to problems with the packaging for the collector editions (or whatever they’re called). Romero is a purist. He’d probably prefer people to play Sigil on a 486 with a 15 inch CRT monitor at 320x200 resolution.

 

[Shoemaker]

That looks fantastic. I need to get my hands on this; I have some pixel art that I'd be interested in processing. I can't do full illustrations very well, but I'm decent at pixel (but it's all programmer-art, really). Would be pretty cool to be able to generate the hi-res illustrations from those.

 

[Shoemaker]

Hopefully this is why the Sigil release is taking so long? This was coming out and they are implementing it!!!

No, the Sigil delays are due to problems with the packaging for the collector editions (or whatever they’re called). Romero is a purist. He’d probably prefer people to play Sigil on a 486 with a 15 inch CRT monitor at 320x200 resolution.

Sigil HD: Win the game by killing me, Upscaled Romero

 

[Plissken]

Looked at a bunch or examples from the Reddit. This is amazing, especially since it keeps the original art style intact unlike a lot of fan made texture packs or those Unreal Engine remake videos, keeping the art style intact is a necessity in my opinion.

This reminds me of the Darbee video enhancer. It's a deviceyou plug an hdmi input cable then output cable into and it uses an algorithm that enhances the contrast, sharpness, color, etc, but in a seamless way that doesn't look unnatural, unlike say dynamic contrast, edge enhancement, video sharpening, etc. that are no good (it has user adjustable settings, but increase the enhancement levels too much and it no longer feels natural though, hd setting between 35-65% is the sweet spot depending on your display).

 

[90 50]

No, the Sigil delays are due to problems with the packaging for the collector editions (or whatever they’re called). Romero is a purist. He’d probably prefer people to play Sigil on a 486 with a 15 inch CRT monitor at 320x200 resolution.

I am mad I threw away at the recycler my old dual cpu 486 machine at the recycler a few years back. It was a doom/quake beast back in the day(and I had my original doom on it)

I’m still curious about the “ must be played with an original payed doom “ comment on the sigil site, it sure how that would be imposed.

But yeah sometimes I want to play a non .wad version with the old school sound cards and midi sound



Some of the best old school doom players that do the crazy doom challenges play on old machines and crt’s

 

[deviake]

I wonder how long until AI is used in making new games, if it's not already

 

[Plissken]

I wonder how long until AI is used in making new games, if it's not already

Takes an artist to make a new game. These things are just enhancing already existing elements.

 

[Chubz]

I was playing the DOOM and Heretic versions just the other day.

It's incredible what these algorithms can do, although it's also worth noting that some extra work is required after the fact in order to polish up the sprites.

 

[deviake]

Takes an artist to make a new game. These things are just enhancing already existing elements.

It's just a matter of time, AI can already make music.

 

[method115]

Takes an artist to make a new game. These things are just enhancing already existing elements.

Doesn't really answer his question. Unless your answer is that will never happen which is just not true.

 

[Law Talkin’ Guy]

I was playing the DOOM and Heretic versions just the other day.

It's incredible what these algorithms can do, although it's also worth noting that some extra work is required after the fact in order to polish up the sprites.

Hell yeah, I love me some Heretic and Hexen!

 

[DrakeEB2]

The pc modding community is why i barely console game anymore. I'm a huge Total War nerd and their mod community is beyond great. Professional level talent and dedication. I can't even play a vanilla TW game anymore. Same with the Infinity engine mod community. Twenty years later i'm still playing modded Baldur's Gate ect.

 

[rikwebb]

Final Fantasy 8+9 have also had AI mods too