High resolution sprites = High resolution KeeperFX

[YourMaster]

KeeperFX can be played in any resolution. Originally it came with the 320x200 resolution, later the 640x400 resolution was added. On modern PC's 1280x1024 is standard for people with 3:4 monitors, 1366×768 is the most used resolution overall because of laptops, and 1920 × 1080 is features on many a gaming-pc.

KeeperFX supports the higher resolutions, but unfortunately the game features sprites for just the two original resolutions (e.g. very small). As people still want to be able to see the icons, buttons, creatures, etc they are automatically made larger by the game (nearest neighbor). This makes the game look really 'blocky', 'pixely' or 'ugly' depending on the technical term you prefer.

I know what you're thinking: We should all kill ourselves because we can't hope to live with this in the year 2015. I say, yes this is a good idea, but I have a better one: Make bigger sprites.

It is possible to download the KeeperFX GFX source data here. Is there a sprite-artist here who is capable of making (a few) higher resolution sprites? When in a game of Pictionary I get the task of drawing an 'egg' people guess things like 'a six' and 'a rock' and perhaps 'a rock with a circle around it and loads of arrows', but never 'an egg' so I'm not it.

I could do automatic resizing though:
Original Sprite:


Resized by KeeperFX:


Resized by image editor:



Who can do better?

[mefistotelis]

If you're looking for good automated algorithm, then for hand-drawn sprites there are few:
2xsal
hq4x
4xbrz

You should be able to find stand-alone scaler for most these algorithms. For every image, we could try them all and select the best result.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_scaling

Of course, this is nothing compared to what artist could do with extending a sprite by hand.
Note that in KeeperFX GFX sources there's "textures-160" subfolder - it contains textures rescaled by Synesthesia (and some which he never touched which are rescaled by simpler ways).

[YourMaster]

Yes, that was what I was hoping for, that among the many thousands of visitors to this site, there is a skilled artist willing to do the hundreds of spites by hand, for free. I have seen the few high res sprites in the folder, and I'd love the entire game to look like that.
What can I say, never hurts to try.

Here is bile demon sprite enhanced by an artist:


Seriously though:




Click to see animation:

[indyq]

Hi,
Do you know how to enable these high resolution sprites in game? Are these sprites included in the compiled KeeperFX mod, or do i have to compile it myself just to enable these sprites?

[YourMaster]

The game needs further changes for it to work with high resolution sprites.

[indyq]

Thanks, i thought that file swap would be enough to make it work. So, game needs to scale bigger sprites to fit the model. Are those changes in progress?

[YourMaster]

Yes and no. Mefisto has started work on the support of the high resolution sprites, however almost a year ago all work on developing KeeperFX stopped. If work will ever resume is unclear.

Look here for the progress/status of this issue.

[Trass3r]

By the way now there's a subreddit dedicated to that very problem: https://www.reddit.com/r/GameUpscale/
Trying new tech like https://github.com/xinntao/ESRGAN

[tonihele]

By the way now there's a subreddit dedicated to that very problem: https://www.reddit.com/r/GameUpscale/
Trying new tech like https://github.com/xinntao/ESRGAN

I tried the tech, pretty awesome:
https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/juxta...a-0edaf8f81e27