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Final Fantasy IX - PC Waifu x2 by Fraggoso ("HD"/ Filtered backgrounds)

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StarVigil

Member
Final Fantasy IX finally made it to PC a year ago. To a big surprise, Square held on to many of the game's assets, including the fantastic cutscenes.
The 3D models look fantastic, the music is superb like in the original game, and we also got the "booster" treatment (4x speed, dmg boost, etc) like other Final Fantasy PC remasters.
But one thing ironically and sadly stands out: the backgrounds. Those were lost, so all we have are the original PS1 backgrounds that were made for ants.
giphy.gif



So what to do?

Option A: Play it as is and try to endure the disparity of the 3D and 2D assets.
Youtube video of the first 30 min of the game, credit: YourApps Info

Option B: Play it in windowed mode. Minimize the disparity of the assets, make it easier on the eye.
giphy9ix6t.gif


Option C: Install the HD backgrounds mod by Fraggoso
Youtube video that I made of the beginning of the game with the mod installed
Ignore the framerate issues. That's Youtube's fault and they aren't present in the game or my encoded recording.
Screenshot comparison, credit: Fraggoso
Link to Fraggoso's guide on Steamcommunity
Installing is super easy: Download the files (2 links!), replace the files in two folders, done.

So if you're like me and were waiting for a mod to come out and fix the backgrounds, you don't have to wait no more. Enjoy!

giphy.gif
 
I'm glad someone did this; hopefully a lot of people out there who couldn't tolerate the pixellated backgrounds will enjoy it. I don't think I'll use it myself, though: I see some lost detail in those images.

EDIT: I also think the modder would have been well served by adding some slight grain to the backgrounds, because they look a bit too smooth and plasticky as they are.
 
It looks a bit off, but I get that it's limited in what you can do due to the source material.

I'd probably play with this instead of the original if I get FFIX for the PC.
 
I appreciate the intent here but it looks absolutely terrible.

I would say if you're concerned about image quality, play it fullscreen at native or double native res, with black borders. Higher than that and it's going to look awful.
 
So much detail and texture is lost in the conversion.

untitled02syp.png


These notices don't look great after being waifu'd, for example.
 
Byvar said:
Yeah, I don't think the detailed models blend well with the filtered background art either. I wish the creator of the mod at least inserted the high-res backgrounds that we do have into the game. There's only a few though: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=551612
Click to expand...

The problem is that its incredibly hard to do that b/c of how the steam version handles background data.
Its not just a static image file, but instead a weird cut-up version that is hard to rectify.

as far as i'm aware (could be wrong here) you really can't up the res of the background data, so even these waifu2x versions are just a "de-artifacted" version of a similar resolution image.

tbh, i'd love it if someone recreated all the backgrounds to that detail standard of the original background art data, but its unlikely b/c of time, effort, and the weirdness of ff9's background data.
 
So is SE not going to release this on PS4 like they did with FFVII?

--

Honestly, the Steam original looks fine. But for me the original on PS3/PS Vita looks fine too.
 
Has an interesting watercolor look, but doesn't feel right.

Playing on a CRT on a PS1/PS2 is still the way to go. 9's backgrounds were extremely detail dense, and because of that I think they hold up worse than FF8 or even Chrono Cross's when pumped up to modern resolutions.
 
IX needs a remake in the KHIII engine. It would look flawless.

It can keep the prerendered backgrounds and turn based system. It just needs a 1:1 HD remake.
 
Jampsuliini said:
The left, the grainy ones are the original. I personally don't see this loss of detail. It just makes the backgrounds less grainy and gives them this watercolor look. I think it goes pretty well with the character models.
Click to expand...

I actually agree here. Considering how background data is handled in the steam version, the watercolour-esque look of the waifu2x versions match better than the grainy horribleness of the original.

But lets just over react to an image comparing a grainy, detail-lost version to an algorithmic de-grainned version.

Willenium said:
ohhhhh, nooooo.....

to the makers' credit, it probably took a really, really long time to take all of those backgrounds into Photoshop and smudge every single item.
Click to expand...

Its so nice to have a super easy way to see when people don't read a title, much less an OP and then judge something.
 
Could someone point out this loss of detail? The only thing that looks off in that Waifu'd image is the character silhouette looking more like the silhouette of a ghost than a person :D Otherwise I think the modded picture actually looks more detailed. I can actually see the imperfections in the wooden wall. In the original you can only see a blurry mess.
 
True Fire said:
IX needs a remake in the KHIII engine. It would look flawless.

It can keep the prerendered backgrounds and turn based system. It just needs a 1:1 HD remake.
Click to expand...

A ff9 remake via unreal engine would be pretty cool, yeah.
Though at that point might as well do in-engine backgrounds and update the battle system to be faster and have more strategy (making weaknesses easier to figure out, put more emphasis on using different abilities).

Otherwise a 1:1 remake would be ace :3
I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
 
I don't like the look of both. I wish there was an option to turn off the background filtering completely like you can do in Final Fantasy VII and VIII.
 
This is why i like playing PS1 games on my vita. The original res of the models makes the 2d and 3d match much much better than adding completely unecessary high resolution model. Same thing with PSP games. Old games were desigbed with a specific resolution in mind and throwing them into resolutions 4x their intention just looks ugly most of the time....look at Ys 7 screens for recent examples.
 
Too bad so many of you feel like it's a downgrade from the low res backgrounds. After trying it out, I personally like the filtered backgrounds a lot. So I would recommend to other people to give it a shot at least. But I can respect that not everyone will see it that way.
 
Appreciate the effort. Lord knows FFIX is an amazing game and deserves even more love .. but yeah .. as many have said .. the completely plastic/smeared looking backgrounds do not gel with the character models and lose a lot of 'fine' detail.

As pointed out above, if the author can add some sort of artificial grain/noise to the images, at least they'll look more 'appropriate'. This filter is stripping them of all 'organic' detail.

The comparisons remind me of the Predator blu ray conversion, they did the same thing there. Everything was smeared in the HD-ification process.
 
Any example of the result with the CRT Scanlines sweetFX ?

I have yet to really play my steam/PC version of the game but that effect already did a really good job at hiding the background weakness.
 
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