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True Remembrance 2x


ff80c38

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(I'm not sure whether this actually belongs here or not, but this board looks like the best place to post.)
Don't worry, this thread is not about a possible True Remembrance fanfic or something along those lines. So, without further ado, I'm working on a Ren'Py port of True Remembrance at the moment. However, it's not a completely direct port as I'm aiming for a higher resolution of 1280x960 (original: 640x480, hence the '2x'), where the art assets are manually upscaled with algorithms like waifu2x or through other means.

Motivation
I started this project to finally learn Ren'Py (and a little bit about KiriKiri), to have a native build of True Remembrance on Linux I can play in fullscreen without all the blurriness (True Remembrance was the only VN I couldn't read in windowed mode) and to see whether upscaling a whole VN with waifu2x is possible or not. If other people will find this project useful, I'm glad, but I'm mainly doing this for me.

Progress
The port is slowly coming together. The whole script is more or less ported by now - that means it's completely playable (sans the credits), but a few special effects aren't implemented yet and there are issues regarding wrong sprites, wrong transitions and italic text.
I haven't touched the GUI yet and I guess it will be a pretty tough endeavour when I get around to do it, the same goes for upscaling the many images with text or the images for the GUI. I also haven't worked out a few other technicalities or whether porting every detail/effect to Ren'Py is even possible, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Screenshots
As my project is in no real publishable state, I'll have to resort to a few comparison screenshots to give a rough idea how it looks at the moment. I'm especially fond of the truetype font I stumbled across and which has a real similar vibe as the originally used bitmap font. (It's CrimsonText Semibold if anybody is interested)
Originial


0AvrL5w.png

XLTgQCd.png

2x Port


94YFwnZ.png

Qc57n4g.png


Recruiting
I'm not actively recruiting at the moment, but if anybody wants to join, I won't say no :).

I think that's all for now. The main purpose of this thread was to announce my project somewhere and to gauge interest. I honestly have no idea whether people will find my project useful or will be averse to it. And if there are any questions, concerns or even feedback, I'm all ears.

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Good luck! True Remembrance is a personal favorite of mine, so I'd love to see what you come up with.

 

Regarding the images/GUI with text: You might be better off re-typesetting those elements rather than trying to size them up. Text is a little less forgiving than art when it comes to scaling and smoothing. (If you need any help with that part of things, feel free to shoot me a PM. I'd be happy to lend a hand.)

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But... True Remembrance is Kirikiri2... Which is open-source and easy to modify engine, as it is text script-based... That means you can just do a 3-line patch, rescale images and you're done, without any need to do a port to any other engine...  Like Sekai did (or doing) for G Senjou... Same for font, you can replace or rescale existing one, as it is true type as well... Obv it is too late now to change anything, just much faster would be to do fixes to the game without any porting.

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Good luck! True Remembrance is a personal favorite of mine, so I'd love to see what you come up with.

 

Regarding the images/GUI with text: You might be better off re-typesetting those elements rather than trying to size them up. Text is a little less forgiving than art when it comes to scaling and smoothing. (If you need any help with that part of things, feel free to shoot me a PM. I'd be happy to lend a hand.)

Thank you. I already thought about making the images containing text completely from scratch, but I have trouble finding the same font that was originally used. It's also a lot of work, so I'll do that as one of the last things. (I'll keep your offer in mind, thanks.)

 

But... True Remembrance is Kirikiri2... Which is open-source and easy to modify engine, as it is text script-based... That means you can just do a 3-line patch, rescale images and you're done, without any need to do a port to any other engine...  Like Sekai did (or doing) for G Senjou... Same for font, you can replace or rescale existing one, as it is true type as well... Obv it is too late now to change anything, just much faster would be to do fixes to the game without any porting.

Ah, I tried modifying the original game, but I quickly ran into a few problems. Well, that's not too surprising with having no knowledge about KrKr2 and no real English documentation available for it... It was mainly sprites and opacity problems, as well as having an exotic pre-rendered font. I probably would have been able to solve those issues with enough time, fiddling and editing (and doubling nearly every coordinate throughout all scripts), but fiddling about with Ren'Py to get the prologue quickly working was the easy way out for me. Also, having native Linux support and having a reason to finally learn Ren'py played a big role in my decision.

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I don't see a reason to port something, that works perfectly fine. Aside from that, all the original assets were of really poor quality, because the game was old and came out at times when downloading gigabytes of data off the net was out of question. To be honest, It's not really advised to create unofficial ports without author's permission and if you respect the original creators, you'd do better promoting the original.

 

Satomi Shiba actually released an updated remake for the 3DS with Arc System Works. I'd rather bug him to create an updated port for the PC version as well. The new art and music are really preety; they also included an omake with additional short stories.

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I don't see a reason to port something, that works perfectly fine.

 

I don't see a reason for "remasters" "HD versions" "remakes" or "ports" either, if we go by that logic.

People are often fond of classic works and they think: "this will undoubtedly look and feel gorgeous with modern tech."

A new hand of paint on a beloved title won't hurt and let's be honest, anyone asked for permission to make

the HD version of umineko or the ps2 assets patch for higurashi? meh. As long as he doesn't make money

out of this, it's perfectly fine.

 

Kind reminder, just keep things cool. Don't actively discourage this project. Your opinion and constructive

criticism are welcome, but no more than that. This is creative corner, after all.

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I don't see a reason for "remasters" "HD versions" "remakes" or "ports" either, if we go by that logic.

People are often fond of classic works and they think: "this will undoubtedly look and feel gorgeous with modern tech."

A new hand of paint on a beloved title won't hurt and let's be honest, anyone asked for permission to make

the HD version of umineko or the ps2 assets patch for higurashi? meh. As long as he doesn't make money

out of this, it's perfectly fine.

 

Kind reminder, just keep things cool. Don't actively discourage this project. Your opinion and constructive

criticism are welcome, but no more than that. This is creative corner, after all.

What kind of "modern tech" are we talking about? Ren'Py and horribly compressed jpg's, upscaled by a shitty median filter? I'm not discouraging this project, all I'm saying it's preety much redundant to waste strength on such endeavours. There are better ways to learn Ren'Py, like coding your own engine/GUI from scratch; you don't even need a story - you just code and fill in the barebones. Who knows, it might come useful in the future. Besides, ff80c38 is doing this mostly for himself. I'm already wasting my breath, because he won't propably listen to me anyway :makina:

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Actually depends on how creator decided to do the game. I saw some resources done in 1280, which got resized in realtime for 3ds screen. As I did not checked this game resources, cannot confirm what resx used in this game (in resources), but having in mind it is almost same file size as PC version...

 

But in most cases yes, you're stuck to 800x240, but this is still better than 640x480.

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Hmm, thanks for the feedback, but I'm not sure what to think. I understand that a port is basically useless (from a Windows-only user perspective) and that asking for permission would have been necessary or at least better. Or asking for the remade 3DS gfx and sfx, and the omake to create something 'new' for the community. (On a side not, I'm not really fond of the new art style, but the remade music is indeed neat.) But I started this little project on my own and I didn't intend to make it into something big or official. If anybody wants to use my amateurish build, ask Shiba Satomi for permission, maybe get the resources from the 3DS port and include it in my build - be my guest.

I don't really want any credit for this (that all belongs to Shiba Satomi and insani + other parties seen in the credits) and I don't think that I'm creating something new or even better than the original KrKr2 build with my port - my only goals are that it's as true as possible to the original and that it's not blurry in fullscreen. And 'as true as possible' means I (probably) won't be able to replicate every small detail, so it's de facto inferior.

At the moment I consider to simply not release my port. At least not publicly. The story is soon fully enjoyable (that's basically enough for me) and polishing the port (mainly UI, gfx and fx) so it's appropriate and worthy to be released is a lot of work I'm not sure I want to take on.

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  • 1 month later...

Okay, I stuck with my little pet project and now I can finally say "It's done". I spent way more time on the final touches than I'd like to, but at least I learned how laborious polishing a piece of software really is. Moreso if you're not skilled in programming.

While the port isn't perfect, it's to the best of my abilities and (I think) worthy of True Remembrance so that I'm going ahead and release an all-OS build. As always, this port is completely unofficial and all credit belongs to Shiba Satomi, insani and all the other awesome people who made the Japanese and English version of True Remembrance become reality. I didn't produce anything new or even better, I only did some petty coding and image editing. To experience the VN as it was intended, read the either the English version handled by insani or the original Japanese version. Naturally, if there should be any complains I'm going to take the port down as I don't want to cause anyone trouble.

It wasn't the original intent of this project, but it would be nice if this port will be useful to other people. True Remembrance is such a beautiful tale (and beautifully written on top of that) so if some more people can (re)enjoy it because of this, I'm glad. Through this project I learned a lot about coding a VN in Ren'Py and how it feels to be on the developer side of things, but I also learned much more about True Remembrance. Turns out I more or less misunderstood the story when I read it the first time a few years ago :). Recognising all the foreshadowing on consecutive 'readthroughs' was one of my favourite parts as well as learning always new aspects about the story - Even if the most interesting questions are only vaguely hinted, so I'm not sure if my current theories are correct or not. In any case, while this project took more effort than I expected, I also learned new valuable things. And that's enough of me, back to the port and its technical details.

The port is as true to the original as possible, but it wasn't always possible to exactly recreate the behaviour of the KrKr2/KAG3 version. In some places I also made some conscious alterations on the GUI to make navigation easier and the VN joystick/gamepad compatible in case anyone likes to use those. All (slight) changes are are more or less restricted to the GUI, looks of weather effects, the readback screen and used fonts - I would never dare to touch the story. There's also a new config/preferences screen (in place of a dropdown menu) which has some more options than the KrKr2/KAG3 version and functions now as a navigational hub. I also added the possibility to disable the readback and get the default rollback back in case anyone prefers that system over the other. The custom mouse cursor can also be disabled just in case since I read somewhere that it can cause slowdowns on some systems. There shouldn't be any bugs left, but let's see what I missed :).

Download:

Windows / MacOS / Linux

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  • 4 years later...

Hey TS and other people!

That's a nice Ren'py port you've made. Great job!

I hope you don't mind that I've made mine on the basis of yours. I used 3DS remake sprites and inserted it in the PC version. I also changed some BGs too. 

What do you guys think?

You can try it out right now. 

Just download the game from here. 

DOWNLOAD

 

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  • 2 years later...
  • 2 months later...

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