so I have this idea.
Since Diablo 2 remaster wasn't even announced (by Blizzard) yet, what stops us from creating our own remaster mod for Diablo 2? Just to be clear - when I say remaster, I mean only higher resolution with upscaled images, nothing else.
Even though we have some HD mods, all they do is just zooming out, leaving the original textures in low resolution.
But with the AI / machine learning boom, we have some new possibilities - as I've demonstrated today in this reddit post.
The results are rather good (monsters looking good - for example when the Fatality model is being used - the one in the middle in the image grid).
I've even seen some quite impressive examples of some locations in D2 upscaled using the same technique.
So I have this idea - a FullHD mod (but with 4:3 ratio - 1440x1080), but no zooming out - everything stays in place, just like in the 800x600 resolution. This means upscaling every single texture in the game by factor 1.8.
I've done some thinking about what is possible and what is not.
What is possible:
- extracting all textures
- upscaling all textures by factor 1.8
- putting the upscaled textures back in the game
Possible problems:
- Don't DC6, DCC or other texture formats have some size limit? In that case putting the upscaled textures back in the game would be problematic.
- The underlaying (surface) grid (not the tile images, the model layer underneath) should be upscaled too. Don't know if the factor 1.8 is ok in this case - maybe the float would cause problems, but maybe a factor of 2 would be okay. In that case all textures regarding surface (monsters, characters, map tiles, missiles etc.) would be rescaled by a factor of 2.
What do you think about it? Will the image size be a problem for the game image formats? Could the underlaying grid be also extended?
Or are there any other problems you see that I am currently unaware of? Or any other suggestiong?
Thank you.