Question arcs (and Answer Arcs?) with Pachinko Sprites/Ryukishi Sprites and Original OG Backgrounds

[drojf]

Prisma on discord created/trialed using upscaled pachinko sprites .

The sprites can be downloaded here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1N6HTxCyVY1W0amrqpJNzFIPH2sOQ1Q75 (OLD LINK, don't use)

Prisma played up to episode 3 with no issues so it's probably relatively save to use (with the disclaimer that it's not well tested/experimental). It should be installed over the PS3 sprites so that you get the ps3 sprites where no mangagamer sprite exists (otherwise you will just have no sprite at all)

[drojf]

Prisma:

This archive contains

• keeps existing ps3 cgs and efes in the backgrounds folder
• overwrites zoom, tati, r_click folders with scaled versions of the pachinko sprites

USAGE: You'll want to go to your game directory and completely delete the big folder so that no old files remain that aren't replaced by the pachinko big once you drop it in.

Download: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1nYRv-dOrsZ8xdQsjRr5r2DCtMxR4Cmec v0.1 pachinko sprites pack

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Download: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1IFeyiZfDpkI7w-VXwYgibcL6B5UpTb4m v0.1 upscaled OG backgrounds pack / efe pack

Link is dead, but may be better to use an automated method for generating OG backgrounds pack in the future (similar to what we did for Higurashi)

background rar has my modified standard is in seperate efe rar

[drojf]

Possible methods to do Answer arcs:

Use the existing "old sprites" script

• located at https://github.com/07th-mod/umineko-answer/blob/old_sprites/0.utf
• this script was created by reverting the comment where the original "stock" sprite lines were replaced by the inserted ps3 sprites lines
• disadvantage is that
  • any future fixes would be hard to maintain
  • have to manage two scripts
  • can't use ADV mode
• main advantage is that can directly use the existing question arc images without change, just need to add more sprites for new characters

Create a mapping from the old (pachinko) sprites to the new (ps3) sprites, then do a resource-only patch

• This can can be done as a 'best effort' by creating a program to match up the sprites, based on the git diff (I have done this before)
• The program would output an excel file with the mapping, which would then be manually fixed where necessary
• Finally the program would take the exel file, and remap all the images filenames/make copies. After this, the images could be resized however you like.
• main disadvantage of this method is that I have to write the program xd
• this also requires Prisma to actually finish the game first, since you need to visually compare the sprites to check they are correct in some cases.
• can use the existing full or ADV script

[drojf]

I chose the second method. The sprite mapping has been passed onto a tester to try out.

Edit: for the answer arcs, we have found the following script adjustments need to be made:

• Delete the line underline 1223 (so characters aligned to bottom of screen with no offset)
• Change numalias ut_mld_offset,72 to numalias ut_mld_offset, 0 (so meta world characters have no offset)

This is due to the pachinko sprites having the offset hard baked into their character. The PS3 sprites have some extra legroom at the bottom of their sprite which is normally never seen when playing the game.

edit: prisma has finished playing the game - these are still the only edits necessary to use the pachinko sprites

edit2: I'm going to try and fix this by just adding some blank space at the bottom of each sprite. I have calculated/tested the required value to be 144 pixels, but I am setting it to 142 pixels to avoid any off-by-one errors.

[drojf]

I investigated doing 'old backgrounds' on the answer arcs. As a best effort, this is what I found you would need to do:

• Make all the old background commands be prepended with new_ , so they take precedence over the existing ps3 commands
• Make all the old background commands have ":b;" so they use large images instead of small images

unfortunately it's a little difficult to do this by find and replace, so a small program will be needed to get this to work.

I suspect if we want to put these changes in the installer, the installer itself would have to make changes to the script during installation (the above character sprite offset changes and optionally the 'old backgrounds' script changes).

[drojf]

Prisma has done the sprites for the answer arc too:

• All but 4 characters had their ps3 sprites replaced with pachinko sprites
• All but 4 character's had their ps3 character chart images replaced with pachinko chracter chart images (rescaled slightly to fit)
• 4 characters do not have pachinko sprites
• These 4 characters will need to be replaced with ps3 sprites. As the ps3 sprite images are a different size, they will need to be cropped before use (with XnConvert or similar)
• The 4 characters also need their chart images updated
• cha_btn is not yet updated. Can try to reuse the 'normal' character chart images big\bmp\r_click\cha_btn\ep5 big\bmp\r_click\cha_btn big\ep5
• big\bmp\ber_sys\p_mode\shou is completely different on the two versions (insert comparison image) This is the bern puzzle)

A note about the question arcs - the question arcs only replace the sprites, so some of this extra work is not done on the question arcs.

Downloads in this folder (stopgap download until I upload it to 07th mod server): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1GxCLzj8Yvgx5CLnEY1GK5KUbi2-rEDwu

The four missing character folders are:

1. pro (witch hunt character), used in question and answer arcs
2. kaw (Captain Kawabata, the boat captain), used in question and answer arcs
3. na2 (nanjo's son), used in question arcs
4. ku2 (Sabakichi Kumasawa, kumasawa's son), used in question arcs

answer_arcs_pro.zip

[drojf]

The pachinko sprites have now been added to the installer for both the question and answer arcs (the missing sprites are replaced with PS3 sprites for now).

There is currently no manual instructions or download for the pachinko sprites on the wiki. When it is added, make sure not to confuse users into accidentally installing it by putting it next to the 'normal' downloads.

Note that petsnew already generated upscaled ryukishi sprites here: https://github.com/07th-mod/umineko-answer/issues/45 for when we wish to do that part.

[drojf]

With the help of @tlm-2501 I've put up a release of ryukishi (potato) sprites.

I also went through and made sure the Answer arc r_click folder was correct for both the pachinko and ryukishi sprites.

However, I just noticed a problem...all the cha_tati sprites I did (standing sprites in the right_click menu) are too large when shown on the r_click menu. For the pachinko versions it actually looks OK, but their legs are slightly cut off.

I resized the cha_tati folder such that the height was 1188 as per our existing ps3 sprites. However our existing ps3 sprites includes some whitespace at the top and bottom of the image which ends up makin the characters a little smaller.

I've tested it and actual correct size of the image if there is no whitespace should be just 1080, to match the height of the screen :S. I'm not sure why the images were this 1188 size for our existing ps3 patch.

The other issue is that I could only run waifu2x using the UpRGB model on the nvidia graphics card I have, not the newer CUnet model (unfortunately my main machine is AMD). I don't know if the results with the newer model will be significantly better, but that might be worth fixing while we're at it.

I might get around to fixing this some time in the future, but I thought I'd record what's going on. To fix the issues:

• (optional) someone else needs to resize the unmodded big\bmp\r_click\cha_tati folder for both the pachinko and potato sprites using the CUNet Model to 1080p height
• diff the current folder and new results as I had to copy/paste some files around, and make sure all the files exist as per the current patch already done and included in the archive with the files which need to be resized
• re-pack the archive, and upload to server, and generate the metalink file again

edit: doing some testing reveals why it couldn't be 1080p height - if you use a 1080 image, the image will be offset from the bottom of the screen by about 12 pixels (actual height required to fill the screen = 1092px). However, I can adjust this once the images are passed on to me - the 1080p resize using waifu2x still applies.

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Note for future reference: Sprite mapping is located here: https://github.com/07th-mod/umineko-answer/tree/master/sprite_mapping