Island Improvements (Part I) + Assignment Ada (Part I)

Hello everybody and Happy New Year!

This is the first post of 2018… time passes quickly… but nothing will stops us! So, let’s continue with the progress updates!

Now I’m focusing on the lighting and effect improvements for Island areas (along with some additional model and texture upgrades). As some of you already know, we learned how to edit the lighting and effects as we reached the final areas of the game. This means that prior rooms didn’t receive these kind of edits. I’m also taking the opportunity to apply these improvements to the Assignment Ada mini-game at the same time.

The first two areas were the worst and the most time-consuming, but the amount of work required for the rest of the areas is much lower! I think the entirety of my efforts in the Island section will be finished very soon and then I’ll start the character / enemy remaster process.

And what have I done in every room? Here’s a summarized list:

Room 300/405:

• Dozens of additional 3D adjustments (seam correction, poor mapping, transparency conflicts, and clipping issues)
• New shadows here and there
• Improved water and fire effects
• Corrected lighting (no more pop-in issues, consistent shadowing triggers reaching characters and enemies, some relocated and adjusted lights)
• I added the flashlight-ON feature in Ada’s minigame. As you can see when you force the camera angle, Ada’s flashlight is on. So, now it casts light. That’s why the in the comparison shots the remastered side looks brighter than the original. This is something you only notice in these comparison shots but, it won’t change the gameplay  experience. Capcom simply copy-pasted the lighting files from Leon’s room to Ada’s room, but they forgot to add the flashlight light source…
• Fixed pop-in effects at a distance. (ISLAND_REV_1_3.jpg)
• Colour corrected the Iluminados mirrors, applied a specular effect+bumpmap on them, and improved the level of detail of the 3D model

Room 301/406:

• Same as previous room
• Now you can see all the missing lights and effects when you look at the previous area in the distance. (ISLAND_REV_1_5.jpg)
• A new light bulb was added in the ceiling, just after the Iluminados door (in the original there is a super intense light source coming from nowhere). (ISLAND_REV_1_C.jpg)

Room 303:

• All pipes 3D models have been re-created — there were too many mapping issues and it was easier to remake them from scratch
• Some additional 3D and texture improvements
• Improved puddle water effect
• Adjusted lighting

Room 304:

• Some additional 3D and texture improvements — for example, the bottles are now modeled in more detail thanks to a more efficient *.SMD and *.bin file structure
• Thinner dust effect around the windows in the downstairs area
• Adjusted lighting

Room 305:

• Some additional 3D and texture improvements
• Some shadow adjustments
• Adjusted lighting

Room 306/410:

• Some additional 3D and texture improvements (I hate pipes!!)
• Some improved lights and effects

Also:

• I’ve ported all the improved and recurrent models from other rooms into these areas. So, if one specific model has been improved in a certain area, it has been / will be ported everywhere else in the game where the same model appears
• All environmental colours have been corrected to match the original Gamecube/Wii version of the game, as usual by removing the infamous broken effect that makes everything look more yellow / red and slightly overexposed
• I’m adjusting, on a room by room basis, the film grain effect to match the HD resolution of the game (the grain looks ok but it was generated for SD resolutions and in the HD ports it looks too big and blurry in certain areas).
• Some items are slightly misplaced — we’ll try to fix them all all over the game because it’s quite easy to do and it’s not time consuming at all

And here are the comparison shots and the first Assignment Ada video covering the first 3 areas of the minigame. I hope you enjoy them!

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