Upscaled Diablo 2

[In The Name of Zod]

As some of you may have heard recently, AI can be leveraged to take old low-res images and upscale them perfectly to newer high resolution bitmaps. A person who goes by the name of Indoflaven @reddit has recently produced images of Diablo 2 upscaled to 1024x786px.

Image from Tweaktown. (click to see full size).

Check out this article on WCCFTech for more info. It sure looks better than 1.4.

https://wccftech.com/diablo-2-remaster-screenshots/

Original Source: https://imgur.com/a/fz0EX4o

Reddit Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/GameUpscale/comments/bmrkit/diablo_2_upscale/

P.S. I also noticed in the discussion on the reddit link that there is a project to develop Diablo as an open source project using all of the games assets without needing to run the game in compatibility mode. Here is the link to the github page if anyone is interested: https://github.com/eezstreet/OpenD2. I wonder if you would still use the breakpoint system, apparently it fixes bugs or so they say. Anya bug?

 

[zemaj]

Interesting... if there ever is a remaster of D2, it will probably be something along these lines. There was an interview of David Brevik not long ago and they touched on that (briefly). Basically, the whole way characters interact with the map to 'wake up' mobs and such would need to be remodeled. If left as is, you would have a lot of 'sleeping' mobs well within your viewable radius.

Spoiler: interview vid

 

[In The Name of Zod]

Yes, the high res Diablo 2 mod has that exact problem. In this case though the AI is taking a 640x480 image of Diablo 2 and converting them to 1024x768 so you would not have that issue so long as its aspect ratio is maintained. I think its the best solution because then all the other game menu's like the stash and inventory would still work as per the original game. What I am really hoping for is the day AI can be used to discern the 3D structures in the game then ray tracing would become a possibility.

That mod that adds ray tracing to minecraft shows that old games or just games that are not all that flashy with their graphics can be rapidly brought forward and beyond today's standards in game illumination and visual fx.

)

 

[krischan]

That's not an upscaled Diablo, it's just showing a bigger part of the map without having more details. For a comparison, here's a 800x600 screenshot:

View attachment 13739

You will have more awareness of the surroundings (i.e. you can aim from farther ayway, teleport over greater distances etc.) while the monsters don't, which makes it cheating.

I think these high-res mods are around for a while now.

 

[In The Name of Zod]

I stand corrected. The image source was 1024x768 px. There does appear to be less pixelation though if you look at the shadows like the one cast by the tree. Basically anything that runs diagonally with contrasting colors appears less jaggered.

 

[krischan]

Yes, you are right, there's also quite a difference between the screenshots when watching them at the same dpi resolution.