Resident evil 4 hd project – a large fan project, within the framework of which all textures in the game are redrawn and the overall level of the picture is pumped quite strongly. The mod has been in production for many years: the first video showing the developments was posted back in 2014. Now have HD Project finally the release date of the final version appeared.
Command HD Project wanted to preserve the spirit of the game, for which she even skated in the same places where Capcom collected materials for Resident evil 4, – mainly in Spain and Wales. Some objects were photographed from nature, some were redrawn by hand or using scaling. As a result, textures from enthusiasts are up to 16 times higher than the original in terms of resolution.
The scope of work isn’t just about texture quality. HD Project includes a number of improvements:
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Lots of visual fixes, such as errors with the placement of shadows, seams and objects hanging in the air.
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Some of the flat objects were changed to three-dimensional.
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Improved quality of pre-rendered clips.
V HD Project another fan project has been introduced – re4_tweaks. This will result in the following:
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re4_tweaks removes some technical limitations, so better quality objects are used for images in the inventory.
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Restored some of the effects from the GameCube and Wii: for example, the depth of field and the translucent background on the screen with the selected subject.
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Fixed operation of the game on ultra-wide monitors: for example, the interface is correctly placed.
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In the 60 fps mode, an error with QTE appeared, due to which they required monstrously fast clicks. Re4_tweaks fixes this.
According to the calculations of the two main team members, by March 2023 they spent on HD Project about 14,000 working hours and $ 15,440. The money was needed for travel, buying new hardware and replacing the broken one, purchasing programs and some assets from ready-made libraries, and so on. The team accepted donations, but at the time the statistics were published, they were not much higher than the costs – $ 16,100.
Final version release Resident evil 4 hd project will take place on February 2, 2023. The mod is completely free and compatible with Resident Evil 4 Ultimate HD Edition for Steam. Early version HD Project can be downloaded from the project website.
Cut-scenes in the Separate Ways additional campaign were a separate headache for HD Project… In the original version Resident evil 4 for the GameCube, most of the cutscenes were rendered in real time, but there was no Separate Ways. The campaign was introduced as a bonus for the port on the PlayStation 2, but pre-renders began to be used on the PlayStation 2 – they were poorly preserved and nowadays look very “jackal”.
That is, it turned out that in the main campaign there are cut-scenes in real time, thanks to which you can freely change models and textures – they will also appear in the cut-scenes. Separate Ways only have videos – it’s much more difficult to improve them. From live cut scenes from Separate Ways in files Resident evil 4 there is only data on the positions of the camera.
To improve the pre-renders in the plot for Ada Wong, the authors HD Project applied a complex combo: several types of scaling through AI and even a complete recreation of cut-scenes. In this method, the authors took camera position data, shot backgrounds with their high quality assets, and then fine-tuned the result by adjusting the lights and effects to replicate the original prerenders.
“Only about this process can you shoot a whole cycle of videos” – the developer jokes HD Project…
But the result was clearly worth such a titanic effort!
