Hello,
Recently I discovered that it's possible to retexture F-Zero X Gedecompressor combine with tile molester.
Unlike the HD retexturing with those tools I change the textures direclty into the rom. It means that the rextexured rom will work both on the n64 console and on emulators.
Of course the textures quality limits are the same that the ones with the original rom, so it can't look as good as the HD.
After doing some tests, dumping textures from the game and figuring out how that works and the limits of the tools or the rom itself during three weeks I was able to release 3 quick textures mods before taking a summer break.
You have to understand that you can't do anything when injecting new textures, in the game compressed and uncompressed textures, no real prolem when they are uncompressed but compressed ... you have to deal with the MIO0 compressor and some strange properties wih the game that make some textures works some other not, it's not just about of the weight of the textures you want to inject. Instead of having 9 different textures on a venue like Mute City ( 11 with the billboard and overhead monitor ) compressed in one bin file, at the time, I managed to have only 2 or 3 ( plus 2 for the billboard and monitor ), sometimes less, I sill have to figure out the best way to use those compressed tracks files, it won't be easy. You can see on Sector Beta ( Nintexturing Edition ) that there are some glitches with the overhead monitors and the spinning billboards, file was just too big and I wasn't able to fix that quickly using two different textures on the track.
F-Zero X Nintexturing Edition is a very early version of a full pack I d'like to create later this year, this one is pretty ugly sometimes but it's here to show that it's possile to do that, it works both on the console and on emu, no CRC change needed, you just have to patch your original F-Zero X rom with lunar IPS. You can also use those mods with custom tracks, x cup and death mode, all the 11 venues's tracks textures are changed so you won't find any original one anywhere in the game.
I changed the 11 venues files, the two pictures from the beginning of the game, the 3-2-1-GO, the avatars ( during races ), skyscrapers, grounds ... there are still many textures to change ( huds, pics, endings ) but it seems that it's no working with all of them, I couldn't change the energy refiller among other things, the bin files that contains the common tracks parts ( pipes, cylinders, tunnels ... ) is also very difficult to deal with and I had to do some sacrifices, this explains the yellow textures you'll see many times on this mod.
On this video, every championship and tracks played on master mode. First time I did that, I felt it was risky plus I have very short time to do that before taking my summer break on saturday but that was fun. This nearly 4 GO video took me like 12 hours of upload and I had to correct the delay on each 24 tracks of that pack but it still sucks, I hope the result will be ok for you : )
The video : youtube.com/watch?v=EcbKF0W3jl0
The link with the patch, including two other packs with ingame textures : sendspace.com/file/gxddsj
In the same time I worked a SD version of a WIP F-Zero X HD pack made by ChefViking. On this pack high quality worked textures, not just some resized textures that can be found over the web like I did for my first pack. As you can see on he video the result is awesome, the final version of that pack will be a nice alternative to the original game textures. On this beta I used most of the textures ChefVikings gave me but sometimes I didn't know where to add some of them on some of the venue since the HD pack wasn't working on my cpu so I used a few snapshots Chef posted and add the rest of the textures the way I felt at the time.
The video : youtube.com/watch?v=nCh838rSFAA
I think he'll let me downconvert his future final pack to make it available for both emulators and console users, so be patient : )
After doing a lot of tests during the last month I managed to get more textures in the compressed bin files, I tried to fix that color problem I have. It seems that the game creates some colors here and there between two different colors in a texture, it's very annoying because it's very difficult to predict what will happen in the game with the texture you worked on, sometimes it's very ugly. After many tests, by playing with the color levels I managed to avoid those parasite colors, Also I tried with 16 colors only sometime it helps. I managed to change some HUDs this time, I changed the dash plates and refiller textures. Those two are in a compressed file that contains all the common textures for the tracks, again it's really difficult to deal with that particular file but I progress.
The video : youtube.com/watch?v=XhEPIcDhF3A
This week I worked on a new down converttion of Chef's HD pack, sometimes I managed to make his HD textures works with my CPU ( partially ) to this time it's more accurate, also I was able to change few more things I didn't manage to change before. Video later this weekend.
No double post so ... Edit : After working on a beta 2 down conversion of Chef HD pack I managed to make his textures works ( partially ) on HD with another plugin so I built a V3 that is a lot more accurate than the first version I made.
Since my first betas I discovered many things, I found out how to include more textures on the compressed venue files, I managed to include many new textures in the common textures file that contains pipes, cylinder, refiller, dash ... but there are still textures I can't seem to mod the more I change the more it's difficult to make them work, at least this time I was able to add 4 different tunnels, 4 pipes, new colors for the dash/refiller/ice/dirt among other things.
Just like the Beta 1 version I fill in the blank creating textures to replace the originals Chef didn't change. Most of them are from his textures, the Rainbow Road venue is based on Cario's HD pack, I used the level editor to change some parts on the track to avoid the presence of some Big Blue textures that sucks in a Rainbow Road environement.
I changed some HUDs but modding them is very difficult and it's limited.
I worked on the boost, it's very difficult too, the colors display on tile moletser aren't the ones you see in the game.
I did many test to try to mod more compressed files, the ending pictures, pilotes, 1998 copyright, push start ... without managing to mod them ( the game freeze ).
However the uncompressed textures are simpler to mod, I did some tests with the explosions and backgrounds ( same colors problem I have with the boost ), on the machines, title ... it works fine.
Still a lot of work to do, now I'm waiting for ChefViking to release his final pack to see how close I can be on the rom.
I still have problems with parasites colors generated by the game, I had problems with the skies however I was able to mod 3/8 of them without glitch.
The video : youtube.com/watch?v=VGoAAMGOzQ4
Recently I discovered that it's possible to retexture F-Zero X Gedecompressor combine with tile molester.
Unlike the HD retexturing with those tools I change the textures direclty into the rom. It means that the rextexured rom will work both on the n64 console and on emulators.
Of course the textures quality limits are the same that the ones with the original rom, so it can't look as good as the HD.
After doing some tests, dumping textures from the game and figuring out how that works and the limits of the tools or the rom itself during three weeks I was able to release 3 quick textures mods before taking a summer break.
You have to understand that you can't do anything when injecting new textures, in the game compressed and uncompressed textures, no real prolem when they are uncompressed but compressed ... you have to deal with the MIO0 compressor and some strange properties wih the game that make some textures works some other not, it's not just about of the weight of the textures you want to inject. Instead of having 9 different textures on a venue like Mute City ( 11 with the billboard and overhead monitor ) compressed in one bin file, at the time, I managed to have only 2 or 3 ( plus 2 for the billboard and monitor ), sometimes less, I sill have to figure out the best way to use those compressed tracks files, it won't be easy. You can see on Sector Beta ( Nintexturing Edition ) that there are some glitches with the overhead monitors and the spinning billboards, file was just too big and I wasn't able to fix that quickly using two different textures on the track.
F-Zero X Nintexturing Edition is a very early version of a full pack I d'like to create later this year, this one is pretty ugly sometimes but it's here to show that it's possile to do that, it works both on the console and on emu, no CRC change needed, you just have to patch your original F-Zero X rom with lunar IPS. You can also use those mods with custom tracks, x cup and death mode, all the 11 venues's tracks textures are changed so you won't find any original one anywhere in the game.
I changed the 11 venues files, the two pictures from the beginning of the game, the 3-2-1-GO, the avatars ( during races ), skyscrapers, grounds ... there are still many textures to change ( huds, pics, endings ) but it seems that it's no working with all of them, I couldn't change the energy refiller among other things, the bin files that contains the common tracks parts ( pipes, cylinders, tunnels ... ) is also very difficult to deal with and I had to do some sacrifices, this explains the yellow textures you'll see many times on this mod.
On this video, every championship and tracks played on master mode. First time I did that, I felt it was risky plus I have very short time to do that before taking my summer break on saturday but that was fun. This nearly 4 GO video took me like 12 hours of upload and I had to correct the delay on each 24 tracks of that pack but it still sucks, I hope the result will be ok for you : )
The video : youtube.com/watch?v=EcbKF0W3jl0
The link with the patch, including two other packs with ingame textures : sendspace.com/file/gxddsj
In the same time I worked a SD version of a WIP F-Zero X HD pack made by ChefViking. On this pack high quality worked textures, not just some resized textures that can be found over the web like I did for my first pack. As you can see on he video the result is awesome, the final version of that pack will be a nice alternative to the original game textures. On this beta I used most of the textures ChefVikings gave me but sometimes I didn't know where to add some of them on some of the venue since the HD pack wasn't working on my cpu so I used a few snapshots Chef posted and add the rest of the textures the way I felt at the time.
The video : youtube.com/watch?v=nCh838rSFAA
I think he'll let me downconvert his future final pack to make it available for both emulators and console users, so be patient : )
After doing a lot of tests during the last month I managed to get more textures in the compressed bin files, I tried to fix that color problem I have. It seems that the game creates some colors here and there between two different colors in a texture, it's very annoying because it's very difficult to predict what will happen in the game with the texture you worked on, sometimes it's very ugly. After many tests, by playing with the color levels I managed to avoid those parasite colors, Also I tried with 16 colors only sometime it helps. I managed to change some HUDs this time, I changed the dash plates and refiller textures. Those two are in a compressed file that contains all the common textures for the tracks, again it's really difficult to deal with that particular file but I progress.
The video : youtube.com/watch?v=XhEPIcDhF3A
This week I worked on a new down converttion of Chef's HD pack, sometimes I managed to make his HD textures works with my CPU ( partially ) to this time it's more accurate, also I was able to change few more things I didn't manage to change before. Video later this weekend.
No double post so ... Edit : After working on a beta 2 down conversion of Chef HD pack I managed to make his textures works ( partially ) on HD with another plugin so I built a V3 that is a lot more accurate than the first version I made.
Since my first betas I discovered many things, I found out how to include more textures on the compressed venue files, I managed to include many new textures in the common textures file that contains pipes, cylinder, refiller, dash ... but there are still textures I can't seem to mod the more I change the more it's difficult to make them work, at least this time I was able to add 4 different tunnels, 4 pipes, new colors for the dash/refiller/ice/dirt among other things.
Just like the Beta 1 version I fill in the blank creating textures to replace the originals Chef didn't change. Most of them are from his textures, the Rainbow Road venue is based on Cario's HD pack, I used the level editor to change some parts on the track to avoid the presence of some Big Blue textures that sucks in a Rainbow Road environement.
I changed some HUDs but modding them is very difficult and it's limited.
I worked on the boost, it's very difficult too, the colors display on tile moletser aren't the ones you see in the game.
I did many test to try to mod more compressed files, the ending pictures, pilotes, 1998 copyright, push start ... without managing to mod them ( the game freeze ).
However the uncompressed textures are simpler to mod, I did some tests with the explosions and backgrounds ( same colors problem I have with the boost ), on the machines, title ... it works fine.
Still a lot of work to do, now I'm waiting for ChefViking to release his final pack to see how close I can be on the rom.
I still have problems with parasites colors generated by the game, I had problems with the skies however I was able to mod 3/8 of them without glitch.
The video : youtube.com/watch?v=VGoAAMGOzQ4
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