I gotta keep you guys on your toes and release totally unrelated videos to anything I've done before. Also, Silent Hill 2 is pretty good guys. Who knew? Anyway, if you do want to support the channel more directly, checking out Photo AI from Topaz Labs does net me like 20% if you buy it. You've seen me show it before in previous videos. I use it for all my upscaling projects. So, I feel pretty comfortable recommending it. And if you have any questions about it, feel free to comment below. Affiliate link is HEREEEEEE: www.topazlabs.com/topaz-photo-ai/ref/906/
22:22 the way they achieved the reflections in SH2 is that they render the room twice, with everything inverted in the second room, and you're essentially just looking through a window into the inverted room. So you're actually controlling two James-es for this instance in the bathroom. A little later when you get to the Blue Creek apartments they do the same thing for the reflections in the puddles of water, except there they didn't bother with character models so it's just the room rendered twice. It's a very neat solution that they have some fun with for one room in Silent Hill 3. In the hospital for SH3 there's a room where an entire wall is a mirror, and the room is being corrupted in the "reflection" and after a certain point the player even loses control of the reflection character model. It's a very cool scene.
@@bnbnism just for the enhanced edition all set up actually! I genuinely had no idea about this mod project. Gotta be one of the most impressive fan made projects ever.
the interesting fact is that the enhanced edition mod for pc, has now reached its last update and unfortunetly there is still a lot of work to be done specialy in the texture work which is still low res hasnt been worked on, and the texture dumping on pcsx2 makes that work so much easier, almost like dsfix texture modding, also please work on silent hill 3, youd be fucking amazed with the texture work on that game and how it looks specialy with some moving textures
@@KosOrSomeSayKosmo bro that game still has my favorite facial animations in any game not just for technical quality but just how much it made me awe back in the day
@@TOMLEE64 I wouldn’t say waste of time since I was just goofing around and the Enhanced Edition actually maintains a ton of the low quality textures, so it doesn’t solve that issue. Apparently they had a community poll at some point and they voted to keep the base textures. Now they have touched up the full screen images like when you pick up the map, etc. so many amazing things they did, even if they didn’t touch a lot of the in game textures.
@@fromsoftserve Yeah if people want more crisp textures they're not really going to get that for everything in the Enhanced Edition. Granted, SH2 still looks amazing today, especially with everything the Enhanced Edition does, but I could see some people wanting to play through it with this. I will say though that in my opinion it probably would be more useful to more people if this were ported to the PC version and made compatible with the Enhanced Edition mod, it'd give an already fantastic remaster just a little bit more "oomph" for people that want it. You're free to do whatever you want though my man.
You can toggle the 'Load Texture' tab in PCSX2 in real-time to see the difference between upscaled textures and default textures without rebooting the game. This saves the hassle of taking screenshots to spot the difference each time.
22:25 It's actually an even simpler trick, they basically just copy and mirror the entire environment and place it on the other side of the wall, then they place an alpha masked texture, essentially a dirty glass texture, on a plane where the "mirror" is, and there's a duplicate player model on the other side that you're also controlling that's mimicking all of the player's actions. Boom, ya got a decently accurate "mirror" in 2001. Since all of the different rooms in the game are placed out in the void and you teleport between them when you enter a door, they can get away with placing extra geometry outside the room that wouldn't fit otherwise. That's also why you can see James when you technically shouldn't, since it's essentially just a window with a doppelganger on the other side. Silent Hill 3 actually uses the way mirrors work in these games for a really cool moment that I'm not going to spoil because it's amazing and you should play it because it's one of the best horror games ever made :)
I just finished replaying Silent Hill 1 and it is amazing how much better Silent Hill 2 looks considering they were only a couple years apart! I never played SH2 as a kid, I only played 1,3, and 4...I'm definitely gonna play the OG SH2 and then the remake...
@@MrKrewie It really was...I remember the day I got a PS2 I was so blown away at the graphics...I felt the same way going from SNES to PS1...I rarely got expensive gifts as a kid, but my parents bought my brother an I a PS1 for christmas in 1995 and I must have played Rayman for 3 days straight! I ended up getting Tomb Raider for the next christmas and fell in love! lol
Silent Hill 2-4 still really impress me with how good they look, considering they came out pretty early in the PS2's lifetime. SH3's character models especially are wild looking for the time, and I still think it's kinda crazy to see dynamic shadow maps in PS2 games.
You probably won't be interested in an idea like this, but just throwing it out there. Would love if this became a mini series in the future, or a couple more videos at least, where you show the process (and just playing around with how it works) on other emulators for other consoles aside the PS2, and do more AI texture upscaling and texture comparisons (with any other games of your preference) . Otherwise, interesting and cool video as always, love these "behind the scenes" (Idk if you'd call them that) on how games and textures work etc.
Enhanced Edition is truly incredible. Somehow takes the subpar (but not terrible for the time) PC port and elevates it to the absolute definitive edition and it's not even close. And it does it without destroying any of the intent of the original art, either, which I find especially impressive, as maintaining the "official" look is not trivial. Especially in cases where they had to build assets for specific issues, like that blank window that was never meant to be seen in 16:9, or even other changes like adding the key-focused camera angle after closet encounter with Pyramid Head and keeping it looking seamless and not out of place. That said, I'd be real interested if you could take the upscaled textures you have and somehow kerjigger them into the Enhanced Edition, for an Enhanced Enhanced Edition!
Hey just couple days ago I've been doing the same to Silent Hill 4 on PS2. But I'm not using Topaz, I use 4x-UltraSharp model and ComfyUI instead. Your results seem really promising, I think I'll post mine a bit later too!
2:26 Actually, this isn't a render to texture or any other framebuffer effect. If you look at the dumped game models on some internet resources, you would see that the room with the mirror is actually modeled twice, so this is literally a window into a mirrored room with a cloned character controller doing the same thing as you do.
No idea if you've seen this, but there's also an over-the-shoulder camera mod that makes the game play essentially just like a modern Resident Evil or the SH2 remake. If the gameplay is a hurdle for you, you'd definitely have much better luck with that mod.
I think the extra textures are two alternative instances of the same texture but with a different color palette? You can see James' face is fine in one, but the eye is messed up, but then in the next one his face is messed up but the eye is fine
I am playing the Enhanced edition now, first time playing SH2, honestly it isn't too bad controls wise. I am playing with 2D controls as that was recommended in the one video I watched, don't know how the 3D controls work.
@@Ghost-pb4ts They'd need to have some monumental evidence to convince me the original PS2 version is better than the Enhanced Edition. Better than the OG PC launch? For sure. Better than early Enhanced Edition? Ehh, debatable. Better than EE Update 10? Not on your life!
@@Ghost-pb4ts You're going to have to provide evidence of superior fog effects, as I own both the PS2 version, the Enhanced Edition, and a CRT and OLED monitor on which I can play any combination of the two. The fog effects are now indistinguishable to me. And I don't want any hiding behind the "average player" stuff, gimme the details, how are they mechanistically different? The last remaining difference I'm aware of is that the PC version used half-res fog textures, which was restored to full PS2 resolution as of update #6. Also, this kind of reads like a ChatGPT response. Something about how it's phrased. I dunno, maybe you just type like that, so apologies if so, just felt a bit awkward reading it. The Enhanced Edition adds so much wild (but nothing out of place or unnecessary) stuff that it's mind-boggling. Fixing a bunch of 1-pixel gaps, fixing UV maps that were broken on every version, making stretched textures appear correct. Removing visible texture seems. Restoring partially invisible geometry like a payphone which previously only had a floating "PHONE" sign visible where it was supposed to be, tiny issues like the swarming moths appearing to render behind transparent surfaces, adding just a couple trees behind fences here or there to sell the illusion of the game world continuing, building out entire bits of geometry in some spots where there was none (like black voids behind doors that characters open, just adding a bit of the room visible), restoring specular reflections, restoring flashlight reflections, updating the water to make it a little bit creepier, making some lower-res cars the same quality as the higher-res ones, making it so cars don't despawn too early when at the edge of your visibility, making the fog at the beginning of the game not obviously follow James around (which was visible even at 4:3 if you really paid attention), rebuilding the entire PC audio engine to work flawlessly and get rid of all those weird crackles, pops, cut off sound effects when saving, etc. Honestly the list is immense and incredibly impressive. Some stuff I think massively improves a scene without really doing much. Like just modeling the interior of James' car so it doesn't look so weird when you see inside, or getting a much, MUCH better version of the backdrop image used in the very first scene, but without losing the framing or the character of the image. Replacing 2D tree billboards with 3D model ones, making trees visible outside of a house match what you'd see from that area when you're actually out there, building on the continuity. Here I go again, gotta stop before I list every change under the sun. The enhanced edition's not about making things sharper, although I'm not even sure if you're the person who said that or if it was someone else, it was about gently touching up the game to keep the quality consistent across the board, and they did a helluva job! The original PS2 version is an all-time great, but it wasn't perfect, it had a ton of issues that were highly visible on the PS2, finally, decades later, fixed on the Enhanced Edition, and I think that's worth celebrating. Especially after the abysmal HD Collection.
@@Xbob42 Yeah, I use Grammarly for long sentences to fix the grammar and sentence structure. But sometimes, the AI can go a bit wild. One video I watched was from Vergil hilts (he goes more in-depth), and another was from the Avalanche review. Since I’m on your side, I can’t defend the PS2 argument.
I don't really think you can upscale the textures in this game without messing up the art style. The game looks very painterly and blend very organically. Some of your examples are good, but some of them are too sharp. What could work i think is only remove strong aliasing/pixelation, like on the van texture, but keep the level of detail and sharpness untouched.
how do you go about upscaling textures in batches ? I'm kind of interested to try some nevermind, i'm a tired idiot and you're just showing it later in the video
bro you got it wrong about how they managed to make the reflections. its just another james and restroom at the other side of the walls. the funny thing is that you said it is not accurate by the fact that we could see james where we actually couldnt, but thats not true. this game's reflections is perfect accurated cuz its actually a mirrored restroom and james.
Why should a horror game, not categorized as "survival action," need to have good combat for the protagonist? The aim is to make the player feel helpless, scared, alone, and constantly on edge. In Outlast, you can only run and hide from enemies; there is no combat, which enhances the game's horror atmosphere. I remember playing Silent Hill and receiving so much ammunition that I felt like the Doom guy, eradicating monsters from the game.
@@Ghost-pb4ts I agree, the combat is not bad and it’s also not meant to be a power fantasy in combat. I see a lot of people trash old survival horror games for having “bad” combat where the combat was never the ultimate gameplay loop
This feels pointless and unnecessary, especially because the Enhanced Edition mod is a thing. Why don’t you do stuff for That instead? I just feel like you’re wasting your time upscaling things that have already been fixed with The Enhanced Edition mod.
I gotta keep you guys on your toes and release totally unrelated videos to anything I've done before. Also, Silent Hill 2 is pretty good guys. Who knew? Anyway, if you do want to support the channel more directly, checking out Photo AI from Topaz Labs does net me like 20% if you buy it. You've seen me show it before in previous videos. I use it for all my upscaling projects. So, I feel pretty comfortable recommending it. And if you have any questions about it, feel free to comment below. Affiliate link is HEREEEEEE: www.topazlabs.com/topaz-photo-ai/ref/906/
Dont upscale the fog texture, they looks good even at 4k resolution without any upscaling
@@Ghost-pb4ts oh as you’ll see in the video, I delete the fog textures from the texture dump since I didn’t want to upscale them.
Silent hill is my favorite soulsborne game
You are top souls gamer because have finished it without any roll)
22:22 the way they achieved the reflections in SH2 is that they render the room twice, with everything inverted in the second room, and you're essentially just looking through a window into the inverted room. So you're actually controlling two James-es for this instance in the bathroom. A little later when you get to the Blue Creek apartments they do the same thing for the reflections in the puddles of water, except there they didn't bother with character models so it's just the room rendered twice. It's a very neat solution that they have some fun with for one room in Silent Hill 3. In the hospital for SH3 there's a room where an entire wall is a mirror, and the room is being corrupted in the "reflection" and after a certain point the player even loses control of the reflection character model. It's a very cool scene.
Yeah, Konami loved this trick. It's all over Metal Gear Solid 2
You could remake the entire game at this po-
Oh
lmao. so excited to play the remake! it's been so cool to see it come out and against all odds, seems really great.
@@fromsoftserve you really should play the Enhanced Edition you would love it especially on stream as well as because there's so many endings
@@bnbnism just for the enhanced edition all set up actually! I genuinely had no idea about this mod project. Gotta be one of the most impressive fan made projects ever.
the interesting fact is that the enhanced edition mod for pc, has now reached its last update and unfortunetly there is still a lot of work to be done specialy in the texture work which is still low res hasnt been worked on, and the texture dumping on pcsx2 makes that work so much easier, almost like dsfix texture modding, also please work on silent hill 3, youd be fucking amazed with the texture work on that game and how it looks specialy with some moving textures
best of both worlds would be SH2 Enhanced edition with Fromsoftserve upscaled textures
That would be a dream come true@@pooticus2087
@@pooticus2087 Agreed
What they achieved on the PS2 with Silent Hill 3 is mind blowing to this day.
@@KosOrSomeSayKosmo bro that game still has my favorite facial animations in any game not just for technical quality but just how much it made me awe back in the day
Silent hill 2 enhanced edition is perfection, the difinitive way to play the game
yeah what hes doing feels like a waste of time.
@@TOMLEE64 I wouldn’t say waste of time since I was just goofing around and the Enhanced Edition actually maintains a ton of the low quality textures, so it doesn’t solve that issue. Apparently they had a community poll at some point and they voted to keep the base textures. Now they have touched up the full screen images like when you pick up the map, etc. so many amazing things they did, even if they didn’t touch a lot of the in game textures.
@@fromsoftserve Yeah if people want more crisp textures they're not really going to get that for everything in the Enhanced Edition. Granted, SH2 still looks amazing today, especially with everything the Enhanced Edition does, but I could see some people wanting to play through it with this.
I will say though that in my opinion it probably would be more useful to more people if this were ported to the PC version and made compatible with the Enhanced Edition mod, it'd give an already fantastic remaster just a little bit more "oomph" for people that want it. You're free to do whatever you want though my man.
@@fromsoftserve bro if you make a mod to enhance the enhanced edition even further I would actually die
@@fromsoftserve Yep, what matthall said. Would it be possible to make an upscaled textures mod for the enhanced edition?
You can toggle the 'Load Texture' tab in PCSX2 in real-time to see the difference between upscaled textures and default textures without rebooting the game. This saves the hassle of taking screenshots to spot the difference each time.
22:25 It's actually an even simpler trick, they basically just copy and mirror the entire environment and place it on the other side of the wall, then they place an alpha masked texture, essentially a dirty glass texture, on a plane where the "mirror" is, and there's a duplicate player model on the other side that you're also controlling that's mimicking all of the player's actions. Boom, ya got a decently accurate "mirror" in 2001. Since all of the different rooms in the game are placed out in the void and you teleport between them when you enter a door, they can get away with placing extra geometry outside the room that wouldn't fit otherwise. That's also why you can see James when you technically shouldn't, since it's essentially just a window with a doppelganger on the other side.
Silent Hill 3 actually uses the way mirrors work in these games for a really cool moment that I'm not going to spoil because it's amazing and you should play it because it's one of the best horror games ever made :)
I just finished replaying Silent Hill 1 and it is amazing how much better Silent Hill 2 looks considering they were only a couple years apart! I never played SH2 as a kid, I only played 1,3, and 4...I'm definitely gonna play the OG SH2 and then the remake...
The technological leap between PS1 and PS2 was really amazing
@@MrKrewie It really was...I remember the day I got a PS2 I was so blown away at the graphics...I felt the same way going from SNES to PS1...I rarely got expensive gifts as a kid, but my parents bought my brother an I a PS1 for christmas in 1995 and I must have played Rayman for 3 days straight! I ended up getting Tomb Raider for the next christmas and fell in love! lol
Silent Hill 2-4 still really impress me with how good they look, considering they came out pretty early in the PS2's lifetime. SH3's character models especially are wild looking for the time, and I still think it's kinda crazy to see dynamic shadow maps in PS2 games.
You probably won't be interested in an idea like this, but just throwing it out there.
Would love if this became a mini series in the future, or a couple more videos at least, where you show the process (and just playing around with how it works) on other emulators for other consoles aside the PS2, and do more AI texture upscaling and texture comparisons (with any other games of your preference) .
Otherwise, interesting and cool video as always, love these "behind the scenes" (Idk if you'd call them that) on how games and textures work etc.
Fantastic video!
Had a paper cup full of taco meat and a coconut water tall boy for supper.
Enhanced Edition is truly incredible. Somehow takes the subpar (but not terrible for the time) PC port and elevates it to the absolute definitive edition and it's not even close. And it does it without destroying any of the intent of the original art, either, which I find especially impressive, as maintaining the "official" look is not trivial. Especially in cases where they had to build assets for specific issues, like that blank window that was never meant to be seen in 16:9, or even other changes like adding the key-focused camera angle after closet encounter with Pyramid Head and keeping it looking seamless and not out of place.
That said, I'd be real interested if you could take the upscaled textures you have and somehow kerjigger them into the Enhanced Edition, for an Enhanced Enhanced Edition!
I used to use file de-duplicator for dumps. Saved me so much time
Yo no way a fellow "i just watched max play the game but know more about the game than most people who actually played it" person
Hey just couple days ago I've been doing the same to Silent Hill 4 on PS2. But I'm not using Topaz, I use 4x-UltraSharp model and ComfyUI instead. Your results seem really promising, I think I'll post mine a bit later too!
2:26 Actually, this isn't a render to texture or any other framebuffer effect. If you look at the dumped game models on some internet resources, you would see that the room with the mirror is actually modeled twice, so this is literally a window into a mirrored room with a cloned character controller doing the same thing as you do.
The Dood was mentioned and so we are here.
Can you figure a way to add textures to the Enhanced Edition. If only
No idea if you've seen this, but there's also an over-the-shoulder camera mod that makes the game play essentially just like a modern Resident Evil or the SH2 remake. If the gameplay is a hurdle for you, you'd definitely have much better luck with that mod.
I think the extra textures are two alternative instances of the same texture but with a different color palette?
You can see James' face is fine in one, but the eye is messed up, but then in the next one his face is messed up but the eye is fine
I am playing the Enhanced edition now, first time playing SH2, honestly it isn't too bad controls wise. I am playing with 2D controls as that was recommended in the one video I watched, don't know how the 3D controls work.
Heck yeah Silent Hill content!
Why PS2 and no Enhanced Edition?
Many believe that the PS2 version remains superior. However, I personally think the modded PC version has now surpassed the PS2 version.
@@Ghost-pb4ts They'd need to have some monumental evidence to convince me the original PS2 version is better than the Enhanced Edition. Better than the OG PC launch? For sure. Better than early Enhanced Edition? Ehh, debatable. Better than EE Update 10? Not on your life!
@@Ghost-pb4ts You're going to have to provide evidence of superior fog effects, as I own both the PS2 version, the Enhanced Edition, and a CRT and OLED monitor on which I can play any combination of the two. The fog effects are now indistinguishable to me. And I don't want any hiding behind the "average player" stuff, gimme the details, how are they mechanistically different? The last remaining difference I'm aware of is that the PC version used half-res fog textures, which was restored to full PS2 resolution as of update #6.
Also, this kind of reads like a ChatGPT response. Something about how it's phrased. I dunno, maybe you just type like that, so apologies if so, just felt a bit awkward reading it.
The Enhanced Edition adds so much wild (but nothing out of place or unnecessary) stuff that it's mind-boggling. Fixing a bunch of 1-pixel gaps, fixing UV maps that were broken on every version, making stretched textures appear correct. Removing visible texture seems. Restoring partially invisible geometry like a payphone which previously only had a floating "PHONE" sign visible where it was supposed to be, tiny issues like the swarming moths appearing to render behind transparent surfaces, adding just a couple trees behind fences here or there to sell the illusion of the game world continuing, building out entire bits of geometry in some spots where there was none (like black voids behind doors that characters open, just adding a bit of the room visible), restoring specular reflections, restoring flashlight reflections, updating the water to make it a little bit creepier, making some lower-res cars the same quality as the higher-res ones, making it so cars don't despawn too early when at the edge of your visibility, making the fog at the beginning of the game not obviously follow James around (which was visible even at 4:3 if you really paid attention), rebuilding the entire PC audio engine to work flawlessly and get rid of all those weird crackles, pops, cut off sound effects when saving, etc.
Honestly the list is immense and incredibly impressive. Some stuff I think massively improves a scene without really doing much. Like just modeling the interior of James' car so it doesn't look so weird when you see inside, or getting a much, MUCH better version of the backdrop image used in the very first scene, but without losing the framing or the character of the image. Replacing 2D tree billboards with 3D model ones, making trees visible outside of a house match what you'd see from that area when you're actually out there, building on the continuity. Here I go again, gotta stop before I list every change under the sun.
The enhanced edition's not about making things sharper, although I'm not even sure if you're the person who said that or if it was someone else, it was about gently touching up the game to keep the quality consistent across the board, and they did a helluva job! The original PS2 version is an all-time great, but it wasn't perfect, it had a ton of issues that were highly visible on the PS2, finally, decades later, fixed on the Enhanced Edition, and I think that's worth celebrating. Especially after the abysmal HD Collection.
@@Xbob42 Yeah, I use Grammarly for long sentences to fix the grammar and sentence structure. But sometimes, the AI can go a bit wild.
One video I watched was from Vergil hilts (he goes more in-depth), and another was from the Avalanche review.
Since I’m on your side, I can’t defend the PS2 argument.
@@Xbob42 Vergil hilts video is 5 year old and since then enhanced edition has upgraded drastically
If you have time go check his video
I don't really think you can upscale the textures in this game without messing up the art style. The game looks very painterly and blend very organically. Some of your examples are good, but some of them are too sharp. What could work i think is only remove strong aliasing/pixelation, like on the van texture, but keep the level of detail and sharpness untouched.
Spoiler -
In future Silent Hill game, James's father Frank sunderland mentions that James got lost in Silent Hill, which doesn't make sense to me.
how do you go about upscaling textures in batches ? I'm kind of interested to try some
nevermind, i'm a tired idiot and you're just showing it later in the video
bro you got it wrong about how they managed to make the reflections.
its just another james and restroom at the other side of the walls. the funny thing is that you said it is not accurate by the fact that we could see james where we actually couldnt, but thats not true. this game's reflections is perfect accurated cuz its actually a mirrored restroom and james.
would i be able to do this on enhanced edition?
it's a knock down drag out z-fight
more sh please
PS2+CRT still looks better #sorrysucka
I mean, you could just get the Enhanced Edition and play that on a CRT and that would shit all over the PS2 version.
@@Xbob42 it depends sometimes not perfectly sharp is better
@@c0rpse1 Who said anything about perfectly sharp
Don’t fall for the meme that Silent Hill combat is “bad.” It’s not amazing combat but it’s very serviceable and very fine to play through.
Why should a horror game, not categorized as "survival action," need to have good combat for the protagonist? The aim is to make the player feel helpless, scared, alone, and constantly on edge.
In Outlast, you can only run and hide from enemies; there is no combat, which enhances the game's horror atmosphere.
I remember playing Silent Hill and receiving so much ammunition that I felt like the Doom guy, eradicating monsters from the game.
@@Ghost-pb4ts I agree, the combat is not bad and it’s also not meant to be a power fantasy in combat. I see a lot of people trash old survival horror games for having “bad” combat where the combat was never the ultimate gameplay loop
i would pay an ungodly amount of money for someone to do this to sh1
shoudve remaked that game
upscale mage
This feels pointless and unnecessary, especially because the Enhanced Edition mod is a thing. Why don’t you do stuff for That instead? I just feel like you’re wasting your time upscaling things that have already been fixed with The Enhanced Edition mod.
He says in the video that he did this for fun- not everything has to be work! Let him do his thing lol
First