The Legend of Dragoon Upscale Project

After seeing so much community interest in the possibility of improved visuals in Legend of Dragoon, we are excited to kick off the new year with an official announcement of our ongoing Legend of Dragoon Upscale Project! This project has actually been in the works on our community Discord server since last summer, when RetroArch introduced its WIP texture replacement feature. Progress has been a little slow to date, as everything so far has been done entirely by Black Castle Researchers Zychronix and theflyingzamboni. However, after months of off-and-on experimentation, the project has begun picking up speed. Given the size of the undertaking, all focus is being placed first on the prerendered backgrounds. And of course, we welcome help from any community members with an eye for the aesthetic and a willingness to learn and work with a team. Need convincing? Here’s a preview.

To give a little background: Initial testing for the project was done using Topaz AI Gigapixel, but further experimentation led us to transition to using ESRGAN instead, as its open nature means people are constantly improving its capabilities. Around this time, we discovered the GameUpscale Discord and began attempting to train our own ESRGAN models using the LoD backgrounds themselves as the training dataset. Additionally, we started trying out different models trained by various members of said Discord.

Several months of training, experimentation, interpolation, and deletion of numerous gigabytes of failed attempts later, we were able to find several model combinations that worked well for us with LoD’s prerendered backgrounds, finally allowing production to start moving forward.

Our goal is to make an 8x resolution AI upscale of the backgrounds as a base pack and then move on to other things such as model textures, UI, and map effects afterwards. Current implementations texture dumping/injection feature are sometimes buggy, but for the most part it works. We also plan to release 4x and 2x packs that will be downscaled versions of the 8x pack.

So far, a first pass has been completed on the backgrounds for most of discs 1, 3, and 4, although there is no timeline for completion. Due to the way LoD stores its backgrounds, once upscaling is completed, all of the images will need to be split apart into their component pieces before they can be used in-game, a very time-consuming process.

For now, here are some before and after in-game screenshots of how the upscales will look in the game… (You can view them at full res using the links or down below)

Upscale Comparisons
Bale 1440p | Nest of Dragon 1440p | Aglis 4k | Vellweb 4k
In-Game Upscaled
Bale | Nest of Dragon | Aglis | Vellweb
Original In-Game
Bale | Nest of Dragon | Aglis | Vellweb

…and here is a gallery of a select few full 8x upscaled backgrounds.
(You can view them at full res using the links or down below)

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Bale | Mayfil | Divine Tree | Hoax | Kadessa | Nest of Dragon | Shrine of Shirley | Ulara

On a final note, we were originally planning to do a RetroArch pack only, as that was the only option available. However, within the past few days, DuckStation has been adding in its own texture replacement feature as well, which reportedly functions differently and would limit cross-compatibility. Likely, we will have to choose one or the other for the first release. If you wish to follow the project, you may check out our upscaling chat channel on the community Discord and/or watch our dedicated project page from time to time.

Update: March 1st, 2021

	Stage 1	Stage 2
Disc 1	65% -> 100%	0%
Disc 2	0% -> 46%	0%
Disc 3	90% -> 100%	0% -> 8%
Disc 4	70% -> 100%	0% -> 25%

What is Stage 1 and 2? Stage 1 is where we upscale the complete backgrounds and all variations of it. Stage 2 is where we take the fully upscaled background and split them into individual textures to be used by the emulator. Currently we are still only targeting the upscale to work on RetroArch with Beetle PSX HW.