Anyone know where I can find the background images from the first game? Ideally in native res, but in a lossless format readable on a modern PC.
here you go man
(https://i.imgur.com/8lhYBUn.png) (https://i.imgur.com/U3YgwZJ.png) (https://i.imgur.com/xVYnHrY.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/4ZPwM20.png) (https://i.imgur.com/404vi6i.png) (https://i.imgur.com/lF2WtiB.png)
Excellent! Thanks.
They don't upscale well at all, tried a few different tools - simply too compressed.
I could try using VirtualDub to resize the BGs, though all it does is resize the pixels. Will give it a shot later.
So the quality should stay more or less the same, no? Or am I missing something?
The problem (probably) lies in the fact that while the images look like photographs to us, they are just images with very, very few colors. The use of dithering makes the colors blend more so we perceive them for what they originally were - photographs.
There are many dithering methods and undithering algorithms, but just eyeballing it I think Umihara Kawase uses Floyd-Steinberg. Linux and Mac users can try undither (https://github.com/kornelski/undither/releases), a program by kornelski.
(I'm at work right now and stuck in a windows environment but i'll try when i get home unless someone beats me to it)