At first I thought: This can be similar to modding Mafia. I will just take all the textures, throw them into an AI upscaler, do some converting, put them back into the game, and in two weeks we can have something nice.
Well, after a quick investigation of the game files, I realised it will NOT BE THAT EASY AT ALL!
I don't want to go into technical details, but the game files are scattered into dozens of folders, often duplicating themselves, and just converting the file formats and sorting them into folders takes so much time it hurts.
But after about four weeks of sleep deprivation, I got something like this:
I managed to upscale quite a bunch of textures, rework some of them with the help of texture banks or photos found on the internet, change the weapon sounds, and put at least some barely working post-processing on top of it.
As time went, I started to have less time to work on the game, but at least learned how to work more quiclky and efficiently, so progress continued.
At this stage I had almost all the game textures upscaled or reworked, most of the weapon sounds replaced with more realistic ones and behaving correctly in game, and a way better post-processing in place.
Currently (mid January 2023) I focus mainly on correcting the textures which i still don't like, upscale them to an even higher resolution, or do color corrections. Also I finally figured out how to increase the draw distance of grass, with the help of a comment on a forum, many years old.
As what's still in front of me, I still have to upscale some small item textures (really boring and tiring job), and about half of the textures in the Fist Alpha DLC (yes, Fist Alpha WILL be included). Increase the draw distance in all the game levels, depending on time, retouch some more textures, and create a convenient (stand alone) multi language installer (multiplayer compatible).
So in March we can all have a happy 20 years anniversary of this gem ;)
