WipEout Pure - High-Definition UI [03/30/2020]

[NR74W]

An Unofficial FX300 Anti-Gravity Racing League High-Resolution Textures Project for WipEout Pure.

Compatibility :
GameID :
UCES00001 : Europe
UCUS98612 : USA
UCJS10007 : Japan
ULES00229 : Europe (Demo)
ULUS10058 : USA (Demo)

Supports all DLCs.


Description :
A basic high-resolution texture pack which enhances the User-Interface of the game :
- Intro
- Font
- HUD
- Menu
- Ships (2D previews)*
- Skins*

- Initial track support*

* Work in progress


Screenshots Comparison
(Note : To keep the thread clean, the links are condensed)

# Language Selection
Original > HD
# Logo
Original > HD
# Main Menu
Original > HD
# Skins
Original > HD
# Class Selection
Original > HD
# League Selection
Original > HD
# Team Selection
Original > HD
# In Game (Normal)
Original > HD
# In Game (Zone)
Original > HD


Personal comments :
This is my first attempt at making a texture pack that I made for one of my favorite games, and thought it was a good idea to modestly celebrate WipEout Pure's 15th anniversary (03/23/2005).
The work started about a month ago, a lot of time was spent on it, and even though I lack experience in graphic design, I tried to do my best.

Everything were enhanced for 4K resolution in mind, from 8x to 16x the original size.

This pack in only limited to UI for now, with a few ingame textures remade/referenced in the .ini.

Still, I hope it will satisfies the WipEout community and everyone else. Enjoy !

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As disclaimer, I try not to rely on upscaling, it has almost always terrible results.
In this pack, there's no AI upscaled textures.

The files / folders are all named in lowercase characters, using only underscores as special characters, for maximum compatibility as recommended in the PPSSPP GitHub page; the hash algorithm used is xxh64 with ignoreAddress enabled.
I would like to know if the syntax should be changed to include capital letters and spaces or leave it as it is.


Known problems and questions :
Q: The game stutters in Class Selection and League Selection and some other sections.
A: The PNG format may be at fault here.

When PPSSPP supports the .basis image format, I plan to convert all textures to this new, more efficient format.
Because .basis is a lossy format, there will be both .png and .basis to choose from.

A workaround (at least it seems to work for me) is to enable Unlimited FPS with V-Sync forced, the game won't go higher than your monitor's refresh rate (be sure to use 60Hz to prevent the game from running too fast, also make sure you have the 60FPS cheat code ON), for some reasons it completely eliminates the stuttering, without making the game faster, except when the game lags (like on real hardware).

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Q: In race, the OCR A font is not replaced.
A: For some obscure reasons, the OCR font (and also even the FX300 font) used in race has its CLUT hash changed every time, depending of the region of the game.
It makes replacing these textures quite complicated :

Europe : It seems only the European version has its value (sometimes?) fixed, so only the European release have both working with this pack, and even then it also (rarely) happens to change ;

USA : The USA version only replaces the FX300 font (Update : Sadly I found it to be only working sometimes, so there's no solution for now) ;

JP : Whereas the Japanese version has the CLUT hash of both fonts changing between each races, making it impossible to replace them.

Zeroing the CLUT hash makes things worse, by having the font duplicated for its shadow or vice-versa.

It occurs with all algorithms (quick, xxh32/64) and reduceHash.
Two different textures with the same address/data hashes, but different CLUT.
If you know any workaround / solution / tips, anything, please tell me.
Thanks in advance.

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Q: What about the HUD, the weapons icons aren't there in the pack ?
A: The game has these icons stored in .vex format.

Because they are all vector textures, they scales perfectly with resolution, they don't need to (and cannot) be replaced.


Progress :
In Menu :
---------------
Font : EU / USA : 100% (6/6) | JP-only : 0% (0/2)
Intro : 100% (9/9)
Loading : 100% (7/7)
Menu (primary) : 97.2% (36/37)
----------
Menu (secondary)
Previews :
Ships : 7.2% (5/69) [1/23]
Tracks : -% (96)
Skins :
EU / USA : 33.3% (25/75)
EU-exclusive : 0% (0/40)
USA-exclusive : 0% (0/12)
JP / JP-exclusive : 0% (0/28)
----------
Music : 16.6% (4/24)
Teasers : -% (3)
Artwork Gallery : -% (349)
----------
Skins :
Headers : 67.7% (21/31)
Backgrounds : 12.5% (4/32)

In Game :
---------------
HUD : 100% (3/3)
Tracks : 0.?% (15/???) [1/32 (Base) - 1/37 (All)]
Ships : 0% (0/164) [0/27]
Adverts : 0.?% (1/???) [0/25 Tracks]
Effects : 0% (0/??)

Comments on current progress :
The tracks textures are difficult to name (these must be known and then written in the .ini before being remaked first) also in game the emulator dumps a "few" hundreds of textures (most of which are duplicates, mipmaps notably...), it is time-consuming to sort them, remaking them is also a quite another matter.
In my research, except for a few billboards and some other textures recycled, like the audience / bird / ect, I found so far that there was not a single texture shared between tracks, as if they were made independantly, which will make progress even slower than it is already.

The project is paused for now (mostly because most of the essential textures were completed), I have been working on another project which will be released in a few days (when it will be in a releasable state (still WIP)). Work on this project will resume afterward.
I hope you will enjoy it, so stay tuned !


Availability :
Download at https://github.com/NR74W/WipEout-Pure-HD-Texture-Pack

There's still a lot of improvements to be made, and the project is only beginning.
So feel free to contribute, any help will be much appreciated !

Special thanks to :
Everyone who contributed to PPSSPP. Thanks to all of you, we can enjoy PSP games in all their splendor.

Studio Liverpool (ex-Psygnosis) for creating this amazing game series in the first place. Thanks for everything.

Unknown authors who made the Puma, Sci Fi, Coca-Cola, FEISAR and the FX300 logo vectors used in this pack.

[Turrican2]

I rarely write here, but this is just amazing. The style of the (in)game graphics always scaled perfectly to higher resolutions, with you texture pack now the menu is also on par. Looks fantastic, thank you!

[NR74W]

No problem, I'm glad you like it !
I will be posting updates from time to time.

[coolhardy100]

I'm very grateful for your efforts man it looks amazing. keep at it. i know how difficult it is to upscale textures I'm currently doing my first texture pack as well.