Attempting to fix some of Legend's texture issues on PC (Next Gen OFF)
 

I got inspired by ATombRaiderFan's thread about how they fixed King Arthur's double face problem by making the offending textures completely transparent, and have tried 'fixing' similar issues in the game with this same method.

Thread - https://www.tombraiderforums.com/sho...d.php?t=224680

Here's what I've manage to fix so far and all these are for Next Gen OFF mode on the PC version.

-- Nishimura's Super Shades --

Before
https://i.imgur.com/WIqbPzL.png
Shades in all cutscenes have broken reflections that don't reflect correctly but instead display what's behind character's head.

After
https://i.imgur.com/7Z13Day.png
Texture for shades edited to remove lenses which now turns them more into glasses but looks much better than before imo.

-- The Many Faced Yakuza --

Before
https://i.imgur.com/kS12vi4.mp4
Here the offending texture appeared to be for a blonde variant of the Yakuza goons you fight in Japan fighting for dominance over the black haired texture.

After
https://i.imgur.com/JPE1rgL.mp4
Removing this texture's contents and saving it as a blank alpha image sorts this issue.

- UPDATE -
atombraiderfan has updated the Yakuza fix to correct further issues with texture bleed, which has also fixed the Yakuza looking all the same and like brothers.
Now when installed you'll get all hair colour and style variants as originally intended minus the clean shaved black hair variant.

LateRaider has made a version of these fixes for peeps who use TexMod - https://mega.nz/file/OP40AY7Z#W3a17F...3HLdA44YG40xxs

-- Rutland's Missing Portrait --

Before
https://i.imgur.com/frSUnMV.mp4
This cutscene that's before Peru has a moment where it has an awkward close up of a blank screen where James Rutland's bio should be.

After
https://i.imgur.com/pGwVRPw.mp4
I managed to fix this by erasing the part of the texture for Zip's monitors that fills in the 'screen' part of the object, and viola! There he is!

This is all ongoing and very much a crude way of fixing these issues, and there are several other texture flickering problems I've yet to work out a solution too, but at I thought I'd at least share these fixes to let everyone know that it's possible to get this game looking a little better on PC.

If anyone else playing this game notices any more texture goofs or flickering or knows of any other ways to fix things like this, then feel free to post them here.

Let's see what we can do :)

EDIT: I'm pretty new to this place and still working out how to post images and other stuff on here properly, so bear with :S

EDIT 2 - Here's the link to download my 'fixed' textures as well as the tools I used to unpack and repack the game files. I've also included an install guide to follow just in case anyone get's stuck.

Download: https://archive.org/details/LaraTX

Oh I am loving this. Are you gonna release a patch or something that fixes these things?

That's what I'm hoping to do yes! Still working out what the best way of letting people do what would be.

I've had to use Gh0stblade's CDCengine tools to unpack the files and pack them back up again so I could maybe write a short guide on how to do that and attach my edited files.

Though ideally I'd like to make a less complicated way to install them for people if possible.

Your changes looks great so far :tmb:

BTW I believe the black screen was intentional because the player could play the manor first before the main game, so the devs probably hid Rutland's profile at least until after Bolivia is completed. They probably forgot to remove the black texture from the cutscene.

From what I've seen so far after unpacking the game's 'BIG' files each cutscene has it's own set of unique textures that are often duplicates of objects from that particular level.

The mansion for example has a folder called 'mansion1.drm' which is for the main hall and Zip's lab, whereas the folder 'mansion99.drm' has textures for the main hall but are unique copies for that cutscene.

This means me editing one won't effect the other =)

I've also been making notes of noteworthy textures as I've found them

here's what I have so far...

TR Legend Textures of Note

-- Bolivia --
-bolivia1.drm
'13_15ed' = Distant trees
'15_15f1' = Skybox 1
'16_15f0' = Skybox 2
'17_1608' = Distant Trees tiny
'753_160a' = NG Skybox 1
'754_1609' = NG Skybox 2
'759_1640' = NG Distant Trees

-- Lara UK Outfit --
- lara_alt.drm
'10_2b' = Warning Triangle
'31_2f' = Grapple Icon
'32_2e' = same
'33_2d' = same

All outfit's I've explored so far seem to have these icons embedded


-- West Africa --
- amahlin2.DRM
'10_490' - Floor Texture (don't edit)
'11_48d' - wall texture? Grassy
'12_48c' - wall texture Rocky
'13_48b' - wall texture Mossy (this texture causes flickering but can't be removed otherwise walls vanish)
'19_4a4' - Tall Mossy Wall Texture
'31_4b4' - Negative colour Wall Texture
'280_4aa' - Tiny Mossy Wall Texture
'611_4ec' - NG Dark Stone Wall
'620_4c6' - NG Dark Green Stone Wall
'621_4bd' - NG Veiny wall texture (floor as well?)
'622_50d' - NG Skybox Right
'623_50c' - NG Skybox Left


-- Nishimura.drm --
'3_199' - Nishimura Glasses
'24_19' - Nishimura Glasses NG
'23_19e' - Glasses Bump Map


-- Yakuza Goons --
- male_yakuza_a
'5_1b7c' = blonde hair yakuza face
'3_1b80' = light brown hair yakuza face
'4_1b7e' = bald with goatee?
'6_1b7a' = black hair no beard


-- Croft Manor --
- Mansion1.drm
'12_13a6' = Family Portrait

-- Returning Home Cutscene (pre-Peru) --
- Mansion99.drm
'13_13a6' = Family Portrait
'7_15e2' = Rutland Bio Screen
'10_13a1' = Computer Textures (edit this one)
'15_15e1' = Rutland Holding Shard Screen
'16_15e0' = Stone Dias Screen
'339_140d' = Computer Textures Next gen
'298_140e' = Computer Bump Map?

-- Arthur Tomb Cutscene --
- co_grave_arthur_egg.drm
'23_bd3' = NG Arthur Face
'22_bd7' = NG Arthur Face Bump Map
'21_bd8' = NG Arthur Face Shadowmap
(make all three transparent)

-- UIMansion.drm -- Character portraits and PS2 button icons

'21_1faa' circle button icon
'20_1fab' Square "
'19_1fac' Triangle "

-- UiFrontend --
'1_1fa3' Main Menu Game Title Logo

The Yakuza goons in the Japan level, do have variations, the blond haired version along with black haired version seems to be in the fight after the japanese roof garden. Did not realise their hair could get mixed up in the cutscene you show.

Interestingly there are at least three shirt collar colours on these baddies, red, purple and yellow that are randomly created. Normally we are too busy fighting to notice their fancy clothes :p

I noticed this in a video I made, where I put them all in a line, and the clothing variations stood out ;)

https://i.imgur.com/w72eq4U.jpg

I actually don't mind Nishimura's broken shades because that's how reflections work in TRI. I like them better than as glasses, at least. I would release the shades to glasses as an optional patch.

Tbh I'm likely gonna attach the edited files somewhere here and then it's up to the person what they want patched out or left in, rather than lumping it in as one big file.

thank you! you're a good person ♥♥

.

love this
 

Nice work This looks amazing with widescreen displays:)

Miss Croft appears to have two fathers!

Great job man! Here's hoping a patch's coming with these issues fixed haha

Hahaha indeed! I modded my friend's face into the Croft Manor family portrait to troll him, and also to test what textures effected what version of the cutscene xD

I did not realise there were so many Legend's texture issues, till I read this thread. Nice that you are fixing some of them ;)

I played the PC game and not noticed, I suppose I was to busy trying to beat the baddies at the time and keep Lara alive LOL

pretty funny! i appreciate the work you've done so far.

any chance you'd release the fixes' tpf files incrementally as they come up? i can see the ones you've come across now plus the king arthur issue that doesnt seem to have seen release if i'm reading that old thread correctly

edit - actually i was able to do some of these myself

https://mega.nz/file/OP40AY7Z#W3a17F...3HLdA44YG40xxs

The plan was to release them all for people to download once my Legend vid dropped this month but I think I'll put them all up on a link for people to use now and edit my OG post to include it :)

EDIT- It's up there now but congrats on getting it to work for you without it!

Oh so this will drop this month? Can't wait to see it all!

Thanks man =)

I'm certainly working hard on making it happen! Script is finished and the voice over is all done so it's just the editing and the camera parts left now, so fingers crossed :admles:

ah i didnt realize you were steve of warr

well no need to worry, mine are for use w/ texmod and yours seem to actually affect the in-game files. so our solutions are different :)

That's me aha :tiphat:

Yeah Texmod wouldn't work on my PC for some reason hence why I went down this route instead. I'd actually preferred to do it via your method tbh it would've save me a lot of headaches :hea:

It might depends which exe launcher you use. IIRC the Legend directory has a "test" exe launcher which was the only way I could get TexMod running so I dunno if you tried that already.

BTW Nice to meet you Steve! I thought AoD would be your last TR review video so now I'm looking forward to your next video :o

Nice to meet you too! :tea:

Interesting, no I've not tried that method yet so maybe I'll give it a go sometime!

A lot of people seem to think I was stopping after AOD too, but I'm doing them all up to Shadow of the Tomb Raider :D

Here's a bonus! I AI upscaled the intro video of Legend to 4K. You can find a link to download it here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeZ_eeYtdVA

Just drop it into your install directory and replace the old one and it will work!

I'm slowly working through all of them to make them look better and will likely make a new thread when I've finished them all.

wonderful, thank you!

oh if you would do something similar for anniversary i would be grateful. i swear to god that game's intro video is at 240p, which looks so bizarre when the game is running at 1080p60fps

Oh so this is Steve? Glad to have you here! We've had a few replies here and there in your retrospective videos on YouTube. Keep up the great work mate!

Thank you ^_^

Yeah, that intro is a top priority for me as they used the PS2 version of the intro for the PC version for some reason, that's why it's so low quality. If I can figure out how to extract the version from the PS3 trilogy and upscale that instead then we're laughing!

I've done all of Underworld's though! - https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...dR?usp=sharing

wow, your dedication to the series sure is impressive.

as for TR:A, i think it might be best to use the xbox 360 version, actually. the ps3 version is missing the "LOS ALAMOS, NEW MEXICO 1945" text. it also looks like they zoomed in on it and then cropped it, added bloom, and then desaturated the video. i took some screenshots of HD let's plays...

pc opening https://i.imgur.com/PR0lxXL.png
xbox 360 opening https://i.imgur.com/88Fj5Xp.png
ps3 opening https://i.imgur.com/VpcLmPp.png

regardless of this, there's one difference between the console versions and the pc version: X360 and PS3 (and PS2 as well) say "A CRYSTAL DYNAMICS GAME with BUZZ MONKEY SOFTWARE," but the PC version says "A CRYSTAL DYNAMICS GAME with NIXXES SOFTWARE."

i'm not sure if it'd be worth it to preserve the proper credits or not. (i vote "yes" so it looks authentic.)

No need! Thanks to Eddy's TR Channel I found a way to get the PC version of the game to natively render it out at 4k in engine, so I've made it from that!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4n1T...ture=emb_title

oh now that looks lovely. thank you so much. one more thing to help perfect my favorite TR! still missing the los alamos date stamp but you know what? this is such a good upscale that i don't think it truly matters. like it's well worth the tradeoff

Oh my gosh that Anniversary video is... so crystal clear? There's even a snake on the ground I don't remember seeing before.

That's something I can easily add back in with editing, so I'll give that a go and see what I can do :)

I actually added a fake heatwave effect to the scene where Natla bursts out cause there was quite a bit of micro-screen tearing for some reason, so I've hopefully masked that well enough!

Overlaying the movie with text may be the faithful thing to do but this will hide some details which defeats the point. Maybe you could add a brief pause between the credits screen and movie, so you can have text overlay black screen, fading in and out before the movie starts.

Update: Just noticed the movie has black bars so the text could overlay the bottom.

it looks very lovely! you worked really hard to make it the best it can be :) im very thankful for that

thats an option but its in the spot its in so as to parallel the "modern" opening scene in 1996
https://i.imgur.com/X41v4yT.png

Ah good point :o

So I've made a new version with text, though I've gone for the same look as that Calcutta screenshot just to be consistent.

Additionally, I noticed there were weird goofs with objects bleeding over into other scenes so I've added white fades to hide those and match the original scene's look

I've also manually made my own version of the company text at the beginning too so that looks better.

I also decided to combine Buzz Monkey and Nixxes into one subtitle so they both get credit :)

Enjoy - https://youtu.be/k6F1WLHLML8

Will edit in a link to download the new version for use on PC once it's uploaded to my drive

Just got around to testing out your texture fixes pack and booted up legend. I've checked all cutscenes and gameplay affected by the issues of two-faced Arthur, Yakuza hair and Rutland's profile. All these anticlimactic bugs are gone, thank you! It's also great to be able to opt out of individual fixes - in this case Nishimura's glasses because shades are cool no matter how broken. I also noted that James Rutland's profile is now visible in the manor if you play it before completing Bolivia, but on the whole it's better than having the silly cutscene moment where Zip is pointing at a empty screen.

Excellent retrospective video btw, I enjoyed every minute of it :tmb:

Great news! I'm glad those all worked for you, but if you do come across any other weird oddities then hit me up and I'll see what I can do :)

Also thank you for the kind words about the video, I hope you liked the little shoutout I gave you and the other modders here!

Haha yes I almost fainted when you did the shoutout (just kidding) but thank you! You should give yourself credit since you've did all the heavy lifting and made Legend heaps better than before (including the FMV upscale). Sure I will keep an eye for more problematic textures on my next playthrough ;)

here
 

Isn't that the same idea?
https://www.flawlesswidescreen.org/
This also works with the shutdown of the NG

Hi again!

I've been looking into the Yakuza issue because there are still texture conflicts like brown hair and the occasional goatee appearing on the clean shaven black-haired Yakuza goons. I found something interesting:

https://64.media.tumblr.com/0cfc61d9...c8f827ece3.png

It turns out that Texture A is causing the problem. It overlays goons using B, C and D - basically giving Takamoto a clone army. I experimented with making Texture A transparent (and restored Texture B) and now there are three distinct Yakuza goons. There is no unique goon using Texture A on its own so you won't be fighting any headless goon.

https://64.media.tumblr.com/855f7f35...355e20239b.png

I checked on PS2 version of Legend as well which is old gen and it's the same, three types of Yakuza goons. There is a catch however that when you kill the goons, their heads disappear slightly faster than their bodies :confused:

Here's the edited male_yakuza_a.drm file on google drive via the link below. MachoBroccoli, if you're happy with this version then you can add it to archive ;)

Edit: If anyone is having issue with downloading the file, press the 'Download all' button at the top right of screen.

Edit 2: Link removed.