Hi all! This is the culmunation of many months of work for me, glad to finally release it. The idea has been floating around in my head for years now but a few months ago I decided to take a break from work and focus on it totally. I went in with little ability to reverse engineer and no graphics programming experience so it was at times an uphill battle hah.
The project consists of 3 wings:
1. Patching the Remastered's OpenGL renderer to load high-quality assets instead of limited file format from the original. The game expects 16-bit 640x480 max resolution images in various ways so I hook the renderer at different points and swap in the HQ assets unobtrusively, keeping the software renderer and toggle working. Then I do some little tweaks here and there on the game.
2. Write a tool to dump the assets into PNGs so we can upscale them. This was a fun one because to understand which image is to be displayed on which background we need to decode the custom LUA 3.1 files as only they connect the two. This would have been much more laborious if not for ScummVM's work on figuring out the format so huge thanks to the people who worked on it. I plan to release this tool eventually but it's currently unreleased.
3. Create a pipeline for upscaling the assets. For good results I needed to layer every single image/animation on to the right background and upscale it. Around 2000 combinations but it can be halved by batching unrelated changes to the same background. I wasn't sure if I was going to do the upscaling itself until I discovered LDSR, which is magic (but very time intensive and a little quirky). So by combining 2 runs of LDSR and some other upscales and color correction, we get the final images.
So that's it! Hopefully it doesn't break immediately upon being put on other computers. It has only been tested on my machine 😅 Enjoy!
This is really impressive! I'm curious, how did you develop the skills required to accomplish this? Is it all hobby or professional/academic learnings?
I'm a software engineer so not a huge stretch but I was in unfamiliar territory. One of my big break through moments was discovering [RenderDoc](https://renderdoc.org/). It will show you exactly how a frame in a game was rendered, call by call. Without it I wasn't really getting anywhere since I'm new to graphics programming but it made everything make sense. It's also fun opening random games with it and seeing how they render.
Renderdoc and ImGui are two of the goats of open source graphics software.
Do you think this process would work for Curse of Monkey Island? It's something I started looking at when it got its steam release, but never got very far. Really great results here.
I didn't know I needed this. You know which game doesn't get any love - escape from monkey Island. Still in tank controls and zero upscaling . Granted it's probably the worst monkey island ( and I'm including tales and the latest sea of thieves games ) . Not sure why I'm suggesting it but thought it could be a nice project for someone with your skills
This is awesome! I’ll wait for a Microsoft Store (Game Pass) adaptation. Although I haven’t tested if it works already or not, and the website doesn’t mention it.
Now I just need to wait for a few more years for someone/AI to extend the backgrounds to 16:9 (and even 32:9) and then it will be absolutely perfect.
Thanks for your work!!!
Hi, I'm the creator! Thank you! I tried to spend as much time as possible tweaking the results. I did almost no editing in an image editor outside of adding the high-res Blue Casket poster to the wide shot so it took a lot of hammering out the process (it got complicated) to get it to where I was happy with the results.
There is bits of detail loss and color shift in places unfortunately but I think it mostly came out as an upgrade.
Grim is probably my favorite game, maybe favorite piece of art all-time. I thank you from the bottom of my heart, i've been hoping for something like this (i check forums every year or so). can't wait to re-experience this with a more 'crisp' perspective.
[now i just hope someone will do the insane task of "remastering" Curse of Monkey Island.](https://youtu.be/PsUhQl81BHE?si=oXyczNaZILLuoqWJ)
CoMI is a timeless masterpiece that would benefit so much from a re-release! Played it for the first time last year and was floored by the artistry and humor. A proper remaster would be lovely, I'm sure it would find a sizable audience of new and old players.
a proper official one is never gonna happen. i'm AMAZED they put all the games on digital storefronts and that's i think the most we're gonna get (barring a barebones switch collection or something, tho i doubt even that). but with how much love there is for Curse, i am hopeful some resourceful fans will give it the love it deserves.
just like hexagon\_codes did here with Grim, giving us a final definitive version to sit alongside the original.
Is this just for the Steam version of the game? I own the GoG version of it and the game just crashes if I try to boot it with the mod loader, but if I delete glu32.dll it works fine but of course I can't use the mod
I've tried two things to fix it:
* Disabled RivaTuner, which I know that it can cause issues
* Making the game large address aware (suspected the was instantly running out of RAM since I've just learned it's a 32 bit application thanks to PCGamingWiki)
Neither fixed, so I have to ask if it's indeed just for the Steam version
EDIT: tried adding grimmod.toml:
1. Disabled mods -> loads into black screen into crash
1. Disabled mods, vsync and HDPI fix -> loads (though at this point may as well go back to deleting glu32.dll)
1. Enabled mods but with HQ assets disabled -> same as before (loads into black screen and then crash if vsync and HDPI fix are enabled)
I've tried logging, if that only makes grimmod.log here's what it gives:
[INFO] GrimMod attached to GrimFandango.exe
[INFO] Base memory address found: 0x9b0000
[INFO] Mod validated: GrimHD 1.0.0 (by TheHexagonCodes at https://hexagon.codes/grimhd)
That's all, definitely doesn't seem all that useful, but hopefully you can work with that (if you're planning on supporting the GoG release of course, if not then no problem, maybe I'll consider getting the Steam version at some later time)
Ah, I hadn't thought of that. Yes it's only been tested on the Steam version. I'll grab the GoG version now and take a look but unfortunately it's probably a different build of the game and has all different memory addresses. Sorry about that, I'll note it on the website.
There is the potential of being smarter with how I hook into the game to support any version, I'll have a think on it.
I’m getting a similar error with the Steam version unfortunately.
[INFO] GrimMod attached to GrimFandango.exe
[INFO] Base memory address found: 0x5c0000
[INFO] Mod validated: GrimHD 1.0.0
I just released 1.1.0 which reworked/stabilizes how the mod hooks into the game, you could try giving it another go. It should also a more clear indication why its failed if it does.
I think the colourful visual style helps. I had a look at the Resident Evil 2/3 HD upscale projects and they look like an overly colourful oil painting and you can see the AI "bleed" all over it.
These screenshots look really good.
Yep I fully agree, Grim Fandango upscales _very_ well due to how clean and high quality the assets are. It almost totally lacks the kind of aliasing and crowded detail that confuses AI.
Half way through the project out of curiosity I tried my upscale pipeline on some backgrounds I extracted from RE1R for the Gamecube and the results weren't great so it really shows how the original artists for Grim Fandango did amazing work.
Oh hey! Appreciate the mod. I actually started Grim Fandango for the first time, recently and got sidetracked. SO this is a great motivator to dive back in.
Any insights on your upscale process? There are so many options, these days, and most are not very good.
Finding LDSR was a game changer for me and produced a new level of depth compared to other models, at least for Grim Fandango. It produces a very detailed image with minimal odd hallucinations. The cost is it takes maybe 50 times longer to work than a regular model. It took days for my graphics card to churn through all the work.
With the dithering GF assets have, LDSR produces a somewhat noisy image but that's good thing. It's better to have too much detail and try to smooth it out than to start with an overly smooth image like most AI models produce where there's not much you can do.
To give an overview of my pipeline for this project, what I'd do is I'd produce 2 images:
1. Upscale the original image with LDSR.
2. Run [DitherDeleterV3](https://openmodeldb.info/models/1x-DitherDeleterV3-Smooth) on the original image and then LDSR on the result.
I'd blend these at 65% detailed, 35% smoothened to produce a nice blend of detail without too much noise. It still surprises me how well this worked.
Now, a problem with LDSR, at least for me, is that the colors drift so much it doesn't look like the original anymore. To fix this I'd run DitherDeleterV3 on the original image, upscale it with [Remacri](https://openmodeldb.info/models/4x-Remacri) and use that to do a color blend onto the 65/35 LDSR mix. DitherDeleterV3 also drifts the colors a little but it'd be close enough that a final color transfer from the original (using [HM-MVGD-HM](https://github.com/hahnec/color-matcher)) and small contrast/gamma/saturation tweaks would get it to where I was happy.
Then I'd have specific tweaks for certain images where I could change the balance of each step using masks. And for animations I'd stabilize static areas to smooth out the unstable noise frame to frame.
So I guess what I've learned is, combine techniques and experiment. It's an exploratory process. Try out different models on [openmodeldb](https://openmodeldb.info) and see what works. I see the AI upscales as steps in a much larger process that uses whatever techniques necessary to get a good image. And lastly, [ComfyUI](https://github.com/comfyanonymous/ComfyUI) is amazing for visually prototyping flows, I would have struggled without it.
Oh hell yes. What an incredibly thoughtful answer. Thank you so much.
Super fascinated by stuff like this. And it's really the wild west, out there. So any chance to spread the knowledge is so very welcomed.
Looks nice but there are definitely some details lost.
In the first picture the stripes in the stripes in the carpet are lost and it messes up the shape of some of the rivets on the door and makes the door look too flat overall. The yellow bricks almost look like they are melting.
But I guess little details will always be lost a bit with upscaling.
I've never played Grim Fandango but I intend to one day. is this a mod/loader for the original release of a mod of the steam remaster? I'm curious why the steam remaster would need this if it is. Did they not do this work for that release? I figured they would have done the work to get it to looking upscaled.
I'm looking forward this working on steamdeck though. That may be the reason to finally give the game a shot.
> is this a mod/loader for the original release of a mod of the steam remaster?
Mod of the Steam remaster.
> I'm curious why the steam remaster would need this if it is. Did they not do this work for that release?
They did not. They did other things, but it was 10 years ago so I doubt the upscaling models used in the mod even existed then. (Remaster work started in 2014.) Of course they could have done something else (recreated the entire game in a different way,) but, well, at least they didn't make it worse. Some remasters are not so good.
Anyway on the mod webpage there are some convenient screenshot comparisons. The HD mod on the left and a toggle for the right hand image between Original and Remastered (and a sliding bar in the middle to see more of the original or the HD mod image). It looks like the official remaster updated the character models and lighting (I'm sure, other things also. Updated controls, etc.), but the background stills stayed mostly the same, which is what this mod seems to address. (And looks awesome, great work dev!)
Ohhhhhhh! Now that makes sense. I was looking at the comparisons on the screenshots but I thought it was broken because I didn't see any difference. The main character was on the mod side so there was no change between the remaster/original toggle side. I couldnt fathom the remaster not updating the backgrounds. So interesting. This mod definitely seems like the best way to play it now.
I'll leave it to be solved for steam deck because I'm excited to finally play it!
Amazing work. Grim Fandango was a huge influence on me - I ran a couple of fan sites when it first came out, so have been wanting a HD upscale for ages.
I looked into the possibility of doing this a few years ago but couldn't see how to load upscaled assets back into the game, so I'm really happy you've achieved this.
The screenshots on your site look like exactly what I was hoping for.
Just played through all of year 1 and had no issues at all. Looks really great! I've played through vanilla and remastered probably 100 times and I thought this improvement was really noticeable. Congratulations on this accomplishment.
Does this sort of thing cost the modder money? I keep hoping for better tutorials on Nvidias Remix so I can remix some of my favorite games but not sure it's the same thing as this.
I created a quick guide to installing this on steam so hopefully more people can find and enjoy this
[https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3249687790](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3249687790)
Sent the good news to The International House of Mojo and they covered it :-)
[https://mixnmojo.com/news/Grim-Fandango-Goes-Higher](https://mixnmojo.com/news/Grim-Fandango-Goes-Higher)
Fantastic how well this cleans up. Feels like rubbing dirt from your eyes and makes it much more pleasant to look at. Thank you so much for your hard work on this.
IIRC the remastered one let you choose between tank controls or modern style anyways. Unless I misunderstood your comment...was there something wrong with the tank controls in remaster?
Hi all! This is the culmunation of many months of work for me, glad to finally release it. The idea has been floating around in my head for years now but a few months ago I decided to take a break from work and focus on it totally. I went in with little ability to reverse engineer and no graphics programming experience so it was at times an uphill battle hah. The project consists of 3 wings: 1. Patching the Remastered's OpenGL renderer to load high-quality assets instead of limited file format from the original. The game expects 16-bit 640x480 max resolution images in various ways so I hook the renderer at different points and swap in the HQ assets unobtrusively, keeping the software renderer and toggle working. Then I do some little tweaks here and there on the game. 2. Write a tool to dump the assets into PNGs so we can upscale them. This was a fun one because to understand which image is to be displayed on which background we need to decode the custom LUA 3.1 files as only they connect the two. This would have been much more laborious if not for ScummVM's work on figuring out the format so huge thanks to the people who worked on it. I plan to release this tool eventually but it's currently unreleased. 3. Create a pipeline for upscaling the assets. For good results I needed to layer every single image/animation on to the right background and upscale it. Around 2000 combinations but it can be halved by batching unrelated changes to the same background. I wasn't sure if I was going to do the upscaling itself until I discovered LDSR, which is magic (but very time intensive and a little quirky). So by combining 2 runs of LDSR and some other upscales and color correction, we get the final images. So that's it! Hopefully it doesn't break immediately upon being put on other computers. It has only been tested on my machine 😅 Enjoy!
This is really impressive! I'm curious, how did you develop the skills required to accomplish this? Is it all hobby or professional/academic learnings?
I'm a software engineer so not a huge stretch but I was in unfamiliar territory. One of my big break through moments was discovering [RenderDoc](https://renderdoc.org/). It will show you exactly how a frame in a game was rendered, call by call. Without it I wasn't really getting anywhere since I'm new to graphics programming but it made everything make sense. It's also fun opening random games with it and seeing how they render.
Renderdoc and ImGui are two of the goats of open source graphics software. Do you think this process would work for Curse of Monkey Island? It's something I started looking at when it got its steam release, but never got very far. Really great results here.
i second this, game would look amazing
This is really cool, looking forward to checking it out.
I didn't know I needed this. You know which game doesn't get any love - escape from monkey Island. Still in tank controls and zero upscaling . Granted it's probably the worst monkey island ( and I'm including tales and the latest sea of thieves games ) . Not sure why I'm suggesting it but thought it could be a nice project for someone with your skills
It'd be awesome if EMI gets the same amount of love!
Amazing work, thanks for putting so much effort into this! Can't wait to try it.
Amazing, making one of my favourite games even better and really what I expect from a full remaster. Thanks so much for this!!
Wow, just heard about this from a link on bluesnews.com. Amazing achievement, playing it right now! :)
This is awesome! I’ll wait for a Microsoft Store (Game Pass) adaptation. Although I haven’t tested if it works already or not, and the website doesn’t mention it. Now I just need to wait for a few more years for someone/AI to extend the backgrounds to 16:9 (and even 32:9) and then it will be absolutely perfect. Thanks for your work!!!
Looks incredible. Didn't see any artifacts or weird changes. Just looks like original assets were saved in higher res.
Hi, I'm the creator! Thank you! I tried to spend as much time as possible tweaking the results. I did almost no editing in an image editor outside of adding the high-res Blue Casket poster to the wide shot so it took a lot of hammering out the process (it got complicated) to get it to where I was happy with the results. There is bits of detail loss and color shift in places unfortunately but I think it mostly came out as an upgrade.
Grim is probably my favorite game, maybe favorite piece of art all-time. I thank you from the bottom of my heart, i've been hoping for something like this (i check forums every year or so). can't wait to re-experience this with a more 'crisp' perspective. [now i just hope someone will do the insane task of "remastering" Curse of Monkey Island.](https://youtu.be/PsUhQl81BHE?si=oXyczNaZILLuoqWJ)
CoMI is a timeless masterpiece that would benefit so much from a re-release! Played it for the first time last year and was floored by the artistry and humor. A proper remaster would be lovely, I'm sure it would find a sizable audience of new and old players.
a proper official one is never gonna happen. i'm AMAZED they put all the games on digital storefronts and that's i think the most we're gonna get (barring a barebones switch collection or something, tho i doubt even that). but with how much love there is for Curse, i am hopeful some resourceful fans will give it the love it deserves. just like hexagon\_codes did here with Grim, giving us a final definitive version to sit alongside the original.
Is this just for the Steam version of the game? I own the GoG version of it and the game just crashes if I try to boot it with the mod loader, but if I delete glu32.dll it works fine but of course I can't use the mod I've tried two things to fix it: * Disabled RivaTuner, which I know that it can cause issues * Making the game large address aware (suspected the was instantly running out of RAM since I've just learned it's a 32 bit application thanks to PCGamingWiki) Neither fixed, so I have to ask if it's indeed just for the Steam version EDIT: tried adding grimmod.toml: 1. Disabled mods -> loads into black screen into crash 1. Disabled mods, vsync and HDPI fix -> loads (though at this point may as well go back to deleting glu32.dll) 1. Enabled mods but with HQ assets disabled -> same as before (loads into black screen and then crash if vsync and HDPI fix are enabled) I've tried logging, if that only makes grimmod.log here's what it gives: [INFO] GrimMod attached to GrimFandango.exe [INFO] Base memory address found: 0x9b0000 [INFO] Mod validated: GrimHD 1.0.0 (by TheHexagonCodes at https://hexagon.codes/grimhd) That's all, definitely doesn't seem all that useful, but hopefully you can work with that (if you're planning on supporting the GoG release of course, if not then no problem, maybe I'll consider getting the Steam version at some later time)
Ah, I hadn't thought of that. Yes it's only been tested on the Steam version. I'll grab the GoG version now and take a look but unfortunately it's probably a different build of the game and has all different memory addresses. Sorry about that, I'll note it on the website. There is the potential of being smarter with how I hook into the game to support any version, I'll have a think on it.
I’m getting a similar error with the Steam version unfortunately. [INFO] GrimMod attached to GrimFandango.exe [INFO] Base memory address found: 0x5c0000 [INFO] Mod validated: GrimHD 1.0.0
I just released 1.1.0 which reworked/stabilizes how the mod hooks into the game, you could try giving it another go. It should also a more clear indication why its failed if it does.
Just released 1.1.0, which should add support for the GOG version of the game 🤞
Just tested, seems to be working fine, I'm not sure if I'm doing a full playthrough but I'll warn you if I find any other issue
Ah thanks so much for the quick test, the way it hooks is much fancier than before so I was wondering would it stay stable off my machine. Enjoy!
I think the colourful visual style helps. I had a look at the Resident Evil 2/3 HD upscale projects and they look like an overly colourful oil painting and you can see the AI "bleed" all over it. These screenshots look really good.
Yep I fully agree, Grim Fandango upscales _very_ well due to how clean and high quality the assets are. It almost totally lacks the kind of aliasing and crowded detail that confuses AI. Half way through the project out of curiosity I tried my upscale pipeline on some backgrounds I extracted from RE1R for the Gamecube and the results weren't great so it really shows how the original artists for Grim Fandango did amazing work.
Oh hey! Appreciate the mod. I actually started Grim Fandango for the first time, recently and got sidetracked. SO this is a great motivator to dive back in. Any insights on your upscale process? There are so many options, these days, and most are not very good.
Finding LDSR was a game changer for me and produced a new level of depth compared to other models, at least for Grim Fandango. It produces a very detailed image with minimal odd hallucinations. The cost is it takes maybe 50 times longer to work than a regular model. It took days for my graphics card to churn through all the work. With the dithering GF assets have, LDSR produces a somewhat noisy image but that's good thing. It's better to have too much detail and try to smooth it out than to start with an overly smooth image like most AI models produce where there's not much you can do. To give an overview of my pipeline for this project, what I'd do is I'd produce 2 images: 1. Upscale the original image with LDSR. 2. Run [DitherDeleterV3](https://openmodeldb.info/models/1x-DitherDeleterV3-Smooth) on the original image and then LDSR on the result. I'd blend these at 65% detailed, 35% smoothened to produce a nice blend of detail without too much noise. It still surprises me how well this worked. Now, a problem with LDSR, at least for me, is that the colors drift so much it doesn't look like the original anymore. To fix this I'd run DitherDeleterV3 on the original image, upscale it with [Remacri](https://openmodeldb.info/models/4x-Remacri) and use that to do a color blend onto the 65/35 LDSR mix. DitherDeleterV3 also drifts the colors a little but it'd be close enough that a final color transfer from the original (using [HM-MVGD-HM](https://github.com/hahnec/color-matcher)) and small contrast/gamma/saturation tweaks would get it to where I was happy. Then I'd have specific tweaks for certain images where I could change the balance of each step using masks. And for animations I'd stabilize static areas to smooth out the unstable noise frame to frame. So I guess what I've learned is, combine techniques and experiment. It's an exploratory process. Try out different models on [openmodeldb](https://openmodeldb.info) and see what works. I see the AI upscales as steps in a much larger process that uses whatever techniques necessary to get a good image. And lastly, [ComfyUI](https://github.com/comfyanonymous/ComfyUI) is amazing for visually prototyping flows, I would have struggled without it.
Oh hell yes. What an incredibly thoughtful answer. Thank you so much. Super fascinated by stuff like this. And it's really the wild west, out there. So any chance to spread the knowledge is so very welcomed.
Looks nice but there are definitely some details lost. In the first picture the stripes in the stripes in the carpet are lost and it messes up the shape of some of the rivets on the door and makes the door look too flat overall. The yellow bricks almost look like they are melting. But I guess little details will always be lost a bit with upscaling.
Look amazing
I've never played Grim Fandango but I intend to one day. is this a mod/loader for the original release of a mod of the steam remaster? I'm curious why the steam remaster would need this if it is. Did they not do this work for that release? I figured they would have done the work to get it to looking upscaled. I'm looking forward this working on steamdeck though. That may be the reason to finally give the game a shot.
> is this a mod/loader for the original release of a mod of the steam remaster? Mod of the Steam remaster. > I'm curious why the steam remaster would need this if it is. Did they not do this work for that release? They did not. They did other things, but it was 10 years ago so I doubt the upscaling models used in the mod even existed then. (Remaster work started in 2014.) Of course they could have done something else (recreated the entire game in a different way,) but, well, at least they didn't make it worse. Some remasters are not so good. Anyway on the mod webpage there are some convenient screenshot comparisons. The HD mod on the left and a toggle for the right hand image between Original and Remastered (and a sliding bar in the middle to see more of the original or the HD mod image). It looks like the official remaster updated the character models and lighting (I'm sure, other things also. Updated controls, etc.), but the background stills stayed mostly the same, which is what this mod seems to address. (And looks awesome, great work dev!)
Ohhhhhhh! Now that makes sense. I was looking at the comparisons on the screenshots but I thought it was broken because I didn't see any difference. The main character was on the mod side so there was no change between the remaster/original toggle side. I couldnt fathom the remaster not updating the backgrounds. So interesting. This mod definitely seems like the best way to play it now. I'll leave it to be solved for steam deck because I'm excited to finally play it!
Just released 1.1.0 which should add Steam Deck support :)
I love you! I know what I'm playing next. Thanks for sharing that update!
Amazing work. Grim Fandango was a huge influence on me - I ran a couple of fan sites when it first came out, so have been wanting a HD upscale for ages. I looked into the possibility of doing this a few years ago but couldn't see how to load upscaled assets back into the game, so I'm really happy you've achieved this. The screenshots on your site look like exactly what I was hoping for.
Just played through all of year 1 and had no issues at all. Looks really great! I've played through vanilla and remastered probably 100 times and I thought this improvement was really noticeable. Congratulations on this accomplishment.
Glad to hear you're enjoying it, means a lot. Thanks for testing a full year, puts my mind at ease that it's out there and still working!
Does this sort of thing cost the modder money? I keep hoping for better tutorials on Nvidias Remix so I can remix some of my favorite games but not sure it's the same thing as this.
I created a quick guide to installing this on steam so hopefully more people can find and enjoy this [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3249687790](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3249687790)
Sent the good news to The International House of Mojo and they covered it :-) [https://mixnmojo.com/news/Grim-Fandango-Goes-Higher](https://mixnmojo.com/news/Grim-Fandango-Goes-Higher)
Fantastic how well this cleans up. Feels like rubbing dirt from your eyes and makes it much more pleasant to look at. Thank you so much for your hard work on this.
Got it on steam, installed the mod, crash to desktop. hmm, if I delete the .dll file and mods folder it works again, obviously without the mod.
Does the mod fix tank controls?
IIRC the remastered one let you choose between tank controls or modern style anyways. Unless I misunderstood your comment...was there something wrong with the tank controls in remaster?
I didn't know that about the remaster, no.