SS2 Denoised Cutscenes

[666584a04cd90ThatTextureGuy]

Inspired by: This post on the thief 2 forums, this mod takes the videos in the game, tenderly massages them using murderous positive cyberprocessing to generate larger, 30fps versions of the videos in game.
Because of 1st generation neural implants newdark engine limitations, the game cannot render video larger than 640x480, but there is still a visible improvement overall. I've also packaged the videos in HD if at some point newdark gets patched.
Videos are encoded in x264 format shoved into .avi containers, so the overall download is actually 40mb smaller than the original videos 

Download link: Google Drive

You'll want to make sure you make these changes to cam_ext.cfg to fix any in-game issues:

Code: [Select]

crop_movies
crop_movies 0 70 640 340
movie_sw_scale_quality 6

Let me know what you guys think

[666584a04d0acKolya]

Right off the start let me say that we have gotten several offerings of scaled up and filtered cutscene videos over the years. And the general consensus has always been that short of a recreation in the dark engine you cannot gain quality on the original videos.
That being said, the effort is appreciated, especially since you had an eye on the file size, unlike many previous attempts. And I do see some denoising and significantly crisper fonts.

[666584a04d21eThatTextureGuy]

Thanks.
I know there isn't much room for improvement, but using a modern codec really helps with the block-o-vision from the originals.

[666584a04d57bMarvin]

Definitely looks a lot cleaner. Now that video upscaling via neural networks is readily available, we might get even better results.

Edit: Nevermind, that was already done here.

[666584a04d6d8ZylonBane]

Took me way too long to figure out what deno-ising is.

[666584a04d7cfKolya]

It's the opposite of anodising a video. Removes rust instead of adding it. 

[666584a04d920voodoo47]

it sounds french in my mind somehow. de-no-a-se.

[666584a04da15Kolya]

Now that you mention it. Like a faux French title of nobility.

[666584a04dafdZylonBane]

Sometimes you just have to deno a video.

[666584a04dc70Marvin]

Ran CS3.avi side-by-side and the improvements are obvious. The only really annoying issues stem from high-contrast areas which either have more pronounced edge-noise (large fonts) or flicker when in motion (small yellow/black hazard stripes on the floor of Tommy's shutle).

Still, this is the first upscaling attempt that I would prefer over the originals in most cases.

[666584a04ddf5Chandlermaki]

So we can either get the original low res custscenes or new low res cutscenes with really obvious upscaling artifacts.

Awesome.

[666584a04dee5ZylonBane]

All the cutscenes in SS2 other than the credits and shuttle flybys are only 320x240.

[666584a04e3baThatTextureGuy]

So we can either get the original low res custscenes or new low res cutscenes with really obvious upscaling artifacts.

Awesome.

Can you post some areas? Always looking to improve my methods.

Ran CS3.avi side-by-side and the improvements are obvious. The only really annoying issues stem from high-contrast areas which either have more pronounced edge-noise (large fonts) or flicker when in motion (small yellow/black hazard stripes on the floor of Tommy's shutle).

Still, this is the first upscaling attempt that I would prefer over the originals in most cases.

Mind posting or pming an image? I'm better at comparing still images

[666584a04e789JDoran]

I was always really disappointed with the end video of System Shock 2. I don't mean the visual quality, but the whole thing. It was so anti-climactic, and conventional, as in it was exactly what you'd expect in a much simpler, more generic game, and not at all a good wind-up to the amazing journey that was a complete play-though (and survival) of SS2.

First of all, the player character didn't look at all right, even allowing for the primitive character modelling of the time. In fact, I'd much rather the cut-scene was in first person view, as that way you'd never have to change whatever mental image you'd built up of him/her. A first person cut-scene would be so much more immersive, I believe.

And the dialogue was very unimaginative, and very much like a third rate, very tiny budget, made for TV science fiction film.

For example, the player's "Nah" didn't seem at all appropriate, considering the Hell that SHODAN had put you through, and how she'd slaughtered so many of your fellow humans. If you really didn't want to join her, then surely you'd have much more to say (and you'd say it very emotionally, unlike the almost casual "Nah" in the cut-scene), somewhere between "Why would I want to join you? You're insanely evil" and "**** you, you murdering b*tch, I'm sending you straight to Hell".

Plus maybe, when SHODAN offers to let you join her, you could select whether to destroy her or join her. The path you then choose wouldn't affect much, just the rest of the cut-scene, but it would be interesting to see if SHODAN would honour her request for you to co-rule with her (I'd guess she really, REALLY wouldn't). Though it might be good to have two subsequent cut-scenes, one much like the original ending of the current cut-scene, where you chose to destroy SHODAN, but she somehow survives (or a virtual duplicate of her does) and she becomes viable on the rescue ship, and another (brand new) one, showing the devastation to the human race that you, allied with SHODAN, eventually cause the universe. The latter could be the result of you choosing the 'evil' option and choosing to co-rule with SHODAN.

With the real talent (and obsessive System Shock 2 love) on here, I'm sure we could come up with a great mini-script for a new cutscene or two.

[666584a04e886voodoo47]

naah, it's fine.

a cliché, crazy ending cutscene for a game full of cliché, crazy things.

[666584a04e9b5Kolya]

Allegedly there was a better ending cutscene planned but they somehow lost it and then cobbled this one together quickly.
I say allegedly because no details about this better ending were ever revealed.

My personal dream ending would be, that Shodan discloses to Goggles that he is too late, because she's already on her way to Earth, then switches off the screens. After the escape pod and Becca's new hair, Goggles is seen in a familiar scene in a corridor of the VB, where he shoots himself in the head. THE END

[666584a04ed4bRocketMan]

I hate how everybody has completely abandoned bad endings in movies, video games, etc.  It makes it so you can easily guess how a story will wrap itself up.  Why can't the hero ever utterly fail, leaving everything in ruin?  That would be cool. 

[666584a04ee44voodoo47]

generally, you just go RL for your daily dose of failure, if that's what you desire.

[666584a04f48esarge945]

Sorry for the necro, I have something to actually contribute so hopefully it's okay.

I find the "nah" so inherently awful and cringe that I decided to do a quick edit to remove it. It sort of looks strange now because it zooms in on goggles only to have him say nothing, but I feel like it's still a bit better having him silently contemplate what to do for a second, and then blasting, rather than giving an extremely cheesy, borderline comical response.

The player character doesn't say a word for the entire game, so I think this is far more fitting than the "nah", as I assume most players already have their own idea of what goggles sounds like. Doom Eternal broke the "the player never speaks" rule, and it was really terrible when they did it too. The rule seems to be either have a talking PC, who then talks in all instances where it makes sense, or keep them completely silent. Having them say a few words in the entire game is really jarring, at least in my opinion. It doesn't help when their only line of dialogue is awful. Had Goggles spoken a lot more in the rest of the game, I honesly don't think the "nah" would have been as jarring or as bad. It would still be bad dialogue, but it wouldn't be so extremely out of place.

In my opinion, almost this entire cutscene is bad (except the last bit). SHODAN's dialogue is pretty cheesy as well, and it makes no sense that the PC who has just spent all this time defeating her would stand there and listen to her monolouging, especially since she should already be "dead" by that point. The last level of the game was entirely about urgency - stop shodan before she transforms reality as we know it. So to then stand there and listen to her, especially since she is the type to always try and scheme her way out of everything, doesn't seem right to me.

I also did an edit where the cutscene starts with him simply shooting her, and removed the monologue completely. Obviously this is VERY different from Vanilla, will feel wrong to many people, and is obviously not-canon, but I still think it somewhat improves the ending, as it is now basically "player shoots SHODAN, calls shuttle, Surprise! SHODAN is in the shuttle!". It is simple and gets the job done without the comical B-grade dialogue, and is more like a typical game ending cutscene. The video starts very abruptly, but it makes more sense when it's in the context of playing immediately after a boss fight.

You can find the edited versions here

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1bNoGVp1QMP_jX0lxQL19B9wx9xc2vtjz?usp=sharing

I am bad with video software, let me know if I messed anything up.

I would be very interested in people's thoughts on these, as I always dread and despise this cutscene in every playthorugh - it cheapens the entire game for me. Unfortunately short of re-creating something specifically in the Dark engine, and getting in Terri to re-voice stuff (which is never going to happen), there's really not much good we can do to this cutscene, so I think gutting it almost entirely is the best option. The last part (after shodan's death) is alright. It's just the monologue and the "nah" that gets to me.

[666584a04f668GuyFawkesGaming]

I have to agree, cs3 was pretty lazy. I think it would have added better feel if goggles pointed his gun at her just before she said "how dare you", it would have made the change from "you weren't meant to be important" to "can you not see that value in our friendship" have more weight considering how arrogant SHODAN is. Of course I would also be nice to have this cutscene redone with rebirth models, but that's probably not going to happen.

[666584a04f760voodoo47]

not seeing it happening, as unlike the shuttle takeoffs, cs3 has been pro-level edited for quite a bit.

[666584a04f880sarge945]

If I want to actually make my CS3 edits work in-game, do I need to save them in a specific format? I don't know what Dark needs. I assume they need to be in a file path in an archive as well.

Would actually like to maybe release something properly, rather than just going "here's some hypothetical cutscene edits, everyone".

Would it make sense to release it here, or in a new thread?

[666584a04f993Kolya]

I would suggest you show it in Engineering first. Definitely not here, because this is someone else's thread.
To test your work create a folder structure inside DMM: ModName > cutscenes > cs3.avi
Then load ModName in the mod manager.

[666584a04fa6esarge945]

Will do, thanks.

I will test it out, see if it works, then make an engineering thread about it.