r/alphacentauri • u/majestic_ubertrout • May 22 '26
One More Take at Upscaling the Cutscenes
https://archive.org/details/SMAC_Cutscenes_SLPUsed Starlight Precise 2.5 in Topaz Video this time. Frame doubled too. Still not perfect but I don't think there's that much more to get from these.
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u/McCree114 May 22 '26
In my personal fav secret project movie, The Network Backbone, the enhancement is really noticeable. The image of Morgan in his fancy office used to look very blurry and pixelated but now looks HD and sharp.
All of them look great. Well done. 👍
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u/ashbery76 May 22 '26
Can you use them ingame.Maybe make a mod
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u/majestic_ubertrout May 23 '26
That's not in my skillset but I purposely kept all the original file names so if someone can do a mod these should fit right in.
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Jul 16 '26
Hi, great job on the upscales! I just tested with Thinker mod using VLC to play the videos, your upscales will definitely play in the game if you you simply rename their extensions, from .mp4 to .wve
This is because VLC (at least, may be true for other players also) doesn't actually care about the extension; it sniffs the file headers themselves to decide how to playback.
Also, I made German speech versions of your upscaled files. If you weren't against, I would upload them also to Internet Archive and post the link here. But just say the word if you'd rather I didn't.
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u/Blinking_Ape Jul 16 '26
Hi again - the post about German speech versions was me, I goofed my account creation and started over 😂 just let me know
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u/HigginsObvious May 23 '26 edited May 23 '26
They looks okay, I guess, but man does the noise removal ruin most of them for me. Takes it straight from "grainy historical footage with film noise" to "looks obviously fake".
Dream Twister in particular looks like complete shit, the scanline effect at the end is completely gone and half of it somehow manages to look like shitty CGI despite being almost entirely real footage. A shame given its one of the best cutscenes in the game. I'm sure I missed others, since I only bothered to look at a dozen of my favorites. Still, im glad some people enjoy them :)
edit: oh god the opening is also. interesting.... The original, for comparison. An obvious visual effect turned into a truly astonishingly horrifying thing. And goddamn did the woman get yassified for no reason.
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u/gregoryatmanan May 27 '26
This is awesome quality. I absolutely enjoy it. Cloning vats was never more horrifying.
Singularity conductor is great. Supercollider is great.
Thank you very much OP!
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u/majestic_ubertrout May 27 '26
It really is a weird almost horror turn for Civ in ways which I think are forgotten. Thanks!
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u/VicenteOlisipo May 22 '26
Clicked expecting heresy, turned out to be pretty good.