74205.6 / 27 September 2020

Project IE 4k & Pine Phone update

Project IE 4k

I have been working off and on with many projects. One of the projects that is really a joy to fool around with is what I am calling Project IE 4k. Basically IE or Infinity Engine is a game engine for multiple games I played when I was young and basically what brought me into the world of computer science. The games that use the engine are Baldur's Gate I and II, Icewind Dale I *and II, and Planescape Torment. I really enjoyed and still enjoy these games. If you want to play them you still can to this day very easily on literally any device. It works with something called GemRB. It was also picked up as a commerical project in the form of "Enhanced Editions".
Personally I love GemRB because it is a working open source engine. This engine makes it possible to do creative things that may not be as easily accomplished. This is what brings us to Project IE 4k. Basically since the game was designed a little over 20 years ago, it wasn't really designed for modern systems. If we use aritifical intelligence we can upscale the assets and potentially really improve the experience for years to come. In order to make this possible I have decided to create a few models for upscaling. Added new features to a java project called NearInfinity which is basically a game development editor created by the community for IE games. Using this project and my additions I can export and make my modifications and then re-import my modifications. Then I will simply make a few modifications to take into account an "upscaleFactor" for GemRB which we will use along with the upscaled assets and simple math formulas to do calculations when drawing for height map, light map, and various other things the game has that will need to be calculated. So far the process is going well. I have made the needed modifications for TIS, and MOS. Several other types are still being worked on. For some of the work I created a video to demonstrate the procedure in NearInfinity. Take a look.

You can also see a loading screen working from Baldur's Gate I

I am still working on much of it and by no means done yet, but I am steadily overcoming problems I encounter. Project IE 4k

If you want to see my modficiations to NearInfinty check them out here. NearInfinity

PinePhone script

A little update for the pinephone script. I made a lot of modifications to it. I also added Plasma Mobile from KDE. So now you can install both. Plasma Mobile is farther behind UBPorts, but it is still fun to test out. I look forward to the day I can use multiple distros on my phone that also respect my privacy.

To follow the project go to : PinePhone64 Install Scripts

Also if you subscribe to my YouTube channel I post regular updates as well.