The Moguri Mod, a PC mod that enhances Final Fantasy IX’s visuals beyond current official remasters by leveraging AI through Stable Diffusion, has seen a major update after being on hiatus.
Key Features and Enhancements
- 2D backgrounds have been refined, now offering an upscale experience with new shaders for character and enemy models in both ‘Toon’ and ‘Realistic’ styles.
- The mod requires the Steam version of Final Fantasy IX, along with a 5GB storage space and the Memoria mod launcher to use it.
How do you feel about AI being used to upscale visuals in retro games like Final Fantasy IX? Do you think it enhances the gaming experience or takes away from the original charm?
I think that enhancing existing artwork is a great use for image generation. It digests the existing artwork and fills in the gaps for upscaling. It’s a step beyond running the content through an upscaling filter and saving it for next time.
This is not removing artists, and the opportunity to perform this work manually existed for 20 years. It is
big N’sSony/Square’s miss for not preserving the original HQ artwork for a rerelease. They would charge 75 for the new product either way.Big N?
I was mistakenly thinking about Nintendo. I’ll change it.
I just clicked around. Any idea how to apply this in Linux? I might tinker with it myself, but a heads up would help.
This guide is a couple years old, but I can’t imagine the setup steps have changed much in the meantime:
https://gist.github.com/Eoin-ONeill-Yokai/5016e28506071165578eb8c181700b0f
That’s clutch. Thanks!
