Reskinning Pre-Zilart Areas. Possible?

[Blood Red Poet]

The areas released in the original game look crappy. I guess it would be possible to take each piece and make it look better, like the way CoP looks no?

[Pai Pai Master]

Crappy!?

Ronfaure and La Theine are beautiful, as is Xarcabard. :D

[Blood Red Poet]

I think they look bad compared to newer areas. This is most true with towns and gustaberg.

[CoalChamber]

I agree. I thought I had heard something about the Pc version getting a graphical update when 360 goes retail. Since apparently SE is abandoning the PS2 version it seems, since they're not remaking it for PS3. Was this just rumors? If not then that would be very nice :D

[Caspian]

This is most true with towns and gustaberg.
Bastok hater.
Are the graphics not as good? Or do you just not like the landscape they chose to model it after?

[Nicker]

Higher resolution textures on the ground would be nice :3 but I'd imagine editing the the area texture maps and such would not be a easy task.

[Pai Pai Master]

Well, I think that the design team has become a lot better at making much more aesthetically pleasing areas. I'm not certain if using newer textures and whatnot from the expansions would make older areas look that much better, if that's what you're asking, BRP.

[Nicker]

Newer zones seem to be a lot more enclosed while the older ones seem to be large and open. aside from Atelp there are not many added areas that are as expansive as the old ones, with that said it seems there seem to be way too many desert like zones in the game especially like the areas near mea and even in the newer CoP areas like the Range and Bibiki bay. The newest expansion seems to have a lot of forested areas but it still looks fairly cramped I'd just like to see some open well designed zones.

[Blood Red Poet]

Mindartia isn't a desert, it is a dry land.

[Falnax]

Although this does appear to be possible, as with POLUtils I've seen some DATs that are recognizably parts of zones, I'm not really sure how to convert them, seeing as Model Viewer does all the dirty work in turning a DAT into an accessible format...although perhaps if a random area DAT was put in the place of a skin DAT, and then the exporter was used, it might give you something, but it seems pretty doubtful, seeing as there's import problems such as the fact that there wouldn't be an MQO, and hence no rational MCD...

Although I would agree that it seems like S-E put a lot more effort into designing the areas in and around San d'Oria than they did in Bastok...after, Gustaberg is pretty much the same old plains tiles over and over again, whereas Ronfaure is a nice medley of trees, rivers, grasslands, etc...

[Blood Red Poet]

The forest in Carp's Landing looks better than Jugner. CoP is a lot 'sharper'. Thats what I'm talking about.

Double Post Edited:
The same could be said about older armor too.

[Tan'o]

The forest in Carp's Landing looks better than Jugner. CoP is a lot 'sharper'. Thats what I'm talking about.

Double Post Edited:
The same could be said about older armor too.
If you really care, you can run through the texture dats in the FFXI/RoZ/CoP areas, take the appropriate ones, and then insert them into the FFXIinitial/RoZ dat files.

[Spazz]

I have been working on making the armor look more sharp like the RoZ and CoP expansion. The old school armor just doesnt hold up very well anymore, wouldnt you all say?

[Shinyo]

Ok, let's say you found a way to switch areas around.

So you switched SGusta to WRonfaure. Assuming the game doesn't immediately crash, and you did actually see WRonfaure, there would either be invisable SGusta walls, or other people would just see you running into walls. The zones wouldn't even be in the same places.

What's the point of all this again? If enough people feel like you, SE will change it.

[Pai Pai Master]

I don't think he's taking about switching entire areas completely. I think he's talking about exchanging various textures to make the older areas look as vibrant as the better-designed newer areas.