Adventure Gamers - Forums

I absolutely adore Peter Chan’s original art for Monkey Island 2, before it was scanned in and made low resolution for the original VGA edition of the game.  I thought that the Special Edition did a decent job of redrawing the backgrounds, but they lacked the sheer storybook beauty of Peter Chan’s original paintings.

I figure that surely it should be possible to extract all of the backgrounds from Monkey Island 2 VGA and upscale them with an AI algorithm, make some minor fixes in Photoshop and then use the resulting backgrounds to replace the background files in the Monkey Island 2 Special Edition (ensuring that they’re the same resolution and file format).  The sprites from the Special Edition could be kept as they are and hey presto, you have Monkey Island 2 with Peter Chan’s original artwork (or close enough to it).

Here’s some examples of the VGA backgrounds which have been upscaled using an algorithm (taken from this very forum)...

I am very keen to make this dream of mine a reality and that’s where I need other people’s help and/or advice.  I already have the software and knowhow of how to upscale every single background from the VGA version of the game for the project, so that’s not an issue.

If anyone’s got the technical knowhow of how to the following, then that would be a great help…

1/ How to extract the backgrounds from the VGA release of Monkey Island 2.

2/ How to replace the background files in the Special Edition of Monkey Island 2.

I would be happy to collaborate with others to make this mod a reality.  Ideally, I’d have someone more technically knowledgable than myself work on the replacement of files in the Special Edition, but if need be, I can do it myself (I just need some sage like advice on how to achieve this).

Here’s a quick and very rough mock-up I made in order to demonstrate what Peter Chan’s original backgrounds would look like within the Monkey Island 2 Special Edition…

PETER CHAN’S ORIGINAL BACKGROUND…

A CONCEPT OF HOW MONKEY ISLAND 2 SPECIAL EDITION WOULD LOOK WITH UPSCALED BACKGROUNDS…

It’s my understanding that because the replacement background files would be the same resolution as those from the Special Edition and the same file format (I would make sure of that), that should mean that all of the SE sprites would be automatically placed in their appropriate places, as I have done so in the above example, with the characters and Stan’s shop sign.

Any advice on this matter would be greatly appreciated.  I would primarily like to do this simply because it’s long been a dream of mine but if I’m given the advice, guidance and support to make it a reality, then I will 100% make a patch to allow others to play the mod too.

Seems like ThunderPoop over at mixnmojo stole your idea (or wants to help out:p). Unless you are ThunderPoop as well.

https://forums.mixnmojo.com/topic/200477-what-if-lucasarts-had-had-modern-scanning-tools/

I had a bit of a look at the game’s datafiles using the Monkey Island Explorer, a fan tool for extracting them. It appears that the backgrounds are not merely painted over in their entirety as one image, but instead different parts of each one are layered on top of one another. This would indicate that what for you had in mind you would have to upscale the original backgrounds, then crop out the different sections that line up exactly with how the Special Edition layers items. I’m no PhotoShop genius, but from the dabbling I have done, it would be a monumental task.