Originally a presentation to the IGDA (International Game Developers Association) Ann Arbor meetup on September 22, 2022.
Author: Nathan Hanish
Goal: Revive/Remaster vintage (C64 era) titles
Focus on Below the Root from Windham Classics, 1984
Programmer: Dale Disharoon
Author: Zilpha Keatly Snyder
Music: Larry Snyder
Art: William Groetzinger
Key Features
Early Metroidvania
Larger than the original Zelda
Deep exploration and lore, non-violent
Delightful SID (like early MIDI) music
Extremely readable visual style
Sprite Collage
Here’s the original game world
Extracting the Art
Special thanks to Justin Stahlman for extracting Sprite Sheets (below) and Screens (above) from the original C64 build
I indexed the sprites and deconstructed the screens into sprite+color lookup
I build a ScummVM extension to render and navigate all the screens
Test screen renders, that’s a lot of art to repaint!
Enter AI Art and Stable Diffusion
Text2image
Describe scene
→ Get image
Image2Image
Describe scene
Provide initial image
→ Get new image
Go read these articles on Ars Technica
Not great for whole scene from C64 game
I am using the SDUI github project to run Stable Diffusion locally https://github.com/harskish/sdui
But works great for an element at a time
And some compositional magic
Outdoors also, some new challenges with segmentation
More compositional magic
And underground
Mash it up
My asks…..
Ideas for how to apply this to other titles
Please try it out!
How to handle animated sprites?
Anybody really know the rights situation for ‘abandonware’
How do I release the results without getting sued?
Current plan is to extend ScummVM
Require the original disk image
Add option for upscaled sprite set
Add option for resynthesized music
If you happen to see this and know who holds the rights, please contact me!
hanishn@gmail.com put “Below the Root Remaster” in the subject line
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