Legacy Asset Emulation for On-the-Fly Game Remastering
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Solution Overview
Problem
Remastering entertainment assets like older computer games for newer consoles requires significant time and expense due to the need for creating entirely new software to accommodate improved capabilities.
Innovation Solution
A system that remasters game textures and audio on the fly using legacy game software, without recompiling, by intercepting texture and audio calls, applying hash algorithms, and replacing them with higher resolution versions stored in a data structure.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Manufacturing precision
If entirely new software is created to accommodate improved capabilities of later model consoles, then the remastered game quality is improved, but the time and expense required increases significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates a copy of the original game environment by emulating the legacy console's hardware and operating system on the modern device. This emulation layer allows the original game software to run unchanged while providing access to modern display and audio capabilities, thereby achieving remastered quality without the need to recreate the entire software
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary emulation layer between the original game software and the modern console hardware. This intermediary translates modern high-resolution graphics and audio outputs into formats compatible with the legacy game, allowing the original software to produce remastered quality output without modification
2Manufacturing precision
If legacy game software is modified to support higher resolution displays, then the image quality on modern displays is improved, but the software complexity and modification requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of modifying the legacy game software to output high-resolution graphics directly, the patent inverts the approach by having the emulation layer render the game at the original resolution and then scaling/upscaling the output to match modern display capabilities. This maintains software simplicity while achieving high image quality
Data Source
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AI summary
Each asset such as a texture (502) called for by legacy software such as a legacy computer game software has a unique identifier associated with it. The unique identifier can be rendered by imposing (304) a hash on the asset, and then the asset stored (308) with its identifier in a data structure. An artist remasters the textures for presentation on a higher resolution display (500) than envisioned in the original software, and stores them back in the data structure with their identifiers. The original software is then played (800) on the higher resolution display, with asset (such as texture) calls being intercepted, identified, and the data structure entered (802-806) to retrieve the remastered asset having a matching identifier. The remastered asset is then inserted (808) on the fly into the game presentation.