Some levels are 1:1, but others are retooled differently such as Earthrock Trilobyte and Gigabolt Manowar. 

I've been playing the demo and I've defeated 4 bosses so far.  Got the full Icarus Armor set and 4 Heart tanks + 1 Sub tank.

The perception of X8 (and of demakes in general) might affect how people look at this, but imagine if X8 HAD looked like this... imagine if they all did. I'm not sure I'd complain.

But if this is a 1:1 remake of the level design (I say IF because I couldn't say I played X8 enough to know them in the way that I know X or X2) then perhaps its value is the light that it sheds on that level design when you take away the things that were masking it.

I don't know if I'm just particular or if I tend to be more appreciative of little details in music more than other people are, but for the projects like this that I've come across, demaking the music tends to be the worst aspect for me. People tend to just take the tracks and remake them with older soundfonts, emulating the notes but none of the emotion or passion that went into the original work. To me it would be like tracing someone else's drawing onto a cardboard box using a paintbrush dipped in piss. You couldn't say that it didn't involve some amount of effort, but would you say it was worth it?

Not being X7 doesn't make something not bad.

But it's not X7....

Being X8 goes a long way to kill interest in a project.

It looks amazing and I hope they keep Zero as well as Axl and the navigators out of it as one of the biggest X fangame pitfalls tends to be balancing around a larger cast. Demake the music like you said and I think they have a real winner on their hands here.

Hi again, I finally got my new PC but now they are gonna upgrade PHP again in early Feb so I might as well wait til that's done before I mess with anything.

Will report back here when things are done.

Apart from Tetris 99 and Switch Sports, I don't actually use my switch. I got one of the original switch runs that can be modded/hacked for a good deal on ebay, and I own TOTK on cart. I just ripped the whole shebang onto my PC because I refuse to play a AAA open world high end RPG at 720p 30fps. I've got TOTK running pretty flawlessly at 4k 60fps on my PC. Some areas have a dip, and there are a few weird issues, but overall it's such a better experience. On the switch itself, the occasional drops to sub 20fps were what I would call unplayable. If the new switch can use DLSS to keep framerates high, I'm all about it.

Thankfully, some of the huge pushes this generation are 120fps and variable refresh rate. I refused to get a PS5 until I had a monitor that could do those, as I'd be wasting the potential. 2 years ago I got the LG C1 48" OLED and it has been amazing for everything. No signs of burn in yet, and any weirdness is corrected by the automated 'pixel cleaning' routine.

Variable refresh rate (NVidia GSync and AMD Freesync) cannot be overemphasized. VRR is better at 40fps than raw 60-70fps, just because of the better frame timing consistency. No tearing, no judder, just an intelligent connection between monitor and GPU pipeline, syncing the current framerate to the monitor.

I think going with a specific AI upscaling algorithm for the new switch it'll be much harder to get consistent performance out of any emu-lators, and I think impossible without an nVidia GPU. As these 'AI' algorithms become more hardware dependent (chat GPT runs on NVidia), I think manufacturers are going to be able to sequester the market to the extreme determent of the consumers.

Even right now, wanna do AI locally? NVidia tensor cores. anything else? 1/3 that efficiency at best.

Fun thing, the word emu-lator without the dash still auto translates to "computer program of dubious legality". For the record (Mods), I did it all 100% legally and I own the hardware, I ain't no pirate.

I'm surprised no one is talking about this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWWEKjiFLAM

Looks really good.   I hope they replace the music with X1-X3 style versions of the X8 tracks. 

That's disheartening to learn that it spews false information as factually accurate as possible, but I suppose it is what it is.

I agree that the artistic side seems much better at this point, as I've utilized it for photography edits and enhancing some old images to much better and larger quality. I've also enjoyed the various odd AI generated images, though they all seem to have a certain look to them that gives it away, assuming extra appendages aren't there like hands / feet / fingers.

If the new Switch does all that, I'm sold on it already. I'm hoping it'll be like the Xbox Series X and PS5 by granting additional power to older titles, assuming it even has backwards compatibility. I have a few games I wouldn't mind playing again if they don't end up chugging on performance issues. I think my only real experience with DLSS so far is with Palworld, which is some new game that just came out on Unreal 5 and didn't have any real hiccups at all from what I seen while also hitting a high refresh rate with no tweaking needed.

Speaking of gaming, there's a fun AI game that I hope goes on steam called "Suck Up!" that uses a form of AI to dictate the way NPCs interact while also using it to transcribe what one verbally says to said NPCs with a very high success rate. It gives me hope for some of the future games that people can craft with care behind them, though I've also seen crazy tech like from nVidia where they allow one to talk with various NPCs in games not designed for it such Cyberpunk. Crazy times we live in!