Forums » Suggestions
Community Created Graphics Work / Opening Up Texture Changeouts To The Lua Sandbox
With the influx of the new players during the free trial for a month gig going on, there have been several comments about the graphics of the game.
When I started VO, the graphics weren't exactly the key item that pulled me in. I was googling for a new MMO I could try given that I was fairly bored with the ones I have played and wanted a game with a general theme of science fiction and space. VO fit the bill perfectly and I purchased a subscription ASAP after my trial was over.
What 'got me' was that the game was interesting without being too bogged down with useless information. It was 'complicated' but not in a way that would have you sit for a day just to figure out the mechanics of the simplest of tasks. Later, the idea of creating your own plugins intrigued me and forced me to learn Lua - something I had been looking at but didn't know where to start.
For the average person on VO right now, I would assume that they care about the game play more than the graphics. I am this way also - to a point. A lot of the new players that have come in have said the graphics, compared to 'modern standards' are out dated and they should be fixed. One night there was a big argument comparing Eve and VO and fortunately ended on an 'okay' note.
VO has a developer team totaling 4 people (or is it 5 now?) and as such, getting work done one such a large ( and from what I hear, a messy code base :P ) game can be a challenge. We're only now seeing the start of massive changes to VO and fixes to 'broken' systems (i.e. Faction Redux, Universe Redux, Economy Redux) that have gone on the way they have for a couple of years now.
Recently, the devs have been focused on Game play. And why not? Game play is what makes or breaks any game. A game can be as flashy as can be but no one will play it for more than 10 minutes if the game play is ridiculously horrible. So why not hire more developers/artists? Money. Why no money? Not a great deal of players. (Here, I'm assuming thats the main reason. I have no idea how much money Guild Soft gets, but with the current player base and after deductions of wages, housing, power, etc. etc. I doubt it is enough to hire more staff)
It has been though that improving game play will improve the player base and thus improve money and thus open up new opportunities... but what is so wrong with the game play right now? I give my opinion of: Nothing is wrong with the game play right now. So what if the Itani players can get the same ships that Serco can get? So what if one player has All Faction POS? To me, most players right now aren't here playing this game because of the complexity or depth of its faction system, or resource system, economy etc.
People are playing this game because it is either A. Decent way to pass the time or B. Its just downright fun (and dare I say - sexy...) That isn't to say that game play shouldn't be worked on - and I am happy that the revs have chosen to focus on it. Its going to open up a lot of cool new doors for the devs to explore once they get all of this work off their plate. I offer up an something however - with all of 2500 (count right?) free trials - how many are still playing 'actively'? How many are already planning on purchasing a subscription? I heard the words from one new player along the lines of "It seems really fun, but the graphics are a little dated for my tastes."
Often with games being shown to new players, unless the game play is so revolutionary that it absolutely MUST be shown off first, the graphics are what are used to pull people in. I looked at the screen shots myself before I downloaded the client and that "Wow... this is amazing." - I only thought this however because I believed it was one of those 'fake' client games. The ones that don't look so much as a game you install onto your computer but as a 'client' to the game on the Internet. (Bad description I know - but I can't think of any games that would fit that description off the top of my head) After awhile of seeing the graphics, I was sort of disappointed, but by that time I already liked the game so it wasn't a question of how good the graphics are.
For many however, this is not the case. Some people feel the need to look at something shiny first before they truly accept the game play. I fear we've lost a decent portion of the free trial players simply because the graphics aren't 'spectacular' - and after they find out that the game has been out for quite awhile, they get further disappointed, possibly thinking that 'real' game updates you see in other games don't really happen in this one. To counter-act this I propose you open up the texture system, whatever that may be, up to the community.
My first suggestion was opening it up by adding a 'skinning' interface for textures that would behave much in the same way as the current HUD system works. You could release wireframe blank textures for specific elements of the game - asteroids, station components, ships - so that whoever wants to may create sets of textures for the game. The general idea would probably be to make High Detail textures and the like that would make VO look the way I feel it deserves to look. AFAIK, none of the textures for ships, station modules (not including station signage), or asteroids contain any Alphas, so I think the possibility of someone creating textures for a malicious purpose may be deterred. (Creating blank white textures for ships is a possibility but really, its not that hard to A. Use your radar and B. see players in space anyways) This way, players can have textures looks exactly how they want them to.
My second suggestion if the first doesn't seem 'appropriate' is to open up texture modifying to the PCC team. The devs already 'trust' them with the mission system, and other VO specific features including Lua and what not), so it isn't a jump in logic to assume that they can be 'trusted' with creating new textures either. Everything will ultimately be signed off by the devs and only made available on the test server (until they're moved to the prod server) so malicious activity will most likely be at a minimum if any PCCs do decide to try something like that.
I know this would, in VOs current state, introduce another slightly big project that the devs simply do not have time to implement. A system like the mission editor and what not. I'm not entirely sure what the cycles are for the devs or even what each one of the team ultimately 'takes care' of but I think it would be a -very- good idea to free up some time for a developer and start working on a system like this. It would take up sometime now - but it could ultimately free up a lot more time in the future as the texture work can be done by someone else.
Sorry for the long 'essay' - Thoughts?
When I started VO, the graphics weren't exactly the key item that pulled me in. I was googling for a new MMO I could try given that I was fairly bored with the ones I have played and wanted a game with a general theme of science fiction and space. VO fit the bill perfectly and I purchased a subscription ASAP after my trial was over.
What 'got me' was that the game was interesting without being too bogged down with useless information. It was 'complicated' but not in a way that would have you sit for a day just to figure out the mechanics of the simplest of tasks. Later, the idea of creating your own plugins intrigued me and forced me to learn Lua - something I had been looking at but didn't know where to start.
For the average person on VO right now, I would assume that they care about the game play more than the graphics. I am this way also - to a point. A lot of the new players that have come in have said the graphics, compared to 'modern standards' are out dated and they should be fixed. One night there was a big argument comparing Eve and VO and fortunately ended on an 'okay' note.
VO has a developer team totaling 4 people (or is it 5 now?) and as such, getting work done one such a large ( and from what I hear, a messy code base :P ) game can be a challenge. We're only now seeing the start of massive changes to VO and fixes to 'broken' systems (i.e. Faction Redux, Universe Redux, Economy Redux) that have gone on the way they have for a couple of years now.
Recently, the devs have been focused on Game play. And why not? Game play is what makes or breaks any game. A game can be as flashy as can be but no one will play it for more than 10 minutes if the game play is ridiculously horrible. So why not hire more developers/artists? Money. Why no money? Not a great deal of players. (Here, I'm assuming thats the main reason. I have no idea how much money Guild Soft gets, but with the current player base and after deductions of wages, housing, power, etc. etc. I doubt it is enough to hire more staff)
It has been though that improving game play will improve the player base and thus improve money and thus open up new opportunities... but what is so wrong with the game play right now? I give my opinion of: Nothing is wrong with the game play right now. So what if the Itani players can get the same ships that Serco can get? So what if one player has All Faction POS? To me, most players right now aren't here playing this game because of the complexity or depth of its faction system, or resource system, economy etc.
People are playing this game because it is either A. Decent way to pass the time or B. Its just downright fun (and dare I say - sexy...) That isn't to say that game play shouldn't be worked on - and I am happy that the revs have chosen to focus on it. Its going to open up a lot of cool new doors for the devs to explore once they get all of this work off their plate. I offer up an something however - with all of 2500 (count right?) free trials - how many are still playing 'actively'? How many are already planning on purchasing a subscription? I heard the words from one new player along the lines of "It seems really fun, but the graphics are a little dated for my tastes."
Often with games being shown to new players, unless the game play is so revolutionary that it absolutely MUST be shown off first, the graphics are what are used to pull people in. I looked at the screen shots myself before I downloaded the client and that "Wow... this is amazing." - I only thought this however because I believed it was one of those 'fake' client games. The ones that don't look so much as a game you install onto your computer but as a 'client' to the game on the Internet. (Bad description I know - but I can't think of any games that would fit that description off the top of my head) After awhile of seeing the graphics, I was sort of disappointed, but by that time I already liked the game so it wasn't a question of how good the graphics are.
For many however, this is not the case. Some people feel the need to look at something shiny first before they truly accept the game play. I fear we've lost a decent portion of the free trial players simply because the graphics aren't 'spectacular' - and after they find out that the game has been out for quite awhile, they get further disappointed, possibly thinking that 'real' game updates you see in other games don't really happen in this one. To counter-act this I propose you open up the texture system, whatever that may be, up to the community.
My first suggestion was opening it up by adding a 'skinning' interface for textures that would behave much in the same way as the current HUD system works. You could release wireframe blank textures for specific elements of the game - asteroids, station components, ships - so that whoever wants to may create sets of textures for the game. The general idea would probably be to make High Detail textures and the like that would make VO look the way I feel it deserves to look. AFAIK, none of the textures for ships, station modules (not including station signage), or asteroids contain any Alphas, so I think the possibility of someone creating textures for a malicious purpose may be deterred. (Creating blank white textures for ships is a possibility but really, its not that hard to A. Use your radar and B. see players in space anyways) This way, players can have textures looks exactly how they want them to.
My second suggestion if the first doesn't seem 'appropriate' is to open up texture modifying to the PCC team. The devs already 'trust' them with the mission system, and other VO specific features including Lua and what not), so it isn't a jump in logic to assume that they can be 'trusted' with creating new textures either. Everything will ultimately be signed off by the devs and only made available on the test server (until they're moved to the prod server) so malicious activity will most likely be at a minimum if any PCCs do decide to try something like that.
I know this would, in VOs current state, introduce another slightly big project that the devs simply do not have time to implement. A system like the mission editor and what not. I'm not entirely sure what the cycles are for the devs or even what each one of the team ultimately 'takes care' of but I think it would be a -very- good idea to free up some time for a developer and start working on a system like this. It would take up sometime now - but it could ultimately free up a lot more time in the future as the texture work can be done by someone else.
Sorry for the long 'essay' - Thoughts?
I would love to be able to personally modify my own graphics, like I currently do with the skins.
I think we can come to a compromise that has already been made in other parts of the game: open-source part of the game to PCC members. Honestly, this is really how plug-ins got started, it's how the UI is being constantly improved by players, and unless I'm gravely mistaken, it hasn't cost the devs too much time. We really don't need a fancy editor or anything, just give us the textures and we'll do our best with Gimp/PS/whatever you use. It would certainly help to have the models for the ships as well, so we can play around with the textures more easily in Wings 3D or something, but I don't expect the devs to want to give their models away.
Agreed
As much as I want this to happen, I can tell you right now it won't and for good reason.
And that reason being...?
they don't want people stealing there stuff, because they can't afford to sue people.
Yea I think thats it, correct me if i'm wrong inc.
Yea I think thats it, correct me if i'm wrong inc.
Art assets need to meet a number of criteria. User-created models are pretty much out -- they need to be in the correct format, they need to meet performance criteria on a number of systems, they need to be available in several different levels of complexity, and they need working collision meshes.
It's hypothetically possible that they could let people work on the textures, although I really don't think that textures are going to get you what you want. Furthermore, they have many times stated that they do not want user-created textures to load on the fly, so any work that was done would have to be probably submitted and then pushed out to the whole userbase at once. Anything else is a gigantic performance headache.
I don't know. While I agree that it'd be nice to improve the art, and that the community might be able to help (although probably less than 5% of those who have expressed interest would have the skill, tools, and patience to create something useful), the devs' time is better spent improving the game than either making tools for y'all or babysitting your contributions.
It's hypothetically possible that they could let people work on the textures, although I really don't think that textures are going to get you what you want. Furthermore, they have many times stated that they do not want user-created textures to load on the fly, so any work that was done would have to be probably submitted and then pushed out to the whole userbase at once. Anything else is a gigantic performance headache.
I don't know. While I agree that it'd be nice to improve the art, and that the community might be able to help (although probably less than 5% of those who have expressed interest would have the skill, tools, and patience to create something useful), the devs' time is better spent improving the game than either making tools for y'all or babysitting your contributions.
they need to be in the correct format, they need to meet performance criteria on a number of systems, they need to be available in several different levels of complexity, and they need working collision meshes.
If they're not in the correct format, the game can just give it an error, and revert to the original graphics, or tweak it out as the programming sees fit. If they don't meet performance criteria, it can go ahead and just suck. If they aren't available in different levels of complexity, it can be simple. Of course collision meshes won't be up for editing; are you nuts?
It's hypothetically possible that they could let people work on the textures, although I really don't think that textures are going to get you what you want. Furthermore, they have many times stated that they do not want user-created textures to load on the fly, so any work that was done would have to be probably submitted and then pushed out to the whole userbase at once. Anything else is a gigantic performance headache.
The performance headache can be dealt personally by the user's PC, and game, instead of modifying the code for VO, for everybody.
I don't know. While I agree that it'd be nice to improve the art, and that the community might be able to help (although probably less than 5% of those who have expressed interest would have the skill, tools, and patience to create something useful), the devs' time is better spent improving the game than either making tools for y'all or babysitting your contributions.
Improved graphics improve the game, and making tools for us has improved the game in the past, and no babysitting is required if default graphics are still provided, which they are, obviously.
Basically, player created graphics don't need to succeed, because if they don't, it's the player's fault. Do you blow raspberries at VO when a user created plugin, or skin, or bind doesn't work properly? "But Mynt, that's different!" No, this suggestion is about making it the same.
If they're not in the correct format, the game can just give it an error, and revert to the original graphics, or tweak it out as the programming sees fit. If they don't meet performance criteria, it can go ahead and just suck. If they aren't available in different levels of complexity, it can be simple. Of course collision meshes won't be up for editing; are you nuts?
It's hypothetically possible that they could let people work on the textures, although I really don't think that textures are going to get you what you want. Furthermore, they have many times stated that they do not want user-created textures to load on the fly, so any work that was done would have to be probably submitted and then pushed out to the whole userbase at once. Anything else is a gigantic performance headache.
The performance headache can be dealt personally by the user's PC, and game, instead of modifying the code for VO, for everybody.
I don't know. While I agree that it'd be nice to improve the art, and that the community might be able to help (although probably less than 5% of those who have expressed interest would have the skill, tools, and patience to create something useful), the devs' time is better spent improving the game than either making tools for y'all or babysitting your contributions.
Improved graphics improve the game, and making tools for us has improved the game in the past, and no babysitting is required if default graphics are still provided, which they are, obviously.
Basically, player created graphics don't need to succeed, because if they don't, it's the player's fault. Do you blow raspberries at VO when a user created plugin, or skin, or bind doesn't work properly? "But Mynt, that's different!" No, this suggestion is about making it the same.
spidey: the point is not so we can.. sue people, or whatever. The point is so that our corporation owns all the content in the game (which is important to securing outside investment), and also so the content in the game reaches a certain minimum quality level.
Getting back to the original post.. we are in the process of trying to re-work the game so our graphics assets are better used. For instance, some things, like chunky asteroids that have a low polygon count, are now usable in large quantities.. making for dense asteroid vistas that were not previously possible. The new newbie sectors are another thing. And.. other areas. There is a hell of a lot that we can do with the assets we already have, to make a graphically more compelling environment.
We are looking at possibly giving access to create new visual effects to the PCC (explosions, weapon effects, warp animations, whatever). Spidey has been asking for this forever, and we have no real problem with it.. it just requires people to work with an obfuscated and highly undocumented (but extremely powerful) system with only a few examples as guides. But we are looking into this.
Modifying textures and making new ones is rather.. complicated. There are certain assets that could definitely use a revamp, like some of our older ships (Atlas, Hornet, whatever). But stations? I don't think anyone could do better with stations than we already have, without adding a significant performance loss (different, yes, but not necessarily better). And then that becomes a tradeoff decision.. is it better to have awesome looking small stations? Or mediocre looking giant stations? How about dynamically generated stations that people can build in-game.. our current station art was built around that concept. Making something "look cool" for what it is right now, can end up making it impossible to expand into what we'd like it to be tomorrow. There is no "best", there are simply a series of tradeoffs that one chooses from to produce something that runs on the range of hardware you want, and has a given minimum level of graphical quality. If we have a wider selection of station textures available, then that's more possible dynamic memory usage depending on what stations are constructed where, and how, and what capships happened to fly in there, and how many players are currently present, and.. 97 other things. Mynt says "The performance headache can be dealt personally by the user's PC, and game, instead of modifying the code for VO, for everybody.".. but.. no, it is not acceptable to produce a game that may have its system requirements change by a factor of 5 when moving from one sector to the next, or having someone new fly by. People with fast machines already have framerate drops in Border Skirmishes.. can you imagine if I went hell-bent on making things look as pretty as possible? No one would be able to run it at all.
Anyway.. this texture this is getting kind of complex to explain, but let me put it this way: I would prefer to be able to have dynamic, user-buildable stations.. gigantic asteroid fields that you fly *through*.. and huge busy "station-cities" that occupy whole sectors of UIT space... as opposed to not having those things and only having a Few Pretty Objects. It's really more about the usage than the individual assets (outside of the older ships and stuff, that do need a facelift).. and we haven't been able to demonstrate the New Usage yet.. I just keep mentioning things like "Universe Redux" and "Look at Latos M7".
Making the game elegantly handle 99% of failure cases is also a.. vastly larger job than is estimated.
To recap, we either have opened up (skins, plugins, etc), or are looking at opening up (effects) all the areas where the time-vs-reward argument is compelling. Other options may be compelling in the future (textures), but are the cost/benefit tradeoff ain't there yet.
Getting back to the original post.. we are in the process of trying to re-work the game so our graphics assets are better used. For instance, some things, like chunky asteroids that have a low polygon count, are now usable in large quantities.. making for dense asteroid vistas that were not previously possible. The new newbie sectors are another thing. And.. other areas. There is a hell of a lot that we can do with the assets we already have, to make a graphically more compelling environment.
We are looking at possibly giving access to create new visual effects to the PCC (explosions, weapon effects, warp animations, whatever). Spidey has been asking for this forever, and we have no real problem with it.. it just requires people to work with an obfuscated and highly undocumented (but extremely powerful) system with only a few examples as guides. But we are looking into this.
Modifying textures and making new ones is rather.. complicated. There are certain assets that could definitely use a revamp, like some of our older ships (Atlas, Hornet, whatever). But stations? I don't think anyone could do better with stations than we already have, without adding a significant performance loss (different, yes, but not necessarily better). And then that becomes a tradeoff decision.. is it better to have awesome looking small stations? Or mediocre looking giant stations? How about dynamically generated stations that people can build in-game.. our current station art was built around that concept. Making something "look cool" for what it is right now, can end up making it impossible to expand into what we'd like it to be tomorrow. There is no "best", there are simply a series of tradeoffs that one chooses from to produce something that runs on the range of hardware you want, and has a given minimum level of graphical quality. If we have a wider selection of station textures available, then that's more possible dynamic memory usage depending on what stations are constructed where, and how, and what capships happened to fly in there, and how many players are currently present, and.. 97 other things. Mynt says "The performance headache can be dealt personally by the user's PC, and game, instead of modifying the code for VO, for everybody.".. but.. no, it is not acceptable to produce a game that may have its system requirements change by a factor of 5 when moving from one sector to the next, or having someone new fly by. People with fast machines already have framerate drops in Border Skirmishes.. can you imagine if I went hell-bent on making things look as pretty as possible? No one would be able to run it at all.
Anyway.. this texture this is getting kind of complex to explain, but let me put it this way: I would prefer to be able to have dynamic, user-buildable stations.. gigantic asteroid fields that you fly *through*.. and huge busy "station-cities" that occupy whole sectors of UIT space... as opposed to not having those things and only having a Few Pretty Objects. It's really more about the usage than the individual assets (outside of the older ships and stuff, that do need a facelift).. and we haven't been able to demonstrate the New Usage yet.. I just keep mentioning things like "Universe Redux" and "Look at Latos M7".
Making the game elegantly handle 99% of failure cases is also a.. vastly larger job than is estimated.
To recap, we either have opened up (skins, plugins, etc), or are looking at opening up (effects) all the areas where the time-vs-reward argument is compelling. Other options may be compelling in the future (textures), but are the cost/benefit tradeoff ain't there yet.
I'm sure I could help document the effects editor... I have a lot of free time. ;)
And i could learn to use it.
Since the graphics are stored unencrypted in the media file it's actually possible to muck around with them a bit. I never could be arsed to try it but this thread made me curious...
sooo ..here's an example:
http://kitchen.nfshost.com/ven/dump0103.png.jpg
made with this script:
http://kitchen.nfshost.com/ven/mediapatch.py
If anyone want's to try it just extract the original images with a file dumper like hachoir, edit an image and run the script with mediapatcher.py media.rlb <oldfile> <newfile>.
It will look for oldfile and replace it with newfile. The only limitations are that the replacement images must be smaller than the originals and the game has to be started without the updater.
I'd also suggest making backups.. the script doesn't do any verification and crap. :P
sooo ..here's an example:
http://kitchen.nfshost.com/ven/dump0103.png.jpg
made with this script:
http://kitchen.nfshost.com/ven/mediapatch.py
If anyone want's to try it just extract the original images with a file dumper like hachoir, edit an image and run the script with mediapatcher.py media.rlb <oldfile> <newfile>.
It will look for oldfile and replace it with newfile. The only limitations are that the replacement images must be smaller than the originals and the game has to be started without the updater.
I'd also suggest making backups.. the script doesn't do any verification and crap. :P
Thank you for the detailed reply, Inc! I would love to see the PCC be able to create effects. It could be like Mogul Velaio's death all over again!
/me hugs spuck
Thanks for the replies.
Just to reiterate, the original post came out of the desire not really to create me own 'custom' textures, but more to have an added option of using 'High Resolution' textures.
Even with high detail set to the max, most of the textures appear somewhat blurry. Are there High Resolution textures that I'm just not aware of already in the game? I usually play at 800x600 screen resolution - does the quality of the 'details' improve with higher/lower resolution?
It also seems that I may have mentioned models (I would check, but I dare not read what I have written :P). If I did, I didn't mean to. As Incarnate has put it, his corporation owns all the assets. I was simply wondering about access to textures that have only a grey background and a wireframe to show where the edges of the model are. IMO, this doesn't interrupt the original content and whoever is making a new texture needs to do so 'on his own', save for the use of the template. I do understand where you're coming from though, and I have looked at Latos. Very sexy and I hope this distance fog tech *someone* is working on, pays off.
As for the media file - I've always wondered how to access anything inside it. Perhaps I'll look into that.
Just to reiterate, the original post came out of the desire not really to create me own 'custom' textures, but more to have an added option of using 'High Resolution' textures.
Even with high detail set to the max, most of the textures appear somewhat blurry. Are there High Resolution textures that I'm just not aware of already in the game? I usually play at 800x600 screen resolution - does the quality of the 'details' improve with higher/lower resolution?
It also seems that I may have mentioned models (I would check, but I dare not read what I have written :P). If I did, I didn't mean to. As Incarnate has put it, his corporation owns all the assets. I was simply wondering about access to textures that have only a grey background and a wireframe to show where the edges of the model are. IMO, this doesn't interrupt the original content and whoever is making a new texture needs to do so 'on his own', save for the use of the template. I do understand where you're coming from though, and I have looked at Latos. Very sexy and I hope this distance fog tech *someone* is working on, pays off.
As for the media file - I've always wondered how to access anything inside it. Perhaps I'll look into that.
Myth: We could add more high-resolution textures. But honestly, if we did so, it would be for people with 512MB and 1GB videocards. 256MB cards require texture compression to be enabled as it is. Or, we would have to spend some time adding more advanced texture compression capabilities to the engine (something we're likely to do eventually, but not a huge priority right now).
Plus, adding more textures will increase the download size. Perhaps dramatically, depending on how many we changed. We added something like 26MB of textures just from modifying the "bone" asteroids.. those are kind of the worst-case in the game (they have object-space normal maps, etc), but it would probably add another 100-200MB for us to upscale everything else. And that makes the game less appealing to new trials. Which then gets into the whole "Separate texture pack" concept that is feasible but just.. really not a priority.
Additionally, I'm not sure if you just wanted to create textures that you would see, or that others would see. A lot of other people on this thread would like to create content that other people in the game would also see, which adds all a lot more complexity.
On another note, are you playing at the native resolution of your monitor? LCD panels have a "native" resolution, where everything is pixel-for-pixel with the panel and should be optimally crisp. Anything less than that resolution (like, often, 800x600) will be blurry. To try and help with this, we added support for the game to use the "desktop" resolution the very first time it is run (or if you choose to delete or rename the wgaf.cfg file).
I don't personally use an LCD monitor, I have still have 21" CRTs, but I play at 1280x960 and I think things are pretty crisp at that res. Some textures will always be blurry close-up, solving that is really an issue beyond pure texture resolution and into concepts like "detail textures", which are really more of an engine thing.
Plus, adding more textures will increase the download size. Perhaps dramatically, depending on how many we changed. We added something like 26MB of textures just from modifying the "bone" asteroids.. those are kind of the worst-case in the game (they have object-space normal maps, etc), but it would probably add another 100-200MB for us to upscale everything else. And that makes the game less appealing to new trials. Which then gets into the whole "Separate texture pack" concept that is feasible but just.. really not a priority.
Additionally, I'm not sure if you just wanted to create textures that you would see, or that others would see. A lot of other people on this thread would like to create content that other people in the game would also see, which adds all a lot more complexity.
On another note, are you playing at the native resolution of your monitor? LCD panels have a "native" resolution, where everything is pixel-for-pixel with the panel and should be optimally crisp. Anything less than that resolution (like, often, 800x600) will be blurry. To try and help with this, we added support for the game to use the "desktop" resolution the very first time it is run (or if you choose to delete or rename the wgaf.cfg file).
I don't personally use an LCD monitor, I have still have 21" CRTs, but I play at 1280x960 and I think things are pretty crisp at that res. Some textures will always be blurry close-up, solving that is really an issue beyond pure texture resolution and into concepts like "detail textures", which are really more of an engine thing.