About

In 2015, Grim Fandango Remastered was released, helping to bring the 1998 classic to modern systems. It brought with it improved models, lighting, sound, controls, and more. However, the source to the original static backgrounds and animations were unfortunately lost and so remained in their original 640x480 16-bit form. This mod attempts to bring the quality of the backgrounds up to match the high fidelity of the rest of the remaster by upscaling them to 2560x1920 with 32-bit color.

Features

• Mods
  • Allows for the creation of asset mods that can swap out any file usually loaded from the game's .LAB datapacks.
• High-Quality Assets
  • Upgrades the renderer to support high-quality assets with any resolution and 32-bit color. Without this, assets are max 640x480 with dithered 16-bit color.
  • GrimHD uses a blend of AI (mainly LDSR) and programmatic techniques to upscale all image assets in the game 4x.
• Forced VSync
  • Previously, the remaster didn't use vsync while in-game and produced frames as fast as it could (sometimes causing coil whine).
• High-DPI Fix
  • On high-dpi systems with UI scaling above 100%, the remaster renders at a lower resolution and lets the system scale it up. This isn't that noticeable with 640x480 backgrounds but it stops high-quality assets from displaying at their full resolution. GrimMod forces the game to always render at the window's actual resolution.
• Quick Renderer Toggle
  • In the remaster, toggling the renderer between Original/Remastered is a smooth transition which makes changes less noticeable. GrimMod makes the toggle instant, highlighting the differences between the renderers.

Installation

1. Unpack GrimMod.zip and place glu32.dll in the root of the Grim Fandango Remastered directory where GrimFandango.exe is located.
2. Unpack GrimHD.zip and place the Mods folder in the root directory alongside glu32.dll.
3. Enjoy the trip!

Note: For GOG, when launching with the "Launch Grim Fandango Remastered" shortcut (like GOG Galaxy does), it's necessary to locate the shortcut in the game folder and set "Properties -> Compatibility -> Run this program as an administrator".

Note: For the Steam Deck, first set the game to run the Windows version by using Proton in the compatibility options.

Limitations

• Doesn't allow for upscaling videos, yet. This includes full cutscenes and scenes that use video as part of the background/foreground (however most animations are simply a series of images, which can be upscaled).
• Sometimes the GrimHD assets lose some fine detail and color accuracy when compared to the original but this will continue to be tweaked.
• Doesn't attempt to make the game 16:9. Any non-4:3 assets will still look stretched.
• A full playthrough with grimmod has been completed but as new software, bugs and crashes are to be expected. Save regularly (but autosave is a potential future feature!).

Changelog

Config

By creating a grimmod.toml file beside glu32.dll, some options can be tweaked:

Setting	Default	Effect
mods = true/false	true	Enable/disable the loading of mods
renderer.hq_assets = true/false	true	Enable/disable hooking the renderer to load modern image formats (PNG/VP9 MKV) from mods
renderer.quick_toggle = true/false	true	Enable for instant toggling between the Original/Remastered renderers, disable to restore the smooth transition
renderer.video_cutouts = true/false	true	Some scenes use videos, which are not yet upscalable with GrimMod, as the entire background image. This option allows GrimMod to manually carve out static chunks of the video, exposing the background underneath. As a somewhat hacky solution it has been given its own toggle if issues pop up.
display.vsync = true/false	true	Enable/disable forced VSync
display.hdpi_fix = true/false	true	GrimMod rewrites some of the window handling to always render at native resolution. Since the game's UI natively scales, this should only be a positive but it can be disabled if it causes issues.
logging.enabled = true/false	true	Enable/disable creation of and writing to grimmod.log with simple logging info, mostly for the purposes of a health check.
logging.debug = true/false	false	Enable/disable debug logging. This outputs a lot of information per frame, useless outside of debugging/development.

Thanks

Thank you to all the makers of all the mods and tools I have enjoyed for free over the years. I owe a great debt to the passion projects of others and I hope this mod can repay a small part of that debt :)

And thanks to everyone who worked on Grim Fandango and made it the masterpiece that it is.