HD Graphics
One of the most significant improvements brought to the Our Hero! trilogy through mkxp-z is the overall visual upgrade, from better rendering to how everything is drawn and managed on screen. Texture handling has been greatly improved, with support for more advanced scaling and fewer visual artifacts. Image filtering is also cleaner, resulting in sharper, less “dirty” pixels. All of this is paired with a higher resolution that maintains correct proportions and native widescreen support.
These improvements collectively convinced me to take things one step further: redrawing every sprite from scratch and redoing all animations.
New Sprites
The sprites across all three games were, admittedly, showing their age. I drew them years ago, when my technical skills were limited and the tools available today simply didn’t exist, or weren’t accessible to me. All the original sprites started on paper and were then digitized through scanning.
Today, I draw entirely in digital. I use a Samsung tablet to draw directly on screen, with Krita as my main drawing software. Krita is particularly powerful when it comes to animation management, which is the natural next step for getting sprites that move well in-game. Since Krita is also cross-platform, I can easily open files later for touch-ups on PC, where I work with an XP-Pen graphics tablet.
I’m not a pixel artist, all the new sprites are drawn at 4K and then scaled down to fit RPG Maker’s requirements. I wouldn’t call myself an expert artist either, but I’m genuinely happy with the results, and I think they’re a clear step up from the originals.
Alongside the new sprites, a number of other smaller improvements were made, listed below.
Attack Pose and Swords
The original attack pose, besides looking a bit rough, was only drawn in two directions. On top of that, due to RPG Maker’s limitations and my technical constraints at the time, every attack pose was redrawn for each individual sword in the game. That meant: 18 different swords = 18 different hero attack poses, one for each weapon!
In the new version, thanks to a simple script, there is now a single attack pose in four directions, with the equipped sword’s sprite drawn on top of it dynamically. Much cleaner. All sword sprites have also been fully redrawn from scratch.
Character Shadows
All characters now have a shadow drawn beneath them. Again, this is handled by a straightforward script: it checks the spritesheet dimensions, and if they match the standard size used by all in-game characters, it renders a shadow sprite underneath. Nothing groundbreaking, but it adds a noticeable sense of depth to every scene.
HUD
The HUDs have been redesigned to feel more modern and minimal. I’ll be honest: I drew heavy inspiration from the HUDs in the latest Zelda titles, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. I find those interfaces simple, clean, and remarkably effective. So: semi-transparent dark background, clean iconography, and as much on-screen information as possible without cluttering the view.
One thing I’m still undecided on: should I keep the same HUD design across all three games, or create something distinct for each one? Consistency has its value, but a player might also expect a new game to bring a fresh interface. I genuinely don’t know, let me know what you think in the comments!
Lighting and Shadow Effects
Whether it’s light streaming through a window or shadows cast by forest canopies, I decided that, thanks to mkxp-z’s performance improvements, lighting effects should be applied wherever they made sense, to bring more dynamism and visual richness to the game’s maps. The effort involved is relatively modest, but the final result adds a lot of atmosphere and polish.
Sharper Text
As mentioned, mkxp-z significantly improves rendering and texture management. This automatically carries over to in-game text as well, which now appears noticeably cleaner and crisper.
New Illustrations and Logo
The logo and illustrations for all three games have been completely redone by Satsume , and the results are honestly stunning, Our Hero! finally looks like something you’d be proud to discover on Steam.
And with that, we’ve covered all the graphical improvements coming to this new edition of the trilogy. (Who knows, maybe one day I’ll even redo all the tilesets!)
Is there anything else in the games you’d like to see improved? Let me know in the comments!