MagicEngine

ccovell · Regular Joined: 19 Dec 2005 Posts: 100 Location: Japan

Hi, David. I know that putting a 512 horizontal resolution mode into ME is not a big priority, but how about 240-line mode as there should be?
Observe:

Screenshots on the left were taken from Magic Engine. (1.0 has the same problem.) Photos on the right are taken from a real PC-Engine system.

And now for my new game *plug plug* which uses 240-line mode in the puzzle to fit a 30x30 puzzle on-screen:

More info here: http://www.disgruntleddesigner.com/chrisc/TMLogic.html

As you can see, there are lots of games that have a higher resolution than MagicEngine displays. Sometimes is is just a minor problem (graphics get cut off); other times, gameplay is affected by the missing lines. Have you ever thought of correcting this?
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Keranu · Posted: Sun May 14, 2006 8:35 am Post subject:

Ouch, I didn't know how bad that was. I've never played Sidearms on a real system, so I had no idea it was missing that status bar!
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LaZer Dorks

dmichel · Admin Joined: 04 Apr 2002 Posts: 1166 Location: France

But... the 512 horizontal resolution mode is aldready implemented. Razz

About the 240-line mode, yes I could add an option for it - internaly ME does use this mode, but are you sure that all the TVs can display that many lines? I think the standard overscan mode is only about 224 lines on a NTSC TV, the max. overscan is 240 lines but only monitors (perhaps a few TVs too) can show that. Also not all the PCE games look better in 240, some show garbage in the upper/lower lines if you show all the 240 lines.
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David Michel

ccovell · Regular Joined: 19 Dec 2005 Posts: 100 Location: Japan

Oops, I checked ME1.0 about the 240-line function but not the hires function.

As for the 240-line mode, programmers have set their games to use 240 lines; why would you overrule them? A PC-Engine game can already set its screen size in increments of 8 pixels, so are you sure there are any games that set 240 line mode on, but put garbage in there?

As for the TV display size, well one can't predict anything... think of those 1940s tubes that had completely circular displays. At the very least, I think having an option to set how high the display can be would be a very useful thing, so please consider it. I have an el cheapo Panasonic TV, and it can display all 240 of the PCE's lines, and more.
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dmichel · Admin Joined: 04 Apr 2002 Posts: 1166 Location: France

No problem, I will probably add this option, but what I meant is that I don't think I can make it the default.

In the very first version of ME I was displaying 240 lines but as more and more games worked in the emulator I found out that many had garbage at the top or bottom of the screen so I cut the display area line by line until all the games show no garbage. I don't remember which games though, it was years ago.
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David Michel

ccovell · Regular Joined: 19 Dec 2005 Posts: 100 Location: Japan

That sounds good. But my last question actually was, did you set 240 lines for all games, or just the games that set it themselves? If a game sets 224 line mode, then of course there's not much sense in forcing it to 240. Autodetecting it should be an option too.

dmichel · Admin Joined: 04 Apr 2002 Posts: 1166 Location: France

Yes, I always used the resolution set by the game, but most of the games, specialy the oldest ones, always set the vertical resolution to 240 regardless that they use it all or not. I believe they all used some library code provided by NEC/Hudson to set up the VDC, if you disassemble the game and look at the VDC init code it's almost always the same.
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David Michel

Kaminari · Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2006 2:38 pm Post subject:

As for the missing status bar in Side-Arms, it's probably another case where the screen is vertically shifted in ME. The black empty space at the top of the display looks suspicious.

I'm eager to see how your use of the overscan is going to behave on a European RGB TV, but as I told you in PM earlier, I'm pretty certain the overscan border was not really meant to be visually exploitable in the first place. Maybe you could release a small ISO with just a simple 512x240 grid picture, so we can test this on a real system?

I'd hate to see you getting lots of complaints and refund requests from all over the world if it happens your game is unplayable on some TVs. Although I heard Leonard J. Crabs and his renowned Legal Barn have a solid reputation of resolving even the strongest cases :)
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ccovell · Regular Joined: 19 Dec 2005 Posts: 100 Location: Japan

No need for an ISO to test vertical resolution anyways -- just put in PC-Genjin 2/ Bonk's Revenge, start up the game and see if you can see coconuts or deep water from the starting point.

Oh, and check the comparison on my homepage to see the images lined up better.
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Kaminari · Posted: Fri Jul 21, 2006 3:10 pm Post subject:

My PC Genjin 2 HuCard is busted :(

Anyway, I tested Side Arms again. My TV is a ten-year-old Thomson flat screen, NTSC/PAL 60 Hz compatible. My console is a Japanese Duo-R with an RGB output.

Exactly as I remembered it, the bottom status bar is not visible at all, and the screen's vertical alignment is actually identical to ME (with a small black space over the top score). Which pretty much proves that the standard vertical res is 224, and the max overscan res is 240. The overscan area is not meant to be displayed (as David said, it's often used as a garbage zone), but in practice it might be more or less visible depending on the TV set used. Whether it's a regional difference or not, I can't tell.

Though I have to agree that, in the case of Side Arms, it's surprising that Irem would have used this reserved space for a status bar that some people might be unable to see. Maybe the whole overscan area is visible on Japanese/US NTSC screens, and is not on PAL 60 Hz screens? That sounds highly unlikely (if only because in many games, you would be able to see some garbage at the bottom of the screen).

I'll gave it a try this week-end on a friend's TV to confirm this (maybe with some pictures).
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nodtveidt · Posted: Sat Jul 22, 2006 11:16 am Post subject:

The status bar in Sidearms wasn't supposed to be seen when it wasn't active. On some TVs I've played the game on, it was displayed, and on other TVs, it wasn't.

The NTSC standard resolution is 640x480 (preferred format is 648x486). There's no reason a 240 line mode can't be displayed on a regular NTSC television if it was actually meant to be a 240 line mode.
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Retro gaming was never this cool.

ccovell · Regular Joined: 19 Dec 2005 Posts: 100 Location: Japan

The basic idea here is that on some TVs 240 lines can be seen, and on others, they can't. So an emu should give the user a choice whether to have the extra lines on or off. It should not be a contest over how many TVs do it this way, and how many don't.
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Kaminari · Posted: Sat Jul 22, 2006 4:48 pm Post subject:

Kaminari · Posted: Sat Jul 22, 2006 5:50 pm Post subject:

Out of curiosity, I'll hook up my composite CoreGrafx 2 and see what gives.
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Tomaitheous · Elder Joined: 27 Sep 2005 Posts: 306 Location: Tucson

I a good TV set will have about 3% overscan while an average set will fall some where between 5-8% range. My HDTV set has no overscan for composite/svideo/rf, while my interlaced 'walmart' brand TV is around 10%.

BTW, the pixel aspect ratio is incorrect for 'Full Screen' scretch mode. Will the new ME allow scretch mode with preserved pixel aspect ratio?
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