MagicEngine

Jabberwok

Ahem. While tweaking Gens, I noticed something of interest. Gens normal (1x) renderer is 320x240 while it's double renderer (2x) is 640x480 (of course Wink

). I noticed that using Gens in 'double' fullscreen stretch the screen is antialiased (hardware filtering). BUT while using 'normal' with fullscreen stretch the screen is not. So I decided to try a "normal renderer" on Magic Engine... opened up the PCE.INI file, switched the fullscreen resolution to 320x240 **hold breath here Shocked

**... it allmost worked, the filter is gone, so is the fullscreen stretch Crying or Very sad

. So it CAN be done though Cool

...

So David, can fullscreen stretch be added to 320x240 easily? my question should be : would this interest somebody besides me?
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If you translate Pole Position in French with babelfish you get 'Position de Polonais'... I think it's hilarious... from a French point of view.

Kaminari · Posted: Thu Sep 19, 2002 10:56 pm Post subject:

You may have overlooked the fact that most of the Megadrive games are natively made for 320x240. Logically, the display area has no need to be stretched in 1x zoom since it's already fullscreen. You'll also find that MD games using 256x224 won't be stretched fullscreen in 1x zoom (normal size).

Same thing for Magic Engine. To be stretched fullscreen, the resolution needs at least a 2x zoom. For one pixel displayed, at least one pixel must be available for interpolation. That's how I understand the mechanism anyway Wink

Jabberwok · Posted: Fri Sep 20, 2002 12:37 am Post subject:

Humm.... I didn't know much about the Megadrive, I just thought nVidia cards used interpolation in windows resolutions only ( 640x480 & up )... But, could the fullscreen stretch still be applied to 340x240 since it's considered a dos resolution?

Eh, I should've kept my old Voodoo3 then Crying or Very sad

... Oh well Wink

.
_________________
If you translate Pole Position in French with babelfish you get 'Position de Polonais'... I think it's hilarious... from a French point of view.

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

Kaminari

Jabberwok, I think you have taken the problem the wrong way Wink

Gens is hardcoded in 640x480. When you toggle from 'double' to 'normal', you don't make the emulator switch in 320x240. What's actually involved here is the zoom factor, not the resolution. Gens stays in 640x480 but the zoom simply switches from 2x to 1x. That's why the game is stretched in fullscreen while the filtering is deactivated.

You can do the same in ME. As David said, just keep with 640x480 for the three screen resolutions. Just change your ini like this:

[...]

;
; fullscreen stretch
; --
; y -> enable
; n -> disable [default]
;

fullscreen=y

;
; fullscreen stretch mode
; --
; 0 -> always
; 1 -> only for 1x1 display size
; 2 -> only for 2x2 display size [default]
;

fullscreen_mode=0

;
; bilinear filtering
; --
; y -> enable
; n -> disable [default]
;
; (this option doesn't work with all the video card)
;

filtering=n

;
; display size
; --
: select display size at startup
;
; 0 -> 1x1 zoom
; 1 -> 2x2 zoom [default]
;

size=0

;
; display zoom
; --
; 0 -> software [default]
; 1 -> hardware
;

zoom=1

[...]

Actually the bilinear filtering can be left activated, since it will only work with the zoom factor set on 2x. As for the display zoom, it doesn't matter whether it's hardware or software (on my system anyway).

Give it a try Smile

Jabberwok · Posted: Sat Sep 21, 2002 1:52 am Post subject:

Unfortunately guys, I had most of these these settings already. The only different one was display zoom which was set on software. Changed it, exactly the same thing. However, changing the display zoom to hardware gave me fullscreen in 320x240 Smile

hehe, the only problem is it's not as sharp as tv mode with no scanlines Sad

... The edges look kinda funny, almost sharp but not quite. Some lines near moving objects look almost transparent. Bah, that's better than nothing I guess.

Looks like hardware zoom is for me. Software zoom doesn't work for me with all the resolutions...

Maybe the new nVidia gpu's are '2D impaired'? I got a GeForce 4 ti 4200. 3D is out of this world, but 2D lacks obviously...
_________________
If you translate Pole Position in French with babelfish you get 'Position de Polonais'... I think it's hilarious... from a French point of view.

Kaminari · Posted: Sat Sep 21, 2002 2:39 am Post subject:

Well, that's the drawback of 1x screens stretched in fullscreen. No interpolation, no filtering possible. Since the stretching ratio is not 2:1 but rather 2.5:1 (640:256 instead of 640:320), you will inevitably notice a substantial loss of detail and a kind of jiggling during the scrolling operations. It's even worse for the vertical resolution.

About the software zoom... I've got a GF2 Ti and I don't experience this problem at all. I believe the nVidia cards feature excellent performances both in 3D and 2D, but as always there may be variations from one model to another. Which Detonator version do you have? I would advise against installing the latest 40.41 beta drivers, since they have serious bugs for the time being. I'm using the 30.82 ones without any problem.

Don't expect however to get better results with software zoom Confused

Jabberwok · Posted: Sat Sep 21, 2002 2:54 am Post subject:

30.82 here also. I even turned off antilaliasing completely ( was at default auto ) saying to myself " what if?" Razz

but this didn't work.