/vr/ - Retro Games

Hi guys, I'm a game developer and CRT enthusiast and I'm just going to throw in a few opinions.

1. Pixelart is drawn with the expectation that it will be blurred not just by a CRT, but by THE HUMAN BRAIN. That's right! When you don't look directly at dither patterns, a funny thing happens with them. They blend!

2. I play all the games I emulate at the system's native resolution, bit depth, and aspect ratio, on an LCD with 2x nearest-neighbor -> linear filtering...Why? Because I want to see the pixelart work done by the devs. Same reason I use mdr-v6 headphones and not Beats. I don't want to obscure the original work just to make it feel like it's better. Also, any devs with good artistic intentions would notice the fact that 4:3 is stretched and compensate for it. The ones that didn't...well that's just how their games are going to look. A lot of the time it was hardware limitations, so having some things compensated and other things not was just a matter of working with square graphics and collisions.

3. If you don't know at least a decent amount about image filters and signal processing, don't even fucking talk about CRT filters. They don't add "noise" to the image. They don't lose or gain any information, they just alter the way that information is presented. Also, most of them fucking alter the color/gamma of the original image, which automatically makes them look worse on an accurate monitor. Don't change your filter, calibrate your screen!

4. Scanlines are a preference. They are very subtle on consumer screens and much more pronounced on professional screens. You can't even see them from a decent distance, even, so they don't matter that much. Just take a few steps back once in a while.