/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.3367932]

SNES

Did the devs intend for me to be playing at 8:7 or 4:3?

[Anonymous No.3367935]

The game doesn't look like either of those pictures on my CRT.

[Anonymous No.3367939]

>>3367935
But it's stretched from 8:7 and fit to your 4:3 monitor

[Anonymous No.3367950]

Parts are supposed to be 4:3 and others 8:7.
You should compromise to 16:13

[Anonymous No.3367961]

>>3367939

Whatever the case is, it doesn't look like either of these. More like something in between. I guess that's what devs really intended.

[Anonymous No.3367991]

>>3367932

How the fuck would you even be playing it at 8:7? What 8:7 displays even existed? You'd have to do some kind of setup with a CRT minotor and force the display like that.

The input graphics are 8:7, and it's expected to be output to a CRT tv at 4:3. Because that's what a SNES does. If they didn't have perfect graphics, it's just an oversight. They either didn't notice or didn't care.

[Anonymous No.3368004]

>>3367991
So it's intended that circles are stretched into ovals?

[Anonymous No.3368007]

>>3368004

Yeah. You can fix that by making your graphics so that when stretched they make perfect circles. But that would add complication to the development process, and devs would have to a: care, and b: want to do the extra work. They likely just did what was easiest.

[Anonymous No.3368026]

>>3368007
So why not play it in 8:7 as the devs designed it?

>spend years on a game
>dont care

[Anonymous No.3368052]

I've been a big fan of this game my whole life and find your post very interesting OP. It could be that the devs developed it on some system that was 8:7 but weren't too phased when they saw their creation stretch the tiniest amount when played on a conventional CRT. I would like to know what the actual story was

[Anonymous No.3368053]

>>3368026

So you're telling me that developers designed games for displayed that did not exist? You're going to have to explain that logic to me.

[Anonymous No.3368057]

Probably depends on the dev. For systems with more extreme discrepancies between storage ratio and display ratio (like Capcom's arcade boards) they definitely took the stretching into account and designed things with the way they'd look an a 4:3 monitor in mind. Note how this sprite lineart was drawn on graph paper with rectangular cels.

[Anonymous No.3368108]

>>3368053
Then why didn't they design it 4:3 to begin with

[Anonymous No.3368120]

>>3368108
They. Did. The screen is always at 4:3. No matter how many pixels it's showing. Learn the difference between storage ratio and display ratio.

[Anonymous No.3368128]

>>3368120
So you're saying they designed it in the computer with non-square pixels in 4:3.

Then it was stored in a game cartridge at 8:7 making square pixels and perfect circles.

And then displayed back at 4:3 stretched.

[Anonymous No.3368141]

>>3368108
Every game console designers (or video chip designers for consoles using third party stuff) of the time designed their video chips without taking into account the aspect ration of the stored picture because they knew it would've been displayed on a 4:3 CRT anyway. Many arcade systems didn't output a 4:3 resolution, but still displayed stuff on a 4:3 monitor.

>>3368128
They designed the games so that it'll look like they wanted when displayed on a 4:3 display. Hardware designers never cared if the pixels were square or not, on a CRTs they can have any ratio wanted. The "pixels must be square" thingy only started with the arrival of matrix LCD displays.

[Anonymous No.3368142]

>>3368128
>Then it was stored in a game cartridge at 8:7 making square pixels and perfect circles.
They were stored in the game cartridge with no real specification as to aspect ratio. They're just individual points of data. It's at the point that you play it that it becomes a 4:3 screen on actual hardware or 8:7 on an emulator or whatever.

[Anonymous No.3368165]

Presumably you can just fiddle with the H. scale on your CRT until it looks how you like.

[Anonymous No.3368202]

>>3368165
Wait, so that mean's 4:3 crt can correctly display the game at 8:7 as the designers intended

8:7 master race

[Anonymous No.3368209]

>>3368202
Plenty of CRTs let you stretch the image.

[Anonymous No.3368218]

>>3368202
>as the designers intended
Except they didn't, like >>3368057 said, they designed stuff with how it would look like on a 4:3 monitor in mind. Square pixels != good ratio.

[Anonymous No.3368263]

The real answer is this. I've done my research and I can guarantee I am more informed than anyone else about what the devs intended. It's...

The way you think looks best

[Anonymous No.3368283]

>>3368128

>So you're saying they designed it in the computer with non-square pixels in 4:3.

Yes. 4:3 was the standard aspect ratio at the time.

>Then it was stored in a game cartridge at 8:7 making square pixels and perfect circles.

No.

[Anonymous No.3368294]

I found the answer.

8:7 is the true aspect.

3DS includes "Pixel Perfect" mode which turns on 8:7 in snes games.

[Anonymous No.3368296]

>>3368263
This!

[Anonymous No.3368301]

>>3368294
They probably added that to avoid the resized double pixel look.

[Anonymous No.3368305]

You can make it look like 8:7 or 4:3 using CRT geometry adjustments

there is no true aspect ratio for SNES

[Anonymous No.3368313]

i just fuck with aspect ratios in retroarch until i get perfectly square pixels unless its impossible on whatever system im emulating

[Anonymous No.3368347]

>>3368294
nah, they did that because the 3ds doesn't have enough pixels to do anything but 1:1

[Anonymous No.3368565]

NES

Did the devs intend for me to be playing at 16:15 or 4:3?

[Anonymous No.3368717]

>>3368294
pixel perfect is a technical term that describes a display mode where each pixel of the emulated system equals a pixel on the emulating system. It's an available mode in emulation because it provides maximum sharpness. Unfortunately, by design, such a mode can not handle when the aspect ratio of pixels changes. So, the only thing pixel perfect mode shows is that the internal resolution has an 8:7 aspect. In fact, the non-pixel perfect mode shows the intended aspect, as it sacrifices the 1-to-1 pixel mapping (which reduces sharpness) in order to provide correct aspect.

[Anonymous No.3368737]

8:7, obviously.

Looks like garbage stretched to 16:9. Looks fine stretched to 4:3. Looks perfect when kept at 8:7.

[Anonymous No.3368762]

Neither of those are correct. The SNES outputs pixel aspect ratio of 8:7 on a NTSC TV, which is not the same as the 8:7 display aspect ratio that you have shown in the OP image that has a 1:1 pixel aspect ratio. The overscan is cropped on most TVs so it fills the 4:3 frame.

http://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/Overscan

This article is mainly about the NES, but much of what's stated here applies to the SNES PPU as well. The given pixel clock results in exactly 8:7 PAR on a NTSC display.

[Anonymous No.3368765]

emulatorfags+autism = not a good combination

[Anonymous No.3368829]

>>3368762
that's quite useful info, thanks. I hope I can tweak my emulators accordingly.

[Anonymous No.3368835]

>>3368762
>>3368829
makes you wonder though wth Nintendo is doing with its 4:3 mode in >>3368294 . They should know better, shouldn't they? Or do they know something we don't?

[Anonymous No.3368840]

>>3368835

Read: >>3368717

3DS is still emulation. If you want to see how devs really intended the game to look, use a CRT and real hard.

And if for some autistic reason you don't like how your squares or circles look, twitch your TV's setting until you get the image you prefer the most.

[Anonymous No.3368858]

>>3368202
Good developers gave you a test image so you can calibrate your screen correctly.

[Anonymous No.3368864]

>>3367932
4:3 on a consumer CRT, you stupid faggot.

[Anonymous No.3368868]

>>3368840
>3DS is still emulation
we're talking aspect ratios

[Anonymous No.3368982]

>>3367932
You'll never know what was intended because

>you'll never have a full description of the working and testing hardware that was used
And you can't say but muh 4:3 consumer TV because it's pretty obvious that at least a couple games didn't compensate for the difference
>you will never be 100% sure that things are supposed to be a specific shape with some minor exception
>you will have to deal with games that have things that will look right and wrong at the same time with either AR

The solution is as per usual do whatever the fuck you want / what looks best to yuu, unless it's stretching to 16:9 / 21:9 then you're just being a fucking retard.

[Anonymous No.3368991]

>>3368982
>And you can't say but muh 4:3 consumer TV because it's pretty obvious that at least a couple games didn't compensate for the difference
And you also can't say muh 8:7 because some games obviously did compensate for the difference in AR like Chrono Trigger

[Anonymous No.3369002]

>>3368026
>years

Maybe some, sure, but a lot of games were pumped out much faster than that.

[Anonymous No.3369069]

>>3367932
You're a fucking retard. Ever seen an 8:7 tv?

[Anonymous No.3369175]

>>3367932
both look pretty good

[Anonymous No.3369198]

palfags are a different story tho

[Anonymous No.3369236]

>>3369069
CRTs have no trouble showing 8:7

[Anonymous No.3369257]

>>3368283
All relevant Japanese computers used 8:5.

[Anonymous No.3370836]

>>3368762
This guy gets it. PAR matters way more than output AR, especially in a CRT environment where overscan is nearly arbitrary.

[Anonymous No.3371086]

>>3368762
>>3370836
a PAR of 8:7 would be a third option, next to an AR of 8:7 and an AR of 4:3. The article suggests a PAR of 1:1 though

[Anonymous No.3371515]

>>3367932
Depends on game. Some were clearly designed with the 4:3 stretch in mind, and some where it doesn't really matter

I personally think Super Metroid looks better in 8:7, but thats me.

[Anonymous No.3371580]

>>3367935
>CRT
Found your problem.

[Anonymous No.3371743]

>>3371580

Did devs intended players to be using projector TVs?

[Anonymous No.3371746]

>>3367932
They intended for you to have fun.

[Anonymous No.3371776]

>>3367932
Oh, definitely 8:7. Super Nintendo devs at the time had no idea it would be played on consumer televisions.

[Anonymous No.3372132]

>>3371776
there are a bunch of posts in this thread making a case that the NES was actually showing square pixels on a 4:3 TV, involving some side margins and overscan. Depending on how much changed in the SNES, it may exhibit the same behavior, producing square pixels (and hence 8:7 output, cropped by overscan) on a 4:3 display.

[Anonymous No.3372194]

>>3372132
But the 4:3 isn't a cropped 8:7

You can see it in an emulator

[Anonymous No.3372209]

>>3372194
read >>3368762 and read it closely. Pay attention to internal resolution, lines dropped due to overscan, and "pixels" that are part of the output of the NES, but not part of the image (frame, if you will). I do not know if the SNES does the exact same thing or not, but for the NES I treat it as 8:7 and square pixels

[Anonymous No.3372257]

>>3372209
256x240 is 16:15

256x224 is 8:7

256x192 is 4:3


An NTSC TV is 256x224 scanlines. How is that 4:3?

[Anonymous No.3372260]

>>3372257
read the link, it is explained there exactly

[Anonymous No.3373114]

>>3372132
8:7 pixels are not exactly square. If they were 1:1 square pixels, the display aspect ratio would be 16:15.

The display aspect ratio when maintaining a 8:7 pixel aspect ratio depends on how much overscan you are cropping. For a 256x240 image the DAR ends up as 11:9.

[Anonymous No.3373168]

>>3371743
Not gonna lie, that's a nice setup.

[Anonymous No.3373416]

>>3373114
>8:7 pixels
nobody is talking about 8:7 pixels.

>If they were 1:1 square pixels, the display aspect ratio would be 16:15.
if they were square pixels the aspect ratio of the output would match the aspect ratio of the data, 8:7

>8:7 pixel aspect ratio
that's all in your head. Nobody makes that claim

[Anonymous No.3373509]

>>3371743
Ye olde crt projectors? Yes they had them in mind.

[Anonymous No.3373531]

>>3373416
>that's all in your head. Nobody makes that claim

http://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/Overscan

>The NTSC color subcarrier is at 39,375,000/11 Hz = 3.5795 MHz. The NES master clock is always 6 times the color subcarrier frequency because there are 12 hues on the NES PPU, and the color generator uses a double-pumped counter to generate the hue signal. So the PPU's pixel rate is 1/4 of the master clock, or 6/4 of the color subcarrier, or 39,375,000*6/4/11 = 5.3693 million pixels per second. (This pixel rate appears to have originated in the TMS9918 VDP used in the ColecoVision. The NTSC Sega Master System VDP and Super NES PPU use this same rate, as does the Sega Genesis VDP in the 256-pixel mode that several multiplatform titles used.)

>Multiplying the pixel rate by the scanline length gives 39,375,000*6/4/11*640/(135,000,000/11) = 280 pixels per scanline. The PPU puts signal in 256 of these and a border at the left and right sides. The color of this border is the same as the backdrop color (usually the value in $3F00). This makes the pixel aspect ratio on a 4:3 TV to be 240/280*4/3 = exactly 8:7, or about 1.143:1.

8:7 PAR is accurate. It's what higan displays be default.

[Anonymous No.3373537]

>>3373531
fuck me, I can't read. Thanks for the civil response and correction

[Anonymous No.3373605]

So, I tried to resolve that thing for me. Here's what I gathered.

The NES renders internally at 256x240, but about 16 of those lines are lost in overscan.

The remaining 256x224 have a storage aspect of about 8:7, but since the NES uses 8:7 pixel aspect, the image ends up at about 64:49, which is close to be not quite 4:3 (64:48).

The "difference" (it's a little bit too narrow) is filled up by the background color. There's no horizontal overscan area on the NES. Or better, the NES does fill more pixels of the image, but with the background color. The part of the image that contains tiles and sprites fits completely on the screen, horizontally.

Anything I missed so far? And going by that article it seems the SNES uses a similar NTSC video mode, so the same would apply there too?

[Anonymous No.3373607]

>>3373114
How do you get exactly 11:9 out of it? I end up with something like 128:105, which is close to 11:9, but a little bit off

[Anonymous No.3373616]

>>3369198
>pal

[Anonymous No.3373643]

>>3373531
any way I can tell higan to not just mask the overscan, but get it off-screen? The black bars are so wasteful

[Anonymous No.3376482]

is there anything in a 1:1 aspect ratio? Why not using the same amount of pixels horizontally as well as vertically? I always wondered that

[Anonymous No.3376485]

>>3376482
Sharp x68000 often has resolutions like 256x256 512x512 or 768x768.

[Anonymous No.3376493]

>>3376482
That's a good question. I never thought of it. The gameboy is close, but it's not, so why not?

Maybe it's because people notice more of their peripheral vision horizontally instead of vertically. That's why we have widescreens and not tallscreens (except for phones, but they're just easier to hold vertically.)

[Anonymous No.3376494]

>>3376485
Ain't those the best kind of resolution? Why do we have these wide screen nowadays? They shit. Why cant we have 1:1 hdtvs?

[Anonymous No.3376496]

>>3376493
A 1:1 monitor exists and you can turn a lot of others into portrait mode.
Bandai's Wonderswan was designed for horizontal and vertical modes. Nintendo's Game&Watch (and the non-retro DS) had two screens above each other.

[Anonymous No.3376498]

>>3376482
Because humans see more horizontally than vertically.

[Anonymous No.3376502]

>>3376496
Forgot to mention that there were a lot of arcade cabinets with vertical screens.

[Anonymous No.3376504]

>>3376498
Maybe chinks with their squinted eyes... but seriously I had an old lcd square monitor (nit sure if it was 1:1 tho. Probably not) and I could work way better on it than my new 20" wide led (I can see more shit vertically and most of the added horizontal space is wasted)

[Anonymous No.3376505]

>>3376504
>>3376504
Cant see any shit vertically*
I Hate using phones to type.

[Anonymous No.3376507]

>>3376494
Because cinema pushed for wide screen early on and television switched to 16:9 during the 90s and 2000s.
I'm not sure why they killed 4:3 or 5:4 computer monitors but I guess it was easier to use the same panels as TVs. Even 8:5 screens are rare and have a hefty markup over similar 16:9 screens outside of professional models.

[Anonymous No.3376515]

>>3376496
Interesting. That just looks "wrong" to me though.
Idk if I'm just used to 4:3 ratios or if rectangles are just more aesthetically pleasing than squares.

[Anonymous No.3376548]

>>3376515
4:3 is more fitting for human vision that 4:4.

[Anonymous No.3376593]

>>3376507
>Even 8:5 screens are rare and have a hefty markup over similar 16:9 screens outside of professional models.
16:10 monitor are marked up mostly because it's very hard to find one that isn't IPS / PLS.

[Anonymous No.3376619]

>>3376593
Compare them to IPS 16:9 monitors. E.g. Eizo EV2450 vs EV2455. You're paying over $100 more for 11% more pixels. You may as well get a 2560x1440 screen for the same money since that has even more pixels.

[Anonymous No.3376646]

>>3376619
>You're paying over $100 more
I don't see quite as high of a difference, between 50 - 80 bucks more which is more than I expected though, didn't quite expect finding a 24" PLS monitor for 150 bucks either.

[Anonymous No.3377348]

>>3367932
4:3

Anything you find that supports 8:7 is the odd overlooked exception. Devs saw 4:3 on their own monitors, developed for 4:3.

[Anonymous No.3377360]

>>3368202
8:7 on a CRT is letterboxed. That would not be a "correct" display.

A few SNES games are letterboxed on a 4:3 screen, but that has more to do with sprite limits.

[Anonymous No.3377364]

>>3372132
>there are a bunch of posts in this thread making a case that the NES was actually showing square pixels on a 4:3 TV, involving some side margins and overscan.

Those posts are wrong. Overscan and pixel clock don't affect this.

[Anonymous No.3377538]

>>3367932
I remember it playing with black bars on the sides on my old TV (russian Rubin-M), so I guess it was unstretched 8:7, and it was stretched to fit on Panasonic, which irritated me immensly at the time.

8:7 looks and feels best so take it for what you want.

[Anonymous No.3377904]

>>3377364
>pixel clock
Where in fuck did that come from? What does the pixel clock have to do with anything?

[Anonymous No.3377908]

The devs of what? Every game developer is free to compensate for, or ignore, the aspect ratio.