Is it me or are sprites on Dreamcast........

Now it would be cool if a HD TV maker added a scan line option for lower resolution stuff. It can't be hard can it? PC Emulators have been doing it for years. Yeah, it's not as good as the real thing but it sure beats the hell out of blocky shitty looking graphics.

Yakumo

 

My HDTV is a CRT and one of the few that supports all resolutions up to 1081i without upscaling it's not an advertised feature but the user manual talks about it.

 

That doesnt mean much, considering its still stretching the video.

 

Ok so I got my PS2 Garou and Last blade. I still can't make out Rock's Red Eyes but everything looks alot cleaner going though my PS2.

Melty Blood looks amazing.

 

480i is the exact same thing as 240p, the TV can't distinguish between the two. Standard definition is 480 lines, interlaced, period. Progressive just uses both fields for different frames instead of the same frame.

You can't have 240p and 480p AND have it interlaced, that doesn't make sense.

I highly doubt the DC ever used 256x240 since modern systems always have a 4:3 aspect ratio for "square pixels". 256x240 games must be overscanned to at least 320 horizontal pixels. If they're looking to simulate the 256x240 (NES) aspect, they'd probably use a 512x240 into 640x240 to get a cleaner interpolation.

640x240 is not twice as *wide* to a TV, TVs have no concept of pixels. A TV's horizontal resolution is only limited by it's shadow mask and bandwidth.

 

MAN TV stuff is confusing as hell. My head about exploded buying mine.

 

The TV can't b/c they're both 15khz signals. Whatever is outputting them can, and does. Why would so many people throw such a fit if "they were the exact same thing". They clearly aren't. 240p games in 480i is like drinking a glass of diarrhea. Pop in Sega Ages 2500 and flip between interlaced and non-interlaced modes (on a CRT) and then say they are the same.

I never said you could. The game(s) that support both 240p & VGA are just line-doubled when used w/ the VGA box. Read this. It even shows a picture of it in 240p. I've never tried it on the VGA box, but apparently Kiken at Shmups (amongst others) has. The game clearly detects the output after the "adjust your screen" image and adjusts accordingly.

Arcade games too, which is what we're talking about. If you want to know for sure, ask in gamengai forums. There are people there way more versed in DC tech than me.

 

I don't think so because there is a huge difference between the pitch of 480 lines in standard definition TV (525 line system) and 1080 lines in a high def TV (1125 line system). For it all to work on the same TV, the electron guns would need to paint multiple physical lines at a time for each low resolution line which AFAIK hasn't been done because it's not practical.

I wouldn't go that far, very few emulators are even remotely accurate, especially regarding rendering. When games are pixels off, I wouldn't sweat scanlines.

Authentic looking scanlines are possible though. Emulators now generally either scale the frame 2x and remove or darken every other line, that's really shitty since in real life scanlines are faint from light from the surrounding active lines spilling into darkness of the off line. In the future when CPU time is no concern, emulators can remove like 1 of 5 scanlines or something and scale to the appropriate aspect with a very high quality filter, that's not today though...

Well for one, scanlines aren't intended to be seen.

I don't think so *said like Macaulay Culkin*, it would be most logical for displays to support ONE physical resolution, the max resolution, with the rest availble through digital signal processing.

The *signals* are exactly the same, the *content* of the fields are not. People throw fits because they often don't understand how TVs work.
What you are describing is not a 240p game in 480i since that's an oxymoron, I think your issue with 480i is actually the fact that a 60hz game, will loose half it's frames when it's displayed through an interlaced signal with the same apparent picture quality as the vertical resolution is simply scaled 2x.

Of course; I don't get your point. You said SFIII supports "240p and VGA via a shitty interlaced picture". What people call VGA which is actually just a 480p video mode. What you mean is that 60hz 240 line and 480 line games look bad when you play them at 480 lines at 30hz. Well, no shit :lol:

Recent arcade games use 256? The reason why I'm skeptical is because rectangular pixels are sloppy and bitmaps which all modern games have would be stretched horizontally 20% when they're viewed on a 4:3 display. To compensate, they would have to rescale all bitmaps to the 256:240 aspect with loss (since it would be subpixel resampling) which would mean blurry bitmaps for absolutely no gain.

 

i just love TV talk. Electrics rule The beauty of raw techniques and hacks of old

 

Would it be virtually impossible to make a magival TV that will display any kind of game the best way possible? Seriously, that would be cool.

 

That's what HDTV sets set out to do... unfortunately they aren't computationally powerful enough to address every issue. In theory with a very high quality ADC, very fast DSP, very complex algorithms and a very nice screen you could have lossless SD video on a HD set (with delay of course...) You still won't have real 480i scanlines though as it's an analog property of the SD display. You will have 1080i scanlines though but you won't see them

 

Maybe in the future, but there will likely be zero demand for it. There's hardly any demand for a monitor that supports low/mid/high resolution (15khz/22khz/31khz) b/c the only people that really want them are arcade players. AFAIK, there are only a few items that come w/ a stock monitor that does this. Taito's EGRET2 cab, X68000 computer, etc.

From this I will just walk away. It's clear anything I say will be shot down with "no it's not". With the right hardware, there's plenty of stuff that's indiscernible from the original. The mental block comes when it's played on a computer. Most rereleases of anything are only emulated, and nobody seems to care. Such a double-standard.

Some emulators allow you to adjust the scanlines. Magic Engine, for one.

??? :shrug: :shrug: :shrug: ???

Please explain what the mode is of a game originally run on Cave's SH3 hardware (which runs at 352x240 I've just learned) on the PS2 in interlaced mode. Said game has no non-interlaced mode (crappy port). It's running in 480i. That is a 240p game running in 480i.

My issue w/ games running in 480i when they were designed for 240p is that they look like a gigantic log that just came out of my ass. Happens when you take something, line double it, and send half the info in every other frame. For polygons it's no biggie, but sprites it is. Do you have any of these games even?

I said Twinkle Star Sprites did, not SFIII. It supports 240p (as proven in the picture) and it supports VGA... as in the DC VGA BOX. I thought that was clear. Sorry if it wasn't. I would never run it through such a device though.

SH3 actually doesn't... it's the only one I'm familiar w/. 352x240 apparently.

This article is pretty good, althouh I can't speak for the results:
http://scanlines.hazard-city.de/
The problem w/ a lot of ports is not only that they're interlaced, but they are also filtered. Once again, buy a cheap Sega Ages 2500 game and play in the menus. You can go from a crisp, non-filtered 240p image to a filtered, interlaced blob of shit. Very interesting. The sad thing is many arcade ports (and shockingly enough, many original 2D games) have these settings hardcoded... and not set in the 'pretty' modes.

Should I point you to the post that stated "240p is only supported through RGB. Composite or S-Video will automatically interlace the picture"? No replies mysteriously when I posted a picture of S-Video outputting 240p.

 

I'm not arguing for the sake of arguing. Stuff that is indiscernible from the real thing is great for casual playing, but when it comes to using most popular emulators (e.g. MAME) for reliable system documentation they aren't sufficient. As I said, often times they aren't even pixel-perfect... I'm another one of those emulator authors so I'm definitely not biased against PC emulators; there's no question that they have far more potential than console ports for preserving the experience of arcade games.

Right but the scanline logic is fixed and probably one of the flawed methods I described. BTW Magic Engine doesn't even have the correct resolution or aspect ratio IIRC (it's been a while though...) don't think you entire lines missing and ovals that should be circles is more of a problem?

Scanlines are considered TV artifacts, their viewability varies from set to set; an "ideal" system + display doesn't have them because the display could actually sync to 240p which no TVs can. I understand that since scanlines are often a reality though, people want them preserved.

This is where you are not clear, it's not a 240p game anymore, it's a 240 line 60hz game output at 480i. The difference is that 240p is a physical specification while 240 line/60hz designates the video from the game's standpoint.

Just to clarify line doubling something doesn't affect picture quality other than filling in scanlines which makes the "blocky emulator look" people love to hate.

What you're describing is exactly what I said, it's dropping frames, exactly 50% of them. Have you or the people in your links examined the video being output, via capture card or something? That should tell you for certain which games are progressive/interlaced, their active resolution, their true resolution and thus their pixel aspect ratio. All things to be considered.

For the record, no I don't have any of the PS2 games you brought up.

I understand you're talking about the VGA box... I'm not trying to be an ass but you mentioned SFIII:TS too. I still don't understand what you meant by "which support both 240p and VGA via a shitty interlaced picture." The only video that will work on a VGA monitor is 480p so where does interlacing fit in?

It's a good introduction but it doesn't touch on the many other details in order to "play it right". The videoprocessor shit is definitely a turn off though... Would you believe me if I wrote an article on how monitors work, basic TV signals etc? (To try to clarify a lot of this discussion)

Well, as you know most people would rather look at 480i which has higher clarity and they don't realize they're loosing frames. Those people also like soft filters (interpolation) or even 2xSaI stuff + square pixels + 480 lines - scanlines = good.

Some original 2D 480i games must actually use 480 lines for something...

 

Just remember, it's obviously not the graphics that count, but the gameplay...:dance:

(Just kidding, I like reading stuff like this because then I understand the whole TV formats thing better. Also, I think both count)

(I just read Gaijans Lemon party title, hahahahahahahah)

 

This could be a form of region protection against European importers or protection against naughty arcade operators.

 

There is this guy I know who is a hopless sega fan boy also a supposed SNK fan. I was telling him how awesome KOF MI 2 was and he refuses to play it becuase it's 3d.

Yet he's always saying "I don't care about graphics I care about gameplay."

 

I forget the exact source of this information, but (possibly in a late pre-Dreamcast launch issue of the UK official Sega Saturn Magazine) there was a lengthy interview with Capcom staff detailing how the system can only handle sprites as polygons with a Z value of zero, plus "luxuries" such as lighting and various shading techniques disabled. Owing to this method of drawing 2D objects, it's possible the Dreamcast applies the same filters as it does when processing 3D (which may explain why certain sprites look blurred, presumably as the result of anti aliasing or texture compression). For their CPS2/3 conversions, I hear that Capcom was forced to resize all of its sprites from their native 320x224 - ironcally the same resolution as the Saturn outputted natively, hence the accuracy of many titles released for that system - to the Dreamcast's 640x480 display mode, causing minor problems with collision that ultimately led to some games being extensively reworked to fit their new host platform. Please forgive me if I'm completely off the mark with this one, but I could have sworn this was pretty much the basic information about how the Dreamcast processes in 2D as discussed by those who know about its capabilities... of at least I'd hope they should!

 

I actually play a lot of MAME through an Arcade VGA. Even the games that that have odd frequencies the AVGA doesn't support (old Atlus hardware for one...Guwange, ESPRade, etc.) still run very good. These are games that redefine the need for pixel perfection (as the hitbox is only a few pixels) and I've done some of my best runs through their emulated forms. I'd make even the most hardcore player take the Pepsi challenge with CPS2/Neo Geo emulation through an AVGA on a proper RGB display w/ a good arcade stick. I'm also very biased towards MAME as it's track record is far better than just about every classic 'port' that's made it's way to the latest generations of console. I do not accept MAME drivers full stop though. There's a tournament going on at shmups and in a few weeks, we will very likely be competing in a game that I think frankly sucks in MAME. So, I'll have to go to my local arcade at night after the little shit factory goes to sleep.

Version .99 will support the AVGA, which in turn supports 256x240. The original resolution is 256x224 so there are 8 blank lines on top, and 8 on bottom. Considering the alternative to play this fantastic system in RGB is a hardware mod (out of my hands) it's a very acceptable alternative. The problem is that .99 still has some emulation issues that are fixed in 1.0. I've been waiting for the latest patch of 1.0 to support the AVGA again for about 20 months now. "It's just a matter of time" I was told.

But they are considered when the developers make the games, obviously.

It can never stop being a 240p game. That's how it was made, that's the display in mind when the pixels were drawn (by hand, in many cases). 480i breaks it. This is painfully clear when you have a nice monitor. If you're playing your games in glorious S-Video (even through a CRT) then you probably won't be too bothered. By your definition, something like ESPGaluda (240p in tate mode, 480i in yoko) would be two games. The Sega Ages 2500 series would be three (480p, 480i, 240p). Still doesn't change the fact that the sprites were drawn w/ one mode in mind.

The interlacing adds a nice (read: ugly) shimmering effect (amongst other things) depending what's on screen. Mushihime-sama is a big offender here w/ it's light, pastel backgrounds. Something w/ a space background will be a lot easier on the eyes. But even w/ that set aside, the "blocky emulator look" should be enough to want better, no?

It's easy to tell which games are progressive and which are interlaced.

I said supposedly, or reportedly (according to that thread) or something. I've never owned an SF game that wasn't to be resold. I'm not a 2D fighter guy. But what I mean by 240p & VGA via interlaced is that generally the only 2D games that will work on the VGA box are those that are already interlaced, and do not support 240p. Those would be Mars Matrix, Gigawing, etc. Games that support 240p only will not work through the VGA box (Gunbird 2, Bangaioh). TSS is a special case, as it will work through both. The game obviously has code to interlace the picture (the very first screen is interlaced, regardless of your display hardware) then I can only assume it autodetects the output. That was what I meant.

I totally agree. I would much rather drop hundreds or even $1000+ on the original hardware if it wasn't emulated well. Even if you can deinterlace the port w/o any lag, you've still got filtering to deal with. In the case of a lot of the games, you have port issues as well.

I would agree w/ the facts, but it seems you think a port which interlaces an otherwise fine progressive signal is okay. Kind of scary to hear from an emulation author if I can be frank. Emulation is for preservation first, no?

I will agree that most people don't realize, and I will also agree that it can offer more clarity. When it wasn't the designers original intention though, it will look like a turd. The opposite of 'more clarity' in fact. I wouldn't say people would "rather" see a 480i image outright. The unfortunate fact is most people don't have two monitors for (console) games. Most are going towards HDTV and the console interlacing the image softens the blow (as stated earlier). It's kind an unfortunate reality of going HD. Those of us that are hardcore enough will hold on to our old boxes until the bitter end though. I know I will.

There are plenty. And there's nothing wrong w/ them. The sprites were drawn w/ 480 lines in mind. Did you check out this thread?
http://www.gamengai.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1184&highlight=PS2

It's very good. I talks about which PS2 2D games are broken, which aren't, and which are mixed. Look at this image: High res backgrounds, and low-res designed sprites. Beautiful, right? Blech.

I probably wouldn't blame him. SNK and 3D mix about as well as a bunch dicks in the shower. Did you see the 3D Metal Slug?

 

I remember that there are a few graphical glitches in the Dreamcast 3rd strike that appeared to be interlacing issues at least that what it seems to be now that I read about it.

But yeah KOF MI 2 is an awesome game. Probably SNK's best Effort in 3d outside of Shodown 64.

The 3d Metal Slug is well......3d metal slug that shouldn't even be allowed to exist and we should also act like it never did.

 

There are a host of issues with some (most?) of the Capcom 2D fighters on the DC. As someone that just doesn't play the genre, I'm probably the last person to ask. I know that the For Matching Service games all have interlaced displays. A few of their other games support 240p, but I'm pretty sure most do not. There's even one (and I don't remember what it is) where the hit detection is completely ass-fucked. It is most likely due to the CPS2's goofy ass elongated pixels being ported onto a machine that probably has square pixels. My extent of my knowledge of the CPS2's display issues is the trouble Cave had with Progear no Arashi. Their first and only CPS2 game, and their first (and only) horizontal shooting game.