Joined: 11/4/2007
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1 and 3 look basically the same. I also reckon they look better and far more natural for the image projected on the TV screen.
The stretching on 2 looks awful.
The second one looks horribly squashed. The first one looks alright, I can't decide whether I prefer it over #3 though. I'd need to see a gameplay video or something.
Joined: 3/9/2004
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Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
And how are these compared to the previous 3?
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
As I said, use the original game's aspect ratio, whatever it happens to be. If the game has SGB-specific design, then use the aspect ratio it was designed for.
This whole argument is still about what's technically the proper way to encode it, which is clearly 4:3, vs. what's the way to provide the most enjoyable result, which people seem to agree isn't 4:3. Why anybody would argue for doing something the right way over the way that most people would enjoy is beyond me. I guess this is just the way bureaucracy works. In that case it would probably be best to offer bribes, disguised as completely unrelated donations, in exchange for encodes that aren't 4:3 then. >__>
I find this argument really irritating. Deciding against what people want because it objectively seems to be the right thing to do...
Joined: 3/9/2004
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Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
Why is it clearly 4:3?
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
...Again, people are ignoring something very important: SGB is faster than GB. Either VBA improperly emulates SGB to the point that it shouldn't be called SGB, or times recorded on the Game Boy mode are automatically larger than SGB ones, making the records incompatible, which from my understanding is a problem (See Shadow of the Ninja; running the game in the wrong mode made it go faster). Therefore, we need to decide if SGB should still be supported before we decide to change anything about encoding its runs.
Joined: 3/9/2004
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If you want to get into timing, each flavor of SGB has different timing, which one would you go with?
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
More screenshots to get a point across. Select the best set.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
This whole argument is still about what's technically the proper way to encode it, which is clearly 4:3
Why is it clearly 4:3?
A real SGB upscales the image to 4:3, so the technically proper way to encode SGB runs from just looking at the facts would clearly be 4:3 imo (imo referring to "clearly"). The only reason it shouldn't be done is because people watching the videos would prefer the the undistorted version.
I personally vote for leaving the art, which is optimized for the GB in almost all cases, to be left undistorted.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
Kuwaga wrote:
A real SGB upscales the image to 4:3
No, it doesn't.
If you're seeing your SGB at 4:3, it's because that's what your television is doing.
Kuwaga wrote:
The only reason it shouldn't be done is because people watching the videos would prefer the the undistorted version.
Which undistorted version? The SGB or DMG one?
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
If you're seeing your SGB at 4:3, it's because that's what your television is doing.
Oh, then I must have misinterpreted some of the posts in here. In that case it isn't so clear what the technically proper way to encode it is. I thought the TV received an image that's already in 4:3.
Nach wrote:
Which undistorted version? The SGB or DMG one?
The undistorted version of the original pixel art that can be seen on an actual GB. That's what I've voted for and afaik that's what most people would like to see. As moozooh has already pointed out, artists for SNES games can expect their art to be upscaled to a 4:3, so it's designed with that in mind, but artists for GB games design it pixel per pixel, exactly as it will look on a real Game Boy. So there's a clear difference and 4:3 for all games will certainly make at least look some like total crap in some people's eyes.
It might be that there exists some game where the art has actually been optimised with the SGB in mind, but I doubt it. Even in that case though, they still have to had cared to make it look good on a real GB also (people are generally expected to own GBs rather than SGBs only, just to point out the obvious). That isn't the case the other way round at all, so I voted for option 2. I think deciding this case by case is unnecessary, though I don't feel too strongly about this aspect of the decision.
Joined: 3/9/2004
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Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
Kuwaga wrote:
Nach wrote:
Which undistorted version? The SGB or DMG one?
The undistorted version of the original pixel art that can be seen on an actual GB.
The aspect ratio for SGB picture which best preserves the inner picture's aspect ratio closest to a DMG in fact is not a DMG aspect ratio. The one closest is the native SGB aspect ratio output.
You can verify that with a pixel ruler.
Kuwaga wrote:
That's what I've voted for and afaik that's what most people would like to see. As moozooh has already pointed out, artists for SNES games can expect their art to be upscaled to a 4:3, so it's designed with that in mind, but artists for GB games design it pixel per pixel, exactly as it will look on a real GameBoy. So there's a clear difference and 4:3 for all games will certainly make at least look some like total crap in some people's eyes.
It might be that there exists some game where the art has actually been optimised with the SGB in mind, but I doubt it. Even in that case though, they still have to had cared to make it look good on a real GB also (people are generally expected to own GBs rather than SGBs only, just to point out the obvious). That isn't the case the other way round at all, so I voted for option 2. I think deciding this case by case is unnecessary, though I don't feel too strongly about this aspect of the decision.
So of my pictures above, which column do you prefer?
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
On a purely subjective basis I prefer column 1 or 3. While I don't notice too much difference between them, to me column 1 looks slightly better.
Also, I'd now like to point out that I have interpreted "I want Gameboy aspect ratio" to refer to the inner, borderless image. I've just noticed the caption text to that option may be worded a bit ambiguously.
Joined: 3/9/2004
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Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
Kuwaga wrote:
On a purely subjective basis I prefer column 1 or 3. While I don't notice too much difference between them, to me column 1 looks slightly better.
1 is native SGB aspect, 3 is native DMG aspect.
Kuwaga wrote:
Also, I'd now like to point out that I have interpreted "I want Gameboy aspect ratio" to refer to the inner, borderless image. I've just noticed caption to that option may be worded a bit ambiguously.
Perhaps, many did, but that wasn't the option.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
...Again, people are ignoring something very important: SGB is faster than GB. Either VBA improperly emulates SGB to the point that it shouldn't be called SGB, or times recorded on the Game Boy mode are automatically larger than SGB ones, making the records incompatible, which from my understanding is a problem (See Shadow of the Ninja; running the game in the wrong mode made it go faster). Therefore, we need to decide if SGB should still be supported before we decide to change anything about encoding its runs.
If you want to get into timing, each flavor of SGB has different timing, which one would you go with?
If you're seeing your SGB at 4:3, it's because that's what your television is doing.
Oh, then I must have misinterpreted some of the posts in here. In that case it isn't so clear what the technically proper way to encode it is. I thought the TV received an image that's already in 4:3.
No. The TV receives an image that has 224..240 scanlines and N nanoseconds of analog image data on each scanline (in which 256 pixels are presented). It usually tries to fit that optimally to its display area, making it appear at 4/3 aspect ratio, but especially older TVs often did a bad job at that: Any of the four edges could be either clipped by the tv's edges or be augmented with an extra black border. It was not a very accurate business.
I'm sorry for not having taken the time to read the messages in this thread and the poll options more carefully. It made my posts be based on wrong presumptions. Thanks @Bisqwit for explaining, I didn't know it worked like that.
In any case, I'd like to have the inner image to have the same aspect ratio as the presented image on a Gameboy screen, which I assume consists of perfectly square pixels, my preferred zoom factors are whole numbers and I'll now leave this thread before I'm spouting more nonsense. ^^
Joined: 6/25/2007
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Kuwaga, you're among the rest of us who interpreted "I want Gameboy aspect ratio as the default" as discussing the pixel aspect ratio. I picked it because I like the exact configuration of 160×144 with a 1:1 pixel aspect ratio, which is the "Gameboy aspect ratio".