GP2X Screen Resolutions

[kablammyman]

What resolutions are supported for games? Is 320x240 my only option? Many of my games are tile based 640x480, and it would sux to have to resize SOOOO many files just to port some games.

thanx.

 

[GP2X_Coder]

What resolutions are supported for games? Is 320x240 my only option? Many of my games are tile based 640x480, and it would sux to have to resize SOOOO many files just to port some games.

thanx.

Just use paeryn Hardware SDL Lib and request a surface resolution of 640x480 and it will automatically scale it down to 320x240 for you. That way you don't have to do any resizing yourself.

 

[Dzz]

What resolutions are supported for games? Is 320x240 my only option? Many of my games are tile based 640x480, and it would sux to have to resize SOOOO many files just to port some games.

thanx.

320x240 is the only resolution that works well at all. It is possible to use 640x480 and let the hardware shrink the stuff, but IMO every game that tries this just to make porting stuff easier turns out to be a dismal failure.

 

[Vynx]

What Dzz Said ^^

Having the game auto-scale down from a higher resolution just puts more of a strain on system resources, and slows things down. Unless the game is fairly simple, it's probably not a good idea. I supose it could be done post processing, but who'd want those kind of loading times?

 

[Parkydr]

I haven't found a problem with performance, the main problem is it looks crap, especially text

 

[Vynx]

Well it's just standard pixel resizing isn't it? Nothing like bilinear or other smoother resizing methods (which would probably slow it down anyway)

 

[Godmil]

it would sux to have to resize SOOOO many files just to port some games.

Resizing images shouldn't be a pain, Paint shop pro and I'm sure Photoshop etc should have batch processing options so you can rescale them all in one go. If you cant find out how to do that, just send the files my way and I'll do it for you.

 

[sparr]

exact 2:1 scaling can be done very quickly. bilinear is overkill when you eliminate 99.9% of cases and leave only the easiest one.

 

[Radek]

exact 2:1 scaling can be done very quickly. bilinear is overkill when you eliminate 99.9% of cases and leave only the easiest one.

Even better - there some tricks what can get you close to 4x4 quality using only 4 subsamples.

 

[IanJ]

A trick I plan to implement for ArcEm is to have the 2nd CPU running scaler code. It's then working as a video processor, taking my huge virtual emulated screen and constantly copying and scaling it down to 320x240 for display. Could use smoothed bresenham, bilinear, bicubic, whatever.

Also, the GP2X core *CAN* do smooth scaling, just not on the RGB plane. I've looked at using the YUV planes and even the overlay zones to get better results.

 

[rixed]

Where did you see that the GP2X can do smooth scaling ?
The only scalling Ive seen in YUV screen was not smooth at all, but maybe I missed something...

 

[DaveC]

What resolutions are supported for games? Is 320x240 my only option? Many of my games are tile based 640x480, and it would sux to have to resize SOOOO many files just to port some games.

thanx.

Unfortunately it looks like shit scaled down (or up for that matter) , butt uuuugleee. There really is no good way except have PS do it once and then export to a smaller res file. You could then have some artist here clean up the tiles to make nicer.

 

[Radek]

What resolutions are supported for games? Is 320x240 my only option? Many of my games are tile based 640x480, and it would sux to have to resize SOOOO many files just to port some games.

thanx.

Unfortunately it looks like shit scaled down (or up for that matter) , butt uuuugleee. There really is no good way except have PS do it once and then export to a smaller res file. You could then have some artist here clean up the tiles to make nicer.

Downscaling at even ratios (2x2) isn't bad. At can be done very quickly even on just a CPU. You can do that way a subpixel scrolling for an example (and not I'm talking here about some LCD tricks).

The Amiga can do subpixel horizontal scrolling.

When the ratios are of whole numbers (2,3,4,5...) then scaling down can be considered as supersampling. And a supersampling isn't a bad thing - it's actually a very good thing actually. It reduces a "shimmering" as it's reducing an aliasing.

The uneven ratios are bad thought. They will introduce a distortion what can be fought using blur filtering. So contrast will have go down at gain of less "shimmering".

DaveC - didn't we have such discussion before? :rolleyes:

 

[nubie]

Unfortunately it looks like shit scaled down (or up for that matter) , butt uuuugleee. There really is no good way except have PS do it once and then export to a smaller res file. You could then have some artist here clean up the tiles to make nicer.

Then explain how my Divx of FF Advent Children looks better at full-res than at the actual screen res, sharper and better, seemingly "high-res", and it is not the Divx fault either, I made it about half the size of the original Divx and it is only displaying 1/4 the pixels.

The supersampling does indeed work, I don't know why, but it does, try it yourself.

Encode some DVD trailers into Divx at the same physical size but one at standard res and another at the GP2X res and have a close look.