Snes9X4D4P - Help Me Beta Test

[WizardStan]

Now if you filled the screen entirely you get this odd fractional like 3.25:1 or something. Since you can't light a fraction of a pixel you have to add an extra pixel every so often so now they are not even sizes. The "remainder" pixels are just added in at regular intervals. When you scroll you will see these as odd lines rippling through the screen. Some may be 4 Pandora pixels while some 6. For example 256 doesn't go into the full 800 evenly. 256 does go into 768 evenly though.

Or you could add a filter, as there should be

 

[EvilDragon]

Yeah, using Scale2x together with fullscreen scaling (keeping aspect ratio, of course) might look pretty nice.
On the PC, I didn't like Scale2x - looked weird.

But seeing gpfce with Scale2x on a small display like the Pandora has... it actually makes it look good

 

[DaveC]

Now if you filled the screen entirely you get this odd fractional like 3.25:1 or something. Since you can't light a fraction of a pixel you have to add an extra pixel every so often so now they are not even sizes. The "remainder" pixels are just added in at regular intervals. When you scroll you will see these as odd lines rippling through the screen. Some may be 4 Pandora pixels while some 6. For example 256 doesn't go into the full 800 evenly. 256 does go into 768 evenly though.

Or you could add a filter, as there should be

And make it all blurry?

No thanks. I hate bilinear filters, it just blends things together into a fuzzy image that reduces contrast and detail.

 

[WizardStan]

And make it all blurry?

You mean a (more less) entirely faithful rendering of how it would have looked on a television?

 

[MDave]

Bilinear filtering a 2x image instead of stretching a bilinear 1x image should help keep the pixels more colour accurate, square and avoids the shimmering scrolling background effect.

On aspect ratio: Many, if not all SNES games didn't create art with screen ratio in mind. For example, the bricks and other objects in Super Mario World were not square on a 4:3 TV ratio, and when Mario runs on those pink triangles to run up walls, his sprite looks stretched. Many of the multi platform games that were on both SNES and Megadrive, like Mortal Kombat and Earthworm Jim, didn't adjust their art for the SNES resolution. The characters in those games look noticeably fatter on the SNES in comparison. The only game I can think of where the funky resolution and aspect ratio was taken into account, is F-Zero, the ship sprites seem to rotate in proportion better then a 1:1 ratio.

 

[Tom`]

And make it all blurry?

You mean a (more less) entirely faithful rendering of how it would have looked on a television?

Like this, maybe?

 

[DaveC]

Bilinear filtering a 2x image instead of stretching a bilinear 1x image should help keep the pixels more colour accurate, square and avoids the shimmering scrolling background effect.

You won't get ripple if the scaling is integer. You only get ripple when you stretch fractional and have uneven pixels.

And make it all blurry?

You mean a (more less) entirely faithful rendering of how it would have looked on a television?

Bilinear does not look like a television it looks like a blurred out LCD.

TVs were sharp from scan-line to scan-line they only had blurring horizontal. Bilinear just blurs everything horizontal and vertical, looks awful, destroys detail. The best filte rthat DOES look like a TV was that Phosphor 3X filter.

Besides if you had a SNES connected through S-video or even RGB it wasn't very blurry.

 

[WizardStan]

Bilinear does not look like a television it looks like a blurred out LCD.

I didn't say bilinear. I just said "a filter". There are many different ways of filtering, you're the one hung up on just bilinear.

 

[MDave]

Bilinear filtering a 2x image instead of stretching a bilinear 1x image should help keep the pixels more colour accurate, square and avoids the shimmering scrolling background effect.

You won't get ripple if the scaling is integer. You only get ripple when you stretch fractional and have uneven pixels.

I know that. I was suggesting that technique if you want 4:3 aspect ratio.

 

[skeezix]

There are some good attempts at making TV-like scalers; the zsnes, snes9x and MAME projects have piles of scaler options. photon2x was a good attempt IIRC?

Personally, I need to write a scaler that blurs it all up like an 80s CRT with smoke all over, and add random cola-drips and cigarette burns onto the display, so it feels more authentic ("Can't read the score, its smudged out by some jelly!") (I mean, for arcade games.)

jeff

 

[socket]

Please add in some scaling options (you said to keep bugging you) ;-)

 

[skeezix]

*g* Yep, keep bugging me; the next few weeks are tight, but keep reminding me

jeff

 

[DaveC]

There are some good attempts at making TV-like scalers; the zsnes, snes9x and MAME projects have piles of scaler options. photon2x was a good attempt IIRC?

jeff

I think you mean phosphor 2x?

Yeah that one was the best one I have seen. Most of the others are just cataract emulators

 

[Prometheus]

I think I might have found a bug - my saved game in Donkey Kong Country apparently wasn't saved (that is, the ones that are written when you get to Candy's Save Point, not save states or anything like that). I put my SD Card in my new Pandora yesterday and went to load up, but it just wasn't there. My card is formatted as ext2.

I don't have the time at this moment to flip through the rest of the thread and the documentation to check if this has been brought up or not - sorry. If it hasn't been brought up, though, consider it brought up now. :lol:

 

[parag0n]

I think I might have found a bug - my saved game in Donkey Kong Country apparently wasn't saved (that is, the ones that are written when you get to Candy's Save Point, not save states or anything like that). I put my SD Card in my new Pandora yesterday and went to load up, but it just wasn't there. My card is formatted as ext2.

I don't have the time at this moment to flip through the rest of the thread and the documentation to check if this has been brought up or not - sorry. If it hasn't been brought up, though, consider it brought up now. :lol:

In old versions of snes9x4d4p, savegames were stored to the user's $HOME directory (on the NAND). In newer versions they are correctly stored in the appdata folder on the SD card.

 

[Prometheus]

I was (and am) using the most recent build.

 

[God Ginrai]

I was (and am) using the most recent build.

Some roms do not save in their standard dump and need fixes to make saving work. Maybe DKC is one of those? I know saving works because Ancient Stone Tablets and SMW are holding their saves correctly.

-God Ginrai

 

[WizardStan]

Check settings for some kind of "save games immediately" checkbox?
Some games, instead of using the save ram for saving, used it as additional physical RAM. Since all this "saving" would slow down an emulator, it's possible to turn it off. 's'only thing I can think of.

 

[Prometheus]

Some roms do not save in their standard dump and need fixes to make saving work. Maybe DKC is one of those? I know saving works because Ancient Stone Tablets and SMW are holding their saves correctly.

-God Ginrai

I forgot to mention, what made me notice it is the fact that other games (e.g., Rockman & Forte, which is the only other save-enabled title I've been playing that I've checked since getting the replacement Pandora) are saving just fine.

As for the dump, it's the "[!]" dump of DKC's v1.0 PAL release, since that's the version of the game I own, and it saves normally elsewhere, including other builds of Snes9x, so I'm not too sure that that's it.

EDIT: Never mind - as per jumpman's post below, you are quite right, God Ginrai.

Check settings for some kind of "save games immediately" checkbox?
Some games, instead of using the save ram for saving, used it as additional physical RAM. Since all this "saving" would slow down an emulator, it's possible to turn it off. 's'only thing I can think of.

I'll have a look for that when I next try to play it.

 

[Jumpman]

DKC not saving is a form of copy protection. I had a back up unit way back in the day, and this game need a special hack to save. I don't remember the details, but I alway assumed an emulator wouldn't have the same issue.

My current US version is not saving either, but like I said, it had problems originally to, so it's not a big shock. I will check and see if I can find a version that saves. They should be out there, but the standard clean rom will have this problem always.

Chris