Fictional D-pads

[Arcade]

I know a guy that can convert real console videogames D-pads to something Windows will accept, but I am just really used to the keyboard...

[Isuka]

bsnes 0.054 is out. The previous version introduced many new features, such as scanlines' intensity regulation, so I can take awesome shots like this one:



Plus, byuu finally released it under GNU's GPL v2, so we can expect it to improve faster than ever.

[Shadow Hog]

Yay, Magical Pop'n! Fun game.

[Isuka]

byuu wrote a very nice piece: http://byuu.org/bsnes/accuracy

It's a pity that the latest compiled binaries lack built-in support for scanlines, I hope they reinclude this feature soon.

[Ritz]

Could someone please explain to me this fascination with scanlines, again? Isn't it just for replicating the look of old CRT monitors or something? Deliberately making things look shit seems like a novelty one would soon grow tired of, but hey!

(Also this is as good an opportunity as ever to formally apologize for flipping out over insomnia.ac a while ago. Alex is still an incomprehensible smeghead, and he's still hardly a genius, and the forum is still a Broadway burlesque on social discourse that you shouldn't be participating in, but he seems to have the right idea and a nose for sniffing out the good shit. It was his post on hierarchy that won me over)

[Isuka]

Don't sweat it, it's alright.

The scanlines thing has to do with the way the games were designed, the way they were meant to be played. While NTSC filters introduce artifacts that were originally just the fault of the RF and composite video interfaces (vastly used in USA and Europe), scanlines are an inherent component of low-resolution CRT displays, and CRT displays were not only the absolute de facto standard back when all these systems and games were originally developed, but also the highest quality displays, period (this is the reason why that one kid from Summer Wars, Kazuma, demands a CRT HD display when fighting that Love Machine thing). Therefore, not only did the game designers create those games with CRT displays in mind, but the entire systems themselves were developed for using them in conjunction with CRT displays, ideally with high quality interfaces like the European SCART or the Japanese D-Terminal (D2), or VGA and component video.

In short, it's simply the way they're meant to be played. The KEGA Fusion guy, Steve Snake, already explained in the Eidolon's Inn forum that he programmed it to forcefully correct the aspect ratio in some Mega Drive games and all Master System ones to avoid aberrations like this, and recommends that you turn on filtering because raw non-square pixels look extra-ugly and are nowhere near what it was originally meant to look like. He probably knows that scanlines are also a part of "doing it right" too, but backed away from suggesting it (let alone forcing it) because it's obviously not to everybody's liking.

But it's just the way it was all originally meant to look like, of course you can disregard it and play however you like, the only important thing would be to have the possibility available to you to go "the intended way" when you feel like it. It's curious yet logical how the latest bsnes binaries lack support for scanlines, yet still support aspect ratio correction and video smoothing/ filtering...

[Ritz]

This explanation is permissible. Carry on.

[FlashTHD]

You (as in the end user playing the thing on your TV) are also not really supposed to be able to tell that they're there to begin with.

[G.Silver]

I've often felt that the scanlines in emulated games don't look right to me, and rather than just getting the visual effect of "this has scanlines" (or not seeing it at all) I end up seeing patterns in them, like in Isuka's post from nearly two years ago up there, they seem to be "grouped" in horizontal patches that stand out more, rather than blending in. Maybe that's really what happens on a TV, but on a TV I don't notice it.

Scanlines are incredibly nostalgic for me, not from the way they looked on my TV, but from back when game magazine screen shots tended to still have them. Certainly, screen shots are clearer now, but can they compete with the scanline-tinted lenses of remembered youth? No chance of that!

[Kogen]

Maybe I have the memory of a squirrel but I cannot recall scanlines. Whenever I see them in emulators it is always a new (and disgusting) experience!

Perhaps I just do not appreciate the nostalgia involved in having to use UHF clamps to hook up a console. I did that a few times, but that does not mean I enjoyed it.

And on the topic of video signals (even if that is not the topic), I did a formal test with a friend back around 1994. We hooked up a Genesis model 2 and a SNES with RF at the same time then turned them on at the same time. Genesis is the one that came on and is thus more powerful. Fact.

[Isuka]

I've often felt that the scanlines in emulated games don't look right to me, and rather than just getting the visual effect of "this has scanlines" (or not seeing it at all) I end up seeing patterns in them, like in Isuka's post from nearly two years ago up there, they seem to be "grouped" in horizontal patches that stand out more, rather than blending in. Maybe that's really what happens on a TV, but on a TV I don't notice it.

Yeah, this probably has to do with scanlines being something closely related to each individual CRT display, while emulators just use the same approach to apply scanlines on all displays of all systems where they're used, as long as they're running the same version and stuff.

They should look more like this, really:





The closest I can get to that is by using very low values for scanlines, although most emulators don't allow you to use scanlines brighter than 75% of the other lines' brightness and darker than 100% (that is, having no scanlines).

And most CRT screens are composed of lines of little round dots or vertical lines (the shadow mask and Trinitron's tension mask/ aperture grille, respectively), so they indeed form a pattern and scanlines are supposed to blend in it.

[Tsuyoshi-kun]

What is that game on the bottom screenshot? It sort of looks like Lemmings, but with much bigger sprites.

[Dr. BUGMAN]

That would be Sink or Swim.

[Isuka]

Fuck yeah, bsnes 077 is out and scanlines are back! There are only three different values, but it's better than nothing.