Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

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rainwarrior
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Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by rainwarrior »

Earthworm Jim is an interesting example, especially since it uses a lot of the same art unchanged in Genesis 320px and SNES 256px. Despite this I'd have a hard time deciding whether the skinnier or fatter Jim looks more like his box art.


Images are presented at 1:1 PAR here, as is usually convenient.

ewj_md1.png
ewj_md1.png (22.59 KiB) Viewed 1051 times
ewj_snes1.png
ewj_snes1.png (18.38 KiB) Viewed 1051 times
Genesis: Andy Asteroids, here we have elliptical 3D tube effect, which I think looks close to circular on an NTSC Genesis but not quite correct. More correct than a 1:1 PAR circle would have been, though. Notably on the very same screen we have a 1:1 PAR spherical orb sprite, so this can go in the inconsistent pile. It's funny that this shows that somebody on the team cared about PAR, but not enough to get the whole game consistent about it.

SNES: Andy Asteroids uses 1:1 PAR for the tube and the orb.

Of course, none of these things are natural phenomena. The tube could be elliptical on purpose. ;) But really, I just think most of the time nobody worries much about PAR.
ewj_md2.png
ewj_md2.png (32.21 KiB) Viewed 1051 times
ewj_snes2.png
ewj_snes2.png (22.92 KiB) Viewed 1051 times
Down the Tubes shows the same 1:1 PAR sphere in both versions. Looks too skinny on Genesis, too fat on SNES. Let's hope this non-optimal bathysphere holds up to the pressure for Jim. Actually, maybe that's why it cracks apart in 30 seconds?


All of these things are, as you might expect, perfectly circular on the later Earthworm Jim HD remake on systems which had native 1:1 PAR. Not that the HD remake staff necessarily knows the intent of the original artists.
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Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

bocchi wrote: Sun May 29, 2022 4:09 pm
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sun May 29, 2022 3:34 pm If this in on an old 4:3 CRT TV, are you 100% sure that isn't just a result of you not adjusting the TV's display settings so the picture takes up the full screen (or as much as possible)?

I mean, I may not be recalling this perfectly, but I don't ever remember seeing black borders at the left and right sides of the images when playing SNES games back in the day. I think I remember black borders at the top and bottom--I'm from the UK, which meant I was playing on PAL TVs, so the extra scanlines were basically par for the course--but not to the sides.

Honestly, there's been a lot of times recently where I've wished I just had an original SNES and an old SD CRT TV to go check half things I read in here directly. LOL
It is a direct capture from the SNES's video output, there is no TV of any sort involved. That is the picture the (NTSC) SNES puts out.
I'm speculating here, but I wonder if this is like building in a display safe area as seen in movies and TV shows and the like that were going to be shown on these old CRT TVs back in the day, so that whatever screen the game was viewed on, even if the TV image wasn't perfectly calibrated/adjusted, you'd still be likely to see everything in view. If so, the visble picture would probably still be stretched to the actual edges of the 4:3 TV screen (which is how I remeber it), but just with a little built-in leeway for people who didn't bother to make sure their TVs were calibrated/adjusted properly and had some parts of the full picture outside the edge of the screen.

*https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_area_(television) and https://eks.tv/title-safe-still-matters/
Last edited by iNCEPTIONAL on Sun May 29, 2022 5:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by rainwarrior »

A lot of SNES games do window off the edges. (E.g. Final Fantasy VI.)

Safe area is part of it, but you can also use to hide the horizontal scroll seam on 1x1 screen tilemaps instead of spending more memory for 2x1 maps. The downside is using up a window.

Even some NES games did this, though they had to use a ton of sprites to cover the right side in black. (TMNT, Alfred Chicken)

Our NES wiki has a fairly good description of safe area, though Nintendo also had official guidelines for it.


Though I think in bocchi's example the black edges are just the system's horizontal blank area, not something the developers had to worry about or could do anything with. It's just that on some TV situations, especially capture devices, it might be visible part of the recorded picture.
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Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by turboxray »

rainwarrior wrote: Sun May 29, 2022 5:30 pm Though I think in bocchi's example the black edges are just the system's horizontal blank area, not something the developers had to worry about or could do anything with. It's just that on some TV situations, especially capture devices, it might be visible part of the recorded picture.
Blanking from the console (software) perspective, but not the display device. The whole "320x240 square pixels" is 4:3 on NTSC requires the (*)whole displayable area for that statement to be true. And if you're deriving PAR from final corrected and un-stretched; you have to pad to the full frame. All those wiki articles and such don't bother mentioning this. And because of this, your visible display area (clipped frame) and device display area (full frame) are not the same, and as mentioned this caused confusion for emulator authors for years with incorrect adjustment. Yeah if you simply know the PAR, all of this is a none issue - but if you're working with aspect ratio correction for old consoles, it should be understood what 4:3 actually means.. and not just stuff that just happens to be coincidentally match up to 4:3 as well (clipped/visible area).




There was interview with some of the SF2 creators and he said he was annoyed that the CPS1 didn't have a square pixels. Such a silly complaint.. I'd take higher res over square pixels any day. 8mhz dot clock CPS1 > 6.04mhz dot clock Neo Geo.




People have been mentioning PCs as well as Deluxe paint being square pixels ( Amiga 320px res is square in PAL land) - you have horizontal and vertical adjustment knobs. You could easily adjust your monitor so that it shows the PAR you want to work with. Even if you just eyeball it.. it's a thing haha. This only became an issue with lower res fixed pixel displays.



Outside of video game art and development, I worked in post production and video editing for indie films/shows, and had to deal with aspect ratios for years. I've been dealing with aspect ratios since forever :/


*Note: there are actually a few "blank" pixels outside this area. I think it's like 4. It's pretty small.
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Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by none »

rainwarrior wrote: Sun May 29, 2022 4:47 pm It's funny that this shows that somebody on the team cared about PAR, but not enough to get the whole game consistent about it.
For small objects like those bubbles the PAR was often ignored on purpose because it would look worse if done "correctly".
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Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by Nikku4211 »

none wrote: Mon May 30, 2022 8:14 am For small objects like those bubbles the PAR was often ignored on purpose because it would look worse if done "correctly".
Are you talking about resizing already-made graphics or redrawing them?

Of course, redrawing them would be more work and require more time, but would that look worse too?
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Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by rainwarrior »

none wrote: Mon May 30, 2022 8:14 am
rainwarrior wrote: Sun May 29, 2022 4:47 pm It's funny that this shows that somebody on the team cared about PAR, but not enough to get the whole game consistent about it.
For small objects like those bubbles the PAR was often ignored on purpose because it would look worse if done "correctly".
It's not just small objects that are inconsistent in this game.

However, I disagree that this specific example wouldn't look better if the orbs were corrected for PAR. They look rather squashed in the Genesis' NTSC pixel aspect ratio:
ewj_md1_32_35_PAR.png
That said, I do think there are plenty of valid reasons for a developer not to correct for PAR. There are often things you have to compromise in pursuit of that kind of thing, and there's usually more at stake than just how round a ball looks.
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Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by turboxray »

rainwarrior wrote: Mon May 30, 2022 10:54 am That said, I do think there are plenty of valid reasons for a developer not to correct for PAR. There are often things you have to compromise in pursuit of that kind of thing, and there's usually more at stake than just how round a ball looks.
If I was a developer making a game for both the SNES and the Genesis, I'd draw everything as 1:1 PAR for the art - if I needed to save time/money/etc. That way the art assets are exactly in the middle between 8.7 PAR and 32:35 PAR adjustments, and it's not a drastic of a difference from the source art. And then they would also be applicable to PAL Amiga and US PCs using. If the art was designed for 32:35 PAR and then you use it un-adjusted for 8:7, then yeah it's pretty noticeable.
However, I disagree that this specific example wouldn't look better if the orbs were corrected for PAR. They look rather squashed in the Genesis' NTSC pixel aspect ratio
This type of thing also leads to "conditioning". Where as Genesis fans prefer a skinnier look, even if it's incorrect or such. It's an "attribute" of the higher res mode (especially when you look at perfect square art on 320px mode), that re-enforces the idea that higher res is being used. This is something preached in the Sega MD/Genesis fan base, and to the extreme point that it's preferable to having more colors like the SNES. Like I said, 'conditioning". I've seen it for audio as well - Genesis fans are obsessed with clarity in audio to the point where they want to hear all the aliasing artifacts. It's also funny, because back in the day - I knew friends of friends.. who had both snes and genesis.. and would set the TV sharpness down so that the SNES looked more blurry like the Genesis composite output. :D But yeah, conditioning. Some people's children.. smh
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Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by Nikku4211 »

turboxray wrote: Mon May 30, 2022 11:55 am
rainwarrior wrote: Mon May 30, 2022 10:54 am That said, I do think there are plenty of valid reasons for a developer not to correct for PAR. There are often things you have to compromise in pursuit of that kind of thing, and there's usually more at stake than just how round a ball looks.
If I was a developer making a game for both the SNES and the Genesis, I'd draw everything as 1:1 PAR for the art - if I needed to save time/money/etc. That way the art assets are exactly in the middle between 8.7 PAR and 32:35 PAR adjustments, and it's not a drastic of a difference from the source art. And then they would also be applicable to PAL Amiga and US PCs using. If the art was designed for 32:35 PAR and then you use it un-adjusted for 8:7, then yeah it's pretty noticeable.
I mean, you could also make the Mega Drive version use a 256x224 resolution similar to the SNES as well, that way you would have a PAR of 8:7 on both systems and have more visual parity.
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Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by turboxray »

Nikku4211 wrote: Tue May 31, 2022 8:25 am
turboxray wrote: Mon May 30, 2022 11:55 am
rainwarrior wrote: Mon May 30, 2022 10:54 am That said, I do think there are plenty of valid reasons for a developer not to correct for PAR. There are often things you have to compromise in pursuit of that kind of thing, and there's usually more at stake than just how round a ball looks.
If I was a developer making a game for both the SNES and the Genesis, I'd draw everything as 1:1 PAR for the art - if I needed to save time/money/etc. That way the art assets are exactly in the middle between 8.7 PAR and 32:35 PAR adjustments, and it's not a drastic of a difference from the source art. And then they would also be applicable to PAL Amiga and US PCs using. If the art was designed for 32:35 PAR and then you use it un-adjusted for 8:7, then yeah it's pretty noticeable.
I mean, you could also make the Mega Drive version use a 256x224 resolution similar to the SNES as well, that way you would have a PAR of 8:7 on both systems and have more visual parity.
Because Genesis/MD lack of color means dithering, and dithering works(looks) better as you go higher in res (regardless if it's composite or RGB). And high res mode means better scanline sprite-limit support, as well as more total sprites. You pretty much almost always want to use 320px mode on the Genesis/MD regardless if it gives incorrect PAR for your source material.

And.. you've provide visual parity for the benefit for the SNES, but sub-optimal for the Genesis. You basically just bias'd the project towards the snes. If you use middle of the road, you avoid it.
Last edited by turboxray on Tue May 31, 2022 11:55 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by Drag »

But then how is anyone supposed to argue which console is better if both versions of the game are identical? Being reasonable and compromising is so boring! :P

(I'm kidding around btw ;) )
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Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by Nikku4211 »

turboxray wrote: Tue May 31, 2022 11:14 am Because Genesis/MD lack of color means dithering, and dithering works(looks) better as you go higher in res (regardless if it's composite or RGB). And high res mode means better scanline sprite-limit support, as well as more total sprites. You pretty much almost always want to use 320px mode on the Genesis/MD regardless if it gives incorrect PAR for your source material.

And.. you've provide visual parity for the benefit for the SNES, but sub-optimal for the Genesis. You basically just bias'd the project towards the snes. If you use middle of the road, you avoid it.
But if you use 320x224 mode, you'd have biased the project towards the Mega Drive because the SNES version would be sub-optimal since the screen area would be at a disadvantage.

Either way you'd bias the project since you won't have enough time to properly gear graphics to take fuller advantage of both systems' video output.
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Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by turboxray »

Nikku4211 wrote: Tue May 31, 2022 12:48 pm
turboxray wrote: Tue May 31, 2022 11:14 am Because Genesis/MD lack of color means dithering, and dithering works(looks) better as you go higher in res (regardless if it's composite or RGB). And high res mode means better scanline sprite-limit support, as well as more total sprites. You pretty much almost always want to use 320px mode on the Genesis/MD regardless if it gives incorrect PAR for your source material.

And.. you've provide visual parity for the benefit for the SNES, but sub-optimal for the Genesis. You basically just bias'd the project towards the snes. If you use middle of the road, you avoid it.
But if you use 320x224 mode, you'd have biased the project towards the Mega Drive because the SNES version would be sub-optimal since the screen area would be at a disadvantage.

Either way you'd bias the project since you won't have enough time to properly gear graphics to take fuller advantage of both systems' video output.
No. Art designed for 1:1 PAR or square pixels, is roughly equal distance between 8:7 and 32:25. Using 1:1 PAR art on a skinnier PAR doesn't make it more correct than using that same 1:1 PAR art on a fatter PAR, if they are both roughly equal distance. I never said use/design the art around 320px or 32:25 PAR and then use it for 8:7 PAR - that's too big of a difference. Those aren't equivalent things.
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Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by rainwarrior »

Nikku4211 is referring to how you can view more of the action on the 320px version. This makes it easier to see what's coming up ahead in Earthworm Jim and The Lion King on Genesis than it is on SNES. It's makes a pretty significant difference in gameplay and your time to react to things.
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Re: Regarding 4:3 and 8:7. . . .

Post by Nikku4211 »

turboxray wrote: Tue May 31, 2022 2:38 pm No. Art designed for 1:1 PAR or square pixels, is roughly equal distance between 8:7 and 32:25. Using 1:1 PAR art on a skinnier PAR doesn't make it more correct than using that same 1:1 PAR art on a fatter PAR, if they are both roughly equal distance. I never said use/design the art around 320px or 32:25 PAR and then use it for 8:7 PAR - that's too big of a difference. Those aren't equivalent things.
8:7 is mathematically equivalent to 32:28, and 35 is closer to 32 than 28 is, especially when taking into account how ratios work.
rainwarrior wrote: Tue May 31, 2022 4:13 pm Nikku4211 is referring to how you can view more of the action on the 320px version. This makes it easier to see what's coming up ahead in Earthworm Jim and The Lion King on Genesis than it is on SNES. It's makes a pretty significant difference in gameplay and your time to react to things.
This is the main point I was making.
Mega Drive versions that run in 320x224 show more screen area, which means the player knows more than they would in the SNES version, which would normally be 256x224, if the level wasn't tweaked for this aspect ratio disparity.

This is both a graphical issue and a gameplay balance issue.
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