Could some kind widescreen game be done on SNES using 512 and/or 448 modes?

[SNES AYE]

Someone I was chatting to just brought up the idea of creating/converting a game so it basically ends up looking widescreen on SNES using the 512 and/or 448 modes to achieve such a result, and, since I have no clue how that might work myself, I'm curious if it's even possible to achieve such an effect on SNES and figured I'd asked you guys since you will probably have a good idea of what's possible or not here?

In the context of the discussion, it was basically just thinking about a way to give the game more horizontal view than typically seen in the average SNES game.

[lidnariq]

Interlacing is mostly a waste. For the most part, it will either yield gross "weave" artifacts on a modern HDTV, or problematic flickering on an old CRT due to exceeding the Kell factor vertically. (Then again, most modern HDTVs will screw up deinterlacing the input regardless of whether the input was interlaced, so you may be sad either way)

512px horizontally does not help sprites - only backgrounds, and only sometimes, and at the cost of having multiple high-color layers. (At best, mode 5 provides one 4bpp / 120 color layer and one 2bpp / 24 color layer. Every other 512px option will have either fewer layers or fewer colors.)

So ... yes, it's technically doable, but no, it's almost always going to be better if you just aim at normal 256x224 resolution.

[SNES AYE]

Would it work if [considering the backgrounds alone for now] it was done similar to RPM Racing but only showing one game view (so no split screen or windows) that took up half the screen height (actually 224 pixels squashed down to half height in 448 mode and maybe drawn centred vertically for nice presentation) and the full 512 width of pixels?

The main goal again being to show twice as much view of the level horizontally than normal/typical.

[lidnariq]

First step: there is no "448 mode". There is only interlacing. The SNES only draws 224-or-239 scanlines in each 1/60th or 1/50th of a second, and nothing you can do can increase that.

Interlacing on the SNES looks bad on anything but exquisitely hand-drawn things with a careful eye to reduce flicker. It's far too easy to exceed the vertical resolution above which the screen flashes obnoxiously. There's a reason I mentioned Kell factor. Only the US and first release of RPM Racing used interlacing - subsequent localizations got rid of it. Don't do it.

But your actual question: Can you use the increased horizontal resolution of backgrounds? Yes. There's extra constraints, such as fewer layers, sprites looking chunkier, and in NTSC-land extra awful chroma crosstalk (anything that repeats every 3 pixels of 512px will become color, not brightness), but it is literally doable.

[Nikku4211]

You can't really use mode 5/6 to properly extend horizontal FOV without serious modification to the graphics because 8x8 in other modes is 16x8 in modes 5 and 6, and 16x16 tiles tend to be less efficient, plus sprites cannot use the extra horizontal resolution, and even then, in a 16:9 TV, everything will still look too thin because 512x224 without interlacing uses a pixel ratio of 4:7(in NTSC), which combined with the 16:9 stretch would result in 16:21 pixels.

It'd be much easier to do widescreen on the TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine and Mega Drive/Genesis, because not only are sprites actually affected by resolution mode changes, but they all have a mid-res 336x224 and 320x224 mode respectively, which would look about as proportional in 16:9 as their low-res 256x224 modes look in 4:3.

If you want to pull a Skatemasta Tcheco but with 16:21 pixels for the backgrounds, be my guest. That would still be interesting to me. As someone with a PS2, I think I personally can handle some interlace flicker too.

Of course, this is all anamorphic widescreen, but it's common for some 16:9 TVs to have a zoom mode too. This means you could get a form of widescreen with a letterboxed 256x160, which also has benefits since you can use forced blanking to effectively have a longer v-blank, and it'd still look proportional on a 4:3 screen.

[SNES AYE]

So ... yes, it's technically doable

OK, that's all I was double checking. Thanks.

[SNES AYE]

Old question revisited, but just to clarify something in my head: would the image below basically represent how it would look, layout-wise, on a typical 4:3 CRT TV if a SNES game were made to run in proper 512×448i mode (in Mode 5), with only the middle 224i lines showing and the rest force-blanked?

256x224 vs 512x448i with forced blank.png

For now, I’m not concerned with how it would look in terms of interlacing flicker, how sprites with relatively double-sized pixels would appear, the wasted screen real estate, or other things like that. I just want to confirm whether my understanding of how it would generally display on screen—compared to the regular 256×224 view—is basically correct.

[Nikku4211]

Old question revisited, but just to clarify something in my head: would the image below basically represent how it would look, layout-wise, on a typical 4:3 CRT TV if a SNES game were made to run in proper 512×448i mode (in Mode 5), with only the middle 224i lines showing and the rest force-blanked?

256x224 vs 512x448i with forced blank.png

For now, I’m not concerned with how it would look in terms of interlacing flicker, how sprites with relatively double-sized pixels would appear, the wasted screen real estate, or other things like that. I just want to confirm whether my understanding of how it would generally display on screen—compared to the regular 256×224 view—is basically correct.

Yes, it would look roughly like that proportion-wise.

Do you want to only blank 224 interlaced lines instead of 360 or 352 for zoom mode?

[SNES AYE]

Old question revisited, but just to clarify something in my head: would the image below basically represent how it would look, layout-wise, on a typical 4:3 CRT TV if a SNES game were made to run in proper 512×448i mode (in Mode 5), with only the middle 224i lines showing and the rest force-blanked?

256x224 vs 512x448i with forced blank.png

For now, I’m not concerned with how it would look in terms of interlacing flicker, how sprites with relatively double-sized pixels would appear, the wasted screen real estate, or other things like that. I just want to confirm whether my understanding of how it would generally display on screen—compared to the regular 256×224 view—is basically correct.

Yes, it would look roughly like that proportion-wise.

Do you want to only blank 224 interlaced lines instead of 360 or 352 for zoom mode?

Edit: Thanks for the answer, by the way.

I’m not entirely sure about that second part, since I don’t really know what zoom mode is?

The main reason I went with 224 vertically is because—ignoring sprites—I imagine the overall effect would look like a standard SNES game screen, just at double the resolution and with twice the vertical view, scaled down to fit the screen. Basically, it’s the closest thing I can think of to a “high-res” version of a normal SNES game, but with much more screen space ahead.

That said, I’m not against going a bit closer to another aspect ratio by using more of the interlaced lines. Still, I like the idea of maximizing the horizontal view while keeping the vertical mostly standard SNES—just with half-sized pixels fitting into the smaller height.

Hopefully that makes sense.

Edit 2: A very quirky take on the original hyper-wide-screen Darius arcade always comes to mind here—though it would still have a narrower horizontal view than that game. And obviously there'd be the double-pixel–sized sprites (would have to redraw those as scaled down versions, I guess), interlaced flicker, and such. It could be really interesting to see… if I’m not totally misunderstanding how it might fit here: Darius Arcade

[tepples]

At the S-PPU's normal 60 Hz dot clock rate, it generates 280 by 240 pixels that fit within the conventional 4:3 frame as defined by ATSC. Each line includes 256 pixels of picture and 24 pixels of side border. (Double those widths in hi-res.) Each field includes 224 lines of picture and 16 total lines of top and bottom border, or 239 and 1 if overscan mode is on. (Double those heights in interlace, where two fields make a frame.)

Zoom is a mode on 16:9 TVs where the TV crops the 4:3 image to 16:9 and enlarges what's left to fill the screen. It's meant to make non-anamorphic DVD, LaserDisc, cable TV, and other letterboxed programming fill the screen. My Vizio VX32L TV's zoom mode crops SNES video to about 256x168 (or 512x336 in hi-res interlace). So if you're targeting zoom mode, draw 512x352 and keep interface elements in the center 480x320. This will make your whole game appear letterboxed on 4:3 TVs (like New Super Mario Bros. Wii) while fitting 16:9 TVs nicely. 512x224, as wide as 2 conventional screens (like X-Men deluxe arcade, video here), would still appear letterboxed in zoom mode.

Sprites are never hires. There's a flag to make them interlaced if interlace is on, after which they no longer appear square but instead wide.

[SNES AYE]

At the S-PPU's normal 60 Hz dot clock rate, it generates 280 by 240 pixels that fit within the conventional 4:3 frame as defined by ATSC. Each line includes 256 pixels of picture and 24 pixels of side border. (Double those widths in hi-res.) Each field includes 224 lines of picture and 16 total lines of top and bottom border, or 239 and 1 if overscan mode is on. (Double those heights in interlace, where two fields make a frame.)

Zoom is a mode on 16:9 TVs where the TV crops the 4:3 image to 16:9 and enlarges what's left to fill the screen. It's meant to make non-anamorphic DVD, LaserDisc, cable TV, and other letterboxed programming fill the screen. My Vizio VX32L TV's zoom mode crops SNES video to about 256x168 (or 512x336 in hi-res interlace). So if you're targeting zoom mode, draw 512x352 and keep interface elements in the center 480x320. This will make your whole game appear letterboxed on 4:3 TVs (like New Super Mario Bros. Wii) while fitting 16:9 TVs nicely. 512x224, as wide as 2 conventional screens (like X-Men deluxe arcade, video here), would still appear letterboxed in zoom mode.

Sprites are never hires. There's a flag to make them interlaced if interlace is on, after which they no longer appear square but instead wide.

Regarding the last part: does that mean if you draw the sprites at double height and detail from the start—say, a Goomba at 16×32—you can enable the flag so they appear square again, just with twice the vertical resolution? Kind of like how high-res text appears in many SNES RPGs, but with the higher resolution applied vertically instead of horizontally?

[tepples]

Yes, you could have it appear nearly* square again. As I understand it, it'd use two entries in OAM: one for the top half and one for the bottom half.


* Subject to the usual 8:7 pixel aspect ratio of 60 Hz SNES

[SNES AYE]

Yes, you could have it appear nearly* square again. As I understand it, it'd use two entries in OAM: one for the top half and one for the bottom half.


* Subject to the usual 8:7 pixel aspect ratio of 60 Hz SNES

OK. Interesting stuff. Thanks to both.

[SNES AYE]

Just wanted to share an image I was experimenting with, inspired by one of the ideas I’d been thinking about here:

Darius 512x448i.png

It doesn’t use the method to double the vertical resolution of the sprites, which would add a bit more vertical detail to them than what’s shown here.

I’m not sure it looks great, but it’s an interesting way to explore using the 512x448i mode to create a very widescreen effect, similar to the original Gradius arcade view.

[Dwedit]

High-res background with low-res sprites are literally the opposite of what arcade hardware like Popeye or Tapper had.