SNES' lower horizontal view . . .

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iNCEPTIONAL

Re: SNES' lower horizontal view . . .

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

rainwarrior wrote: Sat Aug 20, 2022 1:56 pm We're mixing PAR and DAR again 8:7 is being used for both PAR and DAR, but 4:3 is only DAR.

If 256 x 224 resolution is stretched to a 4:3 display (DAR), its PAR is 4x224:3x256 = ~1.17 : 1 = ~8:7

Of course, the 256x224 image isn't really stretched to 4:3, there is overscan and other issues. 8:7 is the ideal PAR for most NTSC systems with 256px width, and "4:3" is the shape of a display on which we might see that 8:7 PAR displayed.

It's approximately the same, but is referring to the dimensions of a different thing.


...and also 256 x 224 resolution displayed with 1:1 PAR scaled pixels... is unfortunately 8:7 DAR. :roll:


I think we've been over this a few times already, though. Apologies for the repetition, but it keeps throwing things off track. I'd suggest throwing PAR or DAR next to ratios to clarify.
Well, I dunno about anyone else, but I'm mainly talking about drawing art in a program with square pixels, as almost all art is now (as far as I'm aware), and, I will assert, how almost all SNES art was drawn back in the day too (hence why I keep banging on about the vast majority of SNES games looking proportionally correct when viewed at an 8:7 display aspect ratio/1:1 PAR, because you just could not even fluke it looking proportionally perfect when viewed with square pixels if you weren't actually drawing and viewing the art with square pixels when creating it in the first place*), and then stretching everything to a 4:3 display aspect ratio, where the pixels would no longer be squares. And my thought [in the original post] was you'd simply take the original art created for a 320 horizontal resolution, remove the additional 64 pixels evenly across the image, so it's now a 256 image instead (which would visually look squished when viewed with the gaps removed, but everything would still be square pixels), and then let the inevitable stretch happen when output to a 4:3 display aspect ratio, where the end result would keep exactly the same amount of horizontal view as the original 320 game, but just now using 256 slightly stretched pixels instead (although, we've established this approach will only make sense for certain types of games).

So, me, I'm basically always talking about and referring to display aspect ratio (8:7 and 4:3), and almost never talking about pixel aspect ratio specifically (1:1 and 8:7), even though that is, of course, inevitably affected by what I'm describing. This is why I try to always remember to specifically say "display aspect ratio", and I sometimes say "pixel aspect ratio or PAR" when I meant that.

Hope that makes sense, at least in terms of what I'm talking about.

*Note: And this is irrespective of the actual display aspect ratio of the screen the game art was created on, as I'm not saying the art was viewed stretched to full screen while it was being created (be it a 4:3 DAR monitor, 8:7 DAR monitor, 16:9 DAR monitor, or whatever), just that when drawing their SNES art back in the day, artists were seeing the pixels on [part of] said screen as squares [in the vast majority of cases], exactly as they do today when using Photoshop and the like, rather than as rectangles (which, it seems to me, most people must think was the case).
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Re: SNES' lower horizontal view . . .

Post by turboxray »

You don't want to deal with PAR, but yet you keep mentioning converting 320px stuff to SNES. If it's Genesis 320px content, the PAR is 0.914. You need to figure out if you're going to convert that to either 8:7 PAR or 1:1 PAR on the snes. And the same for any other resolution/game. Not ALL 320px resolutions are the same PAR, even if they are all the same DAR. I think once you understand this you'll stop trying to view things as DAR.. because PAR solves everything for you and DAR becomes irrelevant. For example, Amiga 320px is not the same PAR as Genesis 320px. Same for PCE's 320px mode too.
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sat Aug 20, 2022 2:07 pm just that when drawing their SNES art back in the day, artists were seeing the pixels on [part of] said screen as squares [in the vast majority of cases], exactly as they do today when using Photoshop and the like, rather than as rectangles (which, it seems to me, most people must think was the case).
You do NOT know that as fact. Horizontal/vertical adjustments were a thing for PC/Computer monitors - you could easily setup the monitor for whatever PAR. And not to mention we have lots of pictures of devs/artist viewing their work on a TV CRT right next to the development PC. Anyone who was doing art at the time on a professional level was aware of this. Whether someone cared enough to compensate for it, is irrelevant. All art was quality controlled on a TV.


I'm not saying don't make SNES art that is for 1:1 PAR. Do whatever you want - and if you don't care about criticism, even better. It won't be correct for the original system, so you have to leave it up to the gamers to figure out how to view it as square pixels (on a real system. Obviously an option on emulators). Just have a splash message in the start of the game stating your art/vision intent. But just don't try to validate it with facts you don't know to be true.
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Re: SNES' lower horizontal view . . .

Post by rainwarrior »

PC resolutions are ubiquitously 1:1 PAR now, they weren't always. I think the shift came about somewhere in the mid to late nineties where 640 x 480 SVGA began to become the lowest common denominator. Before that hardly anything ever had square pixels.

Maybe PAL Amiga, or PC88 (sometimes) had close to 1:1? I think you could make a case that some european SNES developers might have worked with 1:1 PAR in D-Paint on the Amiga. PC88 was less suitable for colourful artwork (and had inconsistent PAR)... the later PC98 which a lot of Japanese developers were using through the SNES era didn't have 1:1 PAR on most models.

Edit: PC98 maybe did commonly have 1:1. The discussion of that was later continued: here.
Last edited by rainwarrior on Thu Feb 22, 2024 3:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: SNES' lower horizontal view . . .

Post by dougeff »

I think I had a CRT monitor in the 90s that could adjust (stretch) the horizontal and/or vertical output.
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Re: SNES' lower horizontal view . . .

Post by rainwarrior »

Lots of CRT monitors allow you to adjust the output. ...but if you know how to adjust PAR then we're not talking about people who just look at it with what they have anymore.

My point is that common 1:1 PAR and LCD monitors with impossible-to-adjust square pixels are post-SNES. You can't use it as a justification that artists back then would have used 1:1 PAR because it just wasn't the normal setup (with maybe PAL Amiga excepted, or maybe people using 640x480 SVGA ahead of the rest).
Last edited by rainwarrior on Sun Aug 21, 2022 2:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
iNCEPTIONAL

Re: SNES' lower horizontal view . . .

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

turboxray wrote: Sun Aug 21, 2022 12:42 pm You don't want to deal with PAR, but yet you keep mentioning converting 320px stuff to SNES. If it's Genesis 320px content, the PAR is 0.914. You need to figure out if you're going to convert that to either 8:7 PAR or 1:1 PAR on the snes. And the same for any other resolution/game. Not ALL 320px resolutions are the same PAR, even if they are all the same DAR. I think once you understand this you'll stop trying to view things as DAR.. because PAR solves everything for you and DAR becomes irrelevant. For example, Amiga 320px is not the same PAR as Genesis 320px. Same for PCE's 320px mode too.
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sat Aug 20, 2022 2:07 pm just that when drawing their SNES art back in the day, artists were seeing the pixels on [part of] said screen as squares [in the vast majority of cases], exactly as they do today when using Photoshop and the like, rather than as rectangles (which, it seems to me, most people must think was the case).
You do NOT know that as fact. Horizontal/vertical adjustments were a thing for PC/Computer monitors - you could easily setup the monitor for whatever PAR. And not to mention we have lots of pictures of devs/artist viewing their work on a TV CRT right next to the development PC. Anyone who was doing art at the time on a professional level was aware of this. Whether someone cared enough to compensate for it, is irrelevant. All art was quality controlled on a TV.


I'm not saying don't make SNES art that is for 1:1 PAR. Do whatever you want - and if you don't care about criticism, even better. It won't be correct for the original system, so you have to leave it up to the gamers to figure out how to view it as square pixels (on a real system. Obviously an option on emulators). Just have a splash message in the start of the game stating your art/vision intent. But just don't try to validate it with facts you don't know to be true.
I probably confused things with the other paragraphs I wrote, but my main point in response to rainwarrior's comment, "We're mixing PAR and DAR again 8:7 is being used for both PAR and DAR, but 4:3 is only DAR.", was:

"So, me, I'm basically always talking about and referring to display aspect ratio (8:7 and 4:3), and almost never talking about pixel aspect ratio specifically (1:1 and 8:7), even though that is, of course, inevitably affected by what I'm describing. This is why I try to always remember to specifically say "display aspect ratio", and I sometimes say "pixel aspect ratio or PAR" when I meant that."

But, I'm going to start using image aspect ratio instead of display aspect ratio where it makes sense, as that's what I'm actually talking about most of time.
Last edited by iNCEPTIONAL on Mon Aug 22, 2022 12:36 am, edited 5 times in total.
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Re: SNES' lower horizontal view . . .

Post by rainwarrior »

iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sun Aug 21, 2022 2:04 pmI probably confused things with the other paragraphs I wrote, but my main point in response to rainwarrior's question
I didn't have a question. Your usage was clear to me from context. I was responding to dougeff using 4:3 as a PAR.

However, given the history of confusion that we've seen, maybe it would help if you used PAR instead of DAR. I think you're the only one here insisting on the term 8:7 DAR, and everyone else here expects it as a PAR.

Part of the reason is probably that there is no actual 8:7 DAR display out there. These games displayed at 1:1 PAR do not fill the whole screen. If you want to call it DAR there's a leap of logic to some virtual display area on a wider screen.
iNCEPTIONAL

Re: SNES' lower horizontal view . . .

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

rainwarrior wrote: Sun Aug 21, 2022 2:18 pm
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Sun Aug 21, 2022 2:04 pmI probably confused things with the other paragraphs I wrote, but my main point in response to rainwarrior's question
I didn't have a question. Your usage was clear to me from context. I was responding to dougeff using 4:3 as a PAR.

However, given the history of confusion that we've seen, maybe it would help if you used PAR instead of DAR. I think you're the only one here insisting on the term 8:7 DAR, and everyone else here expects it as a PAR.

Part of the reason is probably that there is no actual 8:7 DAR display out there. These games displayed at 1:1 PAR do not fill the whole screen. If you want to call it DAR there's a leap of logic to some virtual display area on a wider screen.
OK, I've fixed that to actually quote your comment in the post above.

And, outside of here, I normally don't refer to things in terms of pixel aspect ratios or even specifically TV/monitor display aspect ratios (other than using the common 4:3 or 16:9 terms for the most part) but the image's aspect ratio itself, as that's how I think of such things in terms of creating art (be it traditional art using physical materials or digital art). So, from now on, I'm going to try to say 4:3 image aspect ratio or 8:7 image aspect ratio for SNES visuals as I see them on whatever screen, 4:3 display aspect ratio when I'm talking about the old CRTs we typically played these games on, and 8:7 pixel aspect ratio (or 8:7 PAR) or 1:1 pixel aspect ratio (or 1:1 PAR) when that's what I specifically mean.
Last edited by iNCEPTIONAL on Sun Aug 21, 2022 11:02 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: SNES' lower horizontal view . . .

Post by rainwarrior »

My suggestion wasn't that you need to provide more definitions for you unusual usage of 8:7, it was that whenever you use 8:7 for something other than PAR there is invariably confusion in the thread that follows. I don't think saying "8:7 but it's image aspect ratio" will actually help that.

Personally I don't really mind... I thought what you meant was always clear from context, but yet this confusion happens in every thread, and it's probably just because 8:7 is a little weird to use to refer to this 256 x 224 image with square pixels we're actually always discussing? I dunno, but I think that might be the sticky bit.
iNCEPTIONAL

Re: SNES' lower horizontal view . . .

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

rainwarrior wrote: Sun Aug 21, 2022 8:21 pm My suggestion wasn't that you need to provide more definitions for you unusual usage of 8:7, it was that whenever you use 8:7 for something other than PAR there is invariably confusion in the thread that follows. I don't think saying "8:7 but it's image aspect ratio" will actually help that.

Personally I don't really mind... I thought what you meant was always clear from context, but yet this confusion happens in every thread, and it's probably just because 8:7 is a little weird to use to refer to this 256 x 224 image with square pixels we're actually always discussing? I dunno, but I think that might be the sticky bit.
Well, let me put it like this, until stepping in here, I personally had never referred to an image by anything other than either the literal pixel amounts or its actual [image] aspect ratio. And that's also true when talking about art on actual physical materials (canvas, paper, etc), technical design drawings, TV resolutions, and so on too. I hadn't even heard anyone talking about the actual aspect ratios of the pixels themselves, even as someone converting SNES pixel art to GBC pixel art at Rare back in the day, and I still managed to create the art for a couple of those old pixel games just fine. So, I guess it's just a matter of what you know, and whether you are okay with letting people use the terms that make sense to them (so long as whatever terms they use are correct, obviously). I'm personally fine with people using image aspect ratio, display aspect ratio and pixel aspect ratio (or PAR), and I think the context and, if necessary, some clarification of the one they are using in a specific scenario, will make things clear. Hopefully other people in here are fine with that too.
Last edited by iNCEPTIONAL on Mon Aug 22, 2022 6:56 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: SNES' lower horizontal view . . .

Post by rainwarrior »

Well, if it's useful: the image aspect ratio of the 256 x 224 pixel picture of the SNES is 64:49 and not 4:3. So if that's what you want to compare, it would be 8:7 IAR to 64:49 IAR. Those could also be called DAR, if you want, as long as they're both the same kind of DAR.

4:3 is the shape of a TV screen, which if it was completely flat and rectangular, would be a cropped/padded rectangular view of part of that 64:49 IAR image. There is no display that corresponds to the 8:7 IAR image in the same way, because it's always displayed whole, not cropped/padded. Similarly a PAL television is also 4:3 but it's a cropped/padded version of a differently shaped image. (The PAR for PAL is really large numbers, so I'm not going to list them there. At some point it's better to just use decimal.)

Apples to apples:
  • 64:49 to 8:7 (IAR or DAR)
  • 8:7 to 1:1 (PAR)
Apples to oranges:
  • 4:3 (cropped/padded) to 8:7 (uncropped)
And that's what's confusing, I guess. 4:3 is an approximation that's kinda close to 64:49, and we're used to seeing that kind of image on a 4:3 screen... and yeah, some people out there have been calling these things 8:7 and 4:3, but if you're trying to have technical discussion about this 4:3 is just flat out the wrong ratio for comparison. It's about as accurate as saying the SNES has a 250x220 resolution.

And like I said, I personally thought it was evident what you meant in your OP. I don't really care about the approximation; if you're doing technical work you'll find the details as they're needed. But, every time someone wants to make any actual technical comparisons in the conversation, the first step is going to have to be throwing away these wrong numbers and finding the real ones.
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Re: SNES' lower horizontal view . . .

Post by turboxray »

rainwarrior wrote: Mon Aug 22, 2022 1:16 am Similarly a PAL television is also 4:3 but it's a cropped/padded version of a differently shaped image. (The PAR for PAL is really large numbers, so I'm not going to list them there. At some point it's better to just use decimal.)
I found for PAL, a quick conversion is to just take the PAR used on an NTSC system and multiply it by 1.2.
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Re: SNES' lower horizontal view . . .

Post by tepples »

dougeff wrote: Sat Aug 20, 2022 11:09 am You could squeeze the graphics vertically, by changing the vertical scroll multiple times per frame. Like, every 12 pixels you skip 4 pixels.

And, I saw a demo do something like this, so this is a possibility...
Puyo Pop and Luminesweeper on Game Boy Advance do this, combined with use of 2 layers scrolled 12 pixels apart to get a 12x12-pixel playfield grid.

Another option is to draw the art for a 32x32-pixel metatile grid at 8:7 PAR on the H32 systems (NES, SMS, SNES, etc.) and redraw each metatile to 40x32 pixels at 32:35 PAR for Genesis or PlayStation H40 mode.

Still another is to treat H32 vs. H40 as a choice to match the player's monitor's display aspect ratio. Draw the graphics for H32 and let the player choose between H32 (labeled "for 4:3 TVs") and H40 (labeled "for 16:9 TVs") in the Genesis version's option screen. H40 in a 16:9 NTSC TV's stretch mode is displayed at 128:105 (~1.22 PAR) which is a tad wider than 8:7. This works even better for PC Engine H42, which is 6:7 PAR on a 4:3 TV and becomes 8:7 PAR when stretched to 16:9.
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Re: SNES' lower horizontal view . . .

Post by Dwedit »

Can a 16x12 grid be made with offsets per tile mode? How about a 12x12 grid?
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Re: SNES' lower horizontal view . . .

Post by rainwarrior »

Dwedit wrote: Tue Aug 30, 2022 9:58 am Can a 16x12 grid be made with offsets per tile mode? How about a 12x12 grid?
Offset-per-tile applies to a whole column at once, but you can just do vertical scroll offset splits every 12 lines to cut 16x16 tiles down to 16x12.

For 12px tile horizontally, the only thing I can think of is using 2 layers in alternating columns. Layer 2 can have a 12 pixel horizontal offset relative to layer 1 and tiles would have transparent padding to 16 pixels, which gets covered by the overlapping columns.
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