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

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

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

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

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

Post by 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.
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Nikku4211
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Re: Could some kind widescreen game be done on SNES using 512 and/or 448 modes?

Post by 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.
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SNES AYE
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Re: Could some kind widescreen game be done on SNES using 512 and/or 448 modes?

Post by SNES AYE »

lidnariq wrote: Sun Apr 02, 2023 4:54 pm So ... yes, it's technically doable
OK, that's all I was double checking. Thanks.
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