On the subject of hi-res dialog boxes and elements, does the down scaler allow you to shift the image up and down by scanline? I’m thinking of something like the ‘first scanline option’ in some emulators/shaders. Doing that has helped me keep scanlines on the proper rows when scaling things up in emulators and can make a big difference if you are using a CRT shader for example.
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Yep, there’s a feature that lets you do that. I haven’t messed with it though yet. Sounds like a good project for tonight.
Aww yes, looks better with scanlines.
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Yeah, I couldn’t believe how good it looked from the first time I fired it up. I haven’t played it undocked yet so I’ve literally only seen it in 240p.
That’s really cool.
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Thanks! There’s more where that came from.
Holy crap The Messenger looks way, way better like that. Really cool their art holds up like that given the regular presentation is not designed for that.
Just shows that the ‘8bit’ aesthetic we’re being fed is actually the ‘emulator generation’ aesthetic.
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True. Or rather, scaled up graphics aesthetic. Either way, it’s not the real deal.
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It’s the reason I really liked the art in Tiny Barbarian - it’s based on a Castlevania type thing, but twists it with a modern adaptation of that look. The tiny pixel details would not actually work via composite on a CRT, so it’s doing something unique with the ‘half retro’ aesthetic.
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I think that the scaled up emulator look is the best possible way for devs to do things today, as long as they design things to work at lower resolutions first then scale things up. It allows the game to look good on modern displays (what really matters), or to be downscaled/filtered by nutjobs like @Danexmurder here (meant as compliment).
For games like The Messenger or Curse of the Moon, I find it immensely impressive when the designers make something that works at either 240p or 4K. If someone makes a retro-themed game and it uses tiny details that would be impossible to see under 480p, I don’t respect it as much.
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That’s why Doom 2016 really blew me away. I think that a downscaled 240p game can really show how strong a game’s art direction is.
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Been all over the place with my gaming lately. Mostly been playing shmups and more arcade-like games in short bursts, but I have also been going through Sam and Max in preparation for playing the Wii games. Took a few pics tonight as I played. All shots are of a JVC TM-H150C through the PC
Twinkle Tale map screen, I love it. 320x224 through Retroarch
Sam and Max @ 320x200 VGA mode. The colors look much more washed out in the pictures than in person.
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What do you mean “JVC through PC”? Are these photos?
Interesting because Twinkle Tale looks so much brighter/colourful than I’ve seen before.
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What do you mean “JVC through PC”? Are these photos?
He’s using CRT_Emudriver, it’s a modified driver that can be used with some AMD cards to output a true 15khz signal at whatever resolution your TV can support. You can achieve a very close to real hardware experience using this, Retroarch with it’s latency reduction features, and a legit controller, you might not even be able to tell the difference between that and real hardware for a lot of platforms. I made a write up about it here: My Experience emulating to my CRT - #16 by Mega
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Oh, cool!
Twinkle Tale turned out better, it seems like if I soften the focus the colors really pop, but if I dial the focus in CRT shots are always washed out. I’m just using my Galaxy S7 camera and I’m no photographer so I could be doing something wrong.
I may throw these into GIMP next time and try to match the colors, but I’m lazy!
Oh, OK, it’s just phone camera colour balance
The SoR 4 Announcement inspired me to try out the Streets of Rage Remake. I’m going to share my thoughts on the game itself in the SoR4 thread, but the gist is that everyone should play this, and it makes me wonder how much SoR4 could add to the formula (though I’m still very excited to see it).
I also appreciate that the game is rendered at 240p, which allows for stunning visuals that are still very faithful to the originals. Here are a few shots from my first session.
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